Scott's journey after N-able is now Fully Managed

When Kanata software developer N-able achieved a listing last week on the New York Stock Exchange, at a valuation of US$2 billion, Mark Scott looked on with particular interest.

After all, he's the guy who launched N-able during the peak of the tech bubble in 2000. Scott sold his interest in the firm in 2013, when it was acquired by Texas-based SolarWinds for US$120 million. After eight years of SolarWinds stewardship, N-able had gained US$1.9 billion in market value.

Scott saw not a penny of it.

Like many entrepreneurs, he wasn't bothered. Indeed, he is in a very good place, even after recently selling his farm near Almonte to take up residence in Toronto's Yorkville district. He left N-able in 2006 to launch a second tech venture, now known as Fully Managed.

On Thursday, he shed some light on where that has taken him.

The occasion: Fully Managed was announcing the acquisition of Toronto-based Quartet Services and its 45 employees. Both monitor and secure information technology networks for small and medium-sized business and organizations.

With Quartet in place, Fully Managed is a $100 million-a-year company with 415 employees. About 75 are based in Ottawa, where Fully Managed maintains its headquarters, but there are sizable contingents in Toronto, Vancouver, Alberta and Prince Edward Island.

Fully Managed is a rather sophisticated managed services provider because it also automates aspects of customer relations and human resources. The company has 3,000 customers — ranging from longterm care facilities to U.S. sports franchises — who pay regular fees to make sure their communications networks are running, applications are up to date and data is backed up.

Not surprisingly, the pandemic has been a significant catalyst.

Scott got the idea of forming a managed services provider when he was running N-able, which makes the software tools that allow MSPs to monitor and manage computer and communications networks. In selling these tools, he introduced himself to thousands of MSPs, gaining insight about the industry. He still likes N-able technology, which is embedded in the platform developed by Managed Services.

Scott found the first years at Fully Managed tough going, just as he did at N-able. “I've had to do it the harder way, the slow and steady way,” he says. “People are always slower to adopt new technologies than you might think.”

His experience at N-able not only taught him patience, it also provided introductions to the investment community. Scott invested some of his own money in Fully Managed, but he also drew upon a wide mix of investors along the way: the Business Development Bank of Canada, Epic Capital of Toronto, Top Down Ventures of Vancouver and Kayne Partners of Los Angeles.

Now that Fully Managed is beginning to acquire a little heft, he is occasionally asked about plans for issuing shares to the public. Scott's response is that it is probably still too small, though its revenues are growing 25 to 30 per cent per year. If it achieves a similar valuation as N-able's — roughly six times revenues — that would give Full Managed a potential market value of C$600 million.