At White Rabbit Group, we are fortunate to be able to work with many incredibly talented and passionate partners. In order to show our appreciation and provide additional value to our readers, we are creating a new Partner Spotlight series. These are interviews with our favorite and most successful partners. Our goal is to shine a light on their experience and gain insight surrounding topics related to technology and creativity. Each partner has a unique journey and story to share. We’ll explore theirs in a Q+A format. We hope you enjoy!
Our first interview is with Interlaced, a modern IT support company based in San Diego, California. We sat down with their CEO, Justin Wells, to discuss his journey and how Interlaced is navigating these trying times.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
Justin, before we jump in to discuss Interlaced, could you tell me a bit about your background, and how you arrived at the company?
Justin (Interlaced)
Sure - I grew up in Rural Indiana - my school was split between farmers’ kids and professors’ kids. I got exposed to working with your hands, working with technology, and working with your brain. I left Indiana to attend the Naval Academy to help pay for college, and out of a sense of service. I studied Computer Science and came in with very little coding experience - my classmates were all skilled coders. I worked hard, learned a lot, and got better at coding - just in time to graduate and start a career as a helicopter pilot (zero coding required). I flew for the Navy for 10 years, during which time I got really interested in business. I founded a startup with some friends, loved it, and decided to leave the Navy and Aviation to focus on business full-time. I then went to work at Intuit, where I helped build FinTech partnerships. I learned a ton, got to work with smart and dedicated people, and build some really cool products. I then came across the opportunity to lead Interlaced - the company had everything I wanted in a startup (smart people, cool clients, great product & service), and had solved for all of the startup risks (product market risk, funding, etc) - I fell in love with the company and haven’t looked back.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
What is Interlaced and what does your team do?
Justin (Interlaced)
Interlaced is a full-service IT managed services provider - we focus on helping our clients align their IT environment with their business strategy, helping them scale efficiently, protect against risks, and give their employees an amazing technical experience at work. We have unique expertise working with the Apple ecosystem - since our founding in 2009, we’ve been Apple-first, cloud-enabled, and People-Focused. The last part is critical - many IT providers are solutions-centric - we take an empathetic approach to IT - we want to feel like an extension of your team that cares about you and your goals - and we love to solve problems.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
Why did Interlaced decide to focus on IT specifically for Apple products?
Justin (Interlaced)
Our founders worked for Apple and saw a huge opportunity to extend the service that businesses receive from Apple stores. Managing Apple devices is a challenge for most IT companies and IT departments - it requires a different approach and a whole bunch of expertise. Over the years, we’ve become experts at managing the full gambit of IT services (networks, wifi, cloud migrations, security, etc), ensuring that they all work together really well with Apple devices in mind (#AppleFirst). Over time, we’ve added capabilities that help us manage PCs, as well (“I’m looking at you Accounting and Finance Department”).
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
We get asked about these capabilities frequently but we don’t offer IT. What markets do you serve, are there any geographies you focus on?
Justin (Interlaced)
We have teammates in San Diego, Orange County, San Francisco and Philadelphia. Over the past few years, we’ve expanded to serve companies with remote workforces and satellite offices across the country. We have clients all over the place - Portland, Virginia, Maryland, New York. The vast majority of our services are delivered remotely, and our toolkit ensures we can troubleshoot and solve problems remotely first.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
How do relationships with your clients generally start?
Justin (Interlaced)
We like to have a short informal conversation, starting with the company’s goals (what are they hoping to achieve over the next 6-18 months). After that, we try to discover what is going on inside the IT Program (what technologies are in place, who is managing them, what compliance and security frameworks need to be in place). Once we understand all that, we can recommend a service package or one-time project to set up the company for success. The vast majority of our clients are on a monthly service plan that helps them gain some security, get ‘round-the-clock access to expert help, and helps them plan for the future.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
How has your team been adjusting to this year's challenges due to COVID-19?
Justin (Interlaced)
The adjustment to WFH wasn’t a big issue for our team, or for our customers. Because we supported remote teams already, our standard toolkit went a long way to ensuring our clients’ employees were set up for success to work from home. Since April, we’ve been focusing on three things:
- Security - WFH requires a renewed focus and attention to ensuring data, networks, devices and email are all secure
- Cloud migrations - making sure data is easily accessible when out of the office (especially if your servers are in the office) is critical for speed and efficiency
- Helping our clients prepare for a new future where there is a blend of WFH and in-office work (for example, how do deliveries happen if everyone is at home) - we are helping our customers get their offices ready for this new way of working.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
We love partnering with Interlaced for obvious reasons. For anyone not familiar with your company, could you explain your competitive advantage?
Justin (Interlaced)
I think three things:
- Our 10+ years of experience helping us solve industry-specific problems - we work a lot with design and creative studios… There are lots of very specific challenges around data, productivity and collaboration that go into making a creative studio run efficiently and deliver client-projects on time. Over the years we’ve seen all of these challenges and improved our platform and service for our customers.
- Our ability to help our clients scale - we’ve helped many clients improve their stack so that they can meet compliance and security requirements to work with large, sophisticated clients (ie, the fortune 500s).
- Our people - we work really hard to hire people who fit the culture of our clients, who have really strong customer service skills, and work really hard to solve problems for our customers.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
What’s one of your favorite things about partnering with White Rabbit Group?
Justin (Interlaced)
For me, I love that White Rabbit Group has dug in to perfect their skills to better serve a niche - “app development for creative studios” - it is so clear that WRG knows who their customers are and is solely focused on delivering awesome digital experiences. That’s focus.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
Is there anything else our readers should know about Interlaced or our partnership?
Justin (Interlaced)
I think the combination of DevOps and TechOps is a really powerful combination - a small agency can accelerate their growth, only held back by their imagination.
Adam (white Rabbit Group)
Thanks for your time, Justin! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and look forward to many more. For those of you who have been introduced to Interlaced for the first time, visit the Interlaced website to learn more about their capabilities and talented team!