Unifying Cloud Services | Arthur Chang from PanTerra Networks

DISCLAIMER: Below is an AI generated transcript. There could be a few typos but it should be at least 90% accurate. Watch video or listen to the podcast for the full experience!

Alexander Ferguson 0:00
There are loads of cloud solutions for file sharing, messaging conferencing, project management, overall client vendor communications, but managing all these different services can get messy. In this episode, we talked to Arthur Chang, CEO of PanTera Networks, whose focus is on providing a solution for mid level enterprises that unifies all these cloud services into one. Arthur Chang, who also goes by RD has over 20 years of high tech executive experience. rd started his career at Bell Laboratories later being CEO of silverpoint communications, a provider of telecom equipment, and then CEO of cradle Technologies, a multi core multimedia DSP company. Thank you so much, RD for joining. I’m excited to learn more about PanTerra of how you started and also the problem, unique problem that you’re solving and being able to apply and continue to innovate. How are you innovating? When starting us off? What year did the company starts? And where are you guys headquartered

Arthur Chang 0:57
company started in the late 2000s 2009. kind of timeframe. It was organically grown, still privately held company. And we delivered the product in around 2012 timeframe.

Alexander Ferguson 1:13
Gotcha. What time when did you join on?

Arthur Chang 1:16
I joined in the 2009 timeframe was brought in by the venture capitalists that were investing in the company.

Alexander Ferguson 1:22
Got it? And how big is the team right now?

Arthur Chang 1:25
Well, we’re a private company. So we don’t give exact numbers. But you know, we’re in the 100 to 200 employee range,

Alexander Ferguson 1:31
that’s awesome. So continue to grow, and the market segment you’re focused on is what?

Arthur Chang 1:37
So we’re very laser focused on the mid market enterprises. And we really define the sweet spot of mid market enterprise to be sort of in the 200 to 2000 employee range. But obviously, we will serve companies below that 200 user mark and companies with customers above that 2000 range as well.

Alexander Ferguson 2:00
And then the pain point that you really solve in this market segment, to help me on how we

Arthur Chang 2:05
were really formed and terrorists form to really deliver a better cloud experience for mid market enterprises through the delivery of end to end, all in one secure multi cloud solution that combines three of the key critical services that virtually every company uses, which is unified communications, collaborations, and content sharing. And what’s interesting about that is we’re really the only company out there that delivers those three services and a seamlessly customizable single solution for the mid market enterprise.

Alexander Ferguson 2:42
So communications of being able to do video calls or calls overall.

Arthur Chang 2:48
But both real time phone calls, so we replace the traditional PBX or telephone system of a company. But we also provide all of the rich multimedia services such as video calling, car audio conference calling. And I think more relevant today is the collaboration aspects of our streams product, which provides the ability to create unlimited number of multimedia team rooms where you can share any kind of content, which persists in that team room and conduct messaging, video conference calls, audio conference calls, death shares over and essentially collaborate as a team, both with people inside your company and with people outside your company.

Alexander Ferguson 3:41
Obviously, collaboration is huge, and where teams these days are all over the place. So having some a tool that can incorporate that that’s huge. So tell me and it can you tell me anything more about the technology itself and how it really serves then your market?

Arthur Chang 3:55
Yeah, one of the other unique aspects of Panthera is that we are both the technology provider and the service provider. So we are not reselling somebody else technology, which would then create a supply chain that’s much longer for an end customer. So if there ever is a problem, the end customer waits for multiple companies to actually get involved with resolving any particular problem. We are the technology provider and the service provider. And so by doing that, we can be much more responsive to end customers we can be we can introduce new technologies faster, we can resolve problems faster. And so that’s really one of the unique aspects of having our own technology.

Alexander Ferguson 4:43
People I think sometimes find it helpful to to have analogy a connection point. So if they if they were to take on your service, what other tools would they be replacing then this is an all in one solution.

Arthur Chang 4:53
Right? So really, if you take a look at how do companies do business today, they They have to communicate with their prospects, their customers, their partners. That communication takes place usually in multiple ways, but can broadly be segmented into real time communications like, essentially your telephone system, where you’re either making calls or receiving calls, you can receive calls through ACD cues, like sales, incoming sales or incoming support. And then you have non real time communication, so messaging systems, text messaging, or team rooms that you create, or other types of non real time emails, faxes, voicemails,

Alexander Ferguson 5:43
is there any learnings that you’ve had over the past years that other entrepreneurs or CEOs could take away that you can share?

Arthur Chang 5:52
Yeah, I think, you know, the growing of a company from essentially zero revenue and zero customers at first initial tranche to multi 10s of millions of dollars in revenue is a learning experience that, that I think is unique for each CEO, each management team. But clearly things like managing your your money managing the cash outflow is an important aspect, making sure you don’t run out of money, always putting the customer and your partners first. And that involves the ability to listen, probably more than the ability to speak, customers want to be heard customers want to tell you what they want, what they see what problems they want, solve the challenges, they see how they want their systems integrated, especially in the mid market. And I think the the other aspect that we’ve really learned is that supporting a customer after the sale is one of the best ways to keep churn Whoa, which is an important aspect for a SaaS company. And, and to create customer loyalty, which then creates customer ref reference ability. And we gain a lot of our customers through referrals of our existing customers, or through channel partners, who have essentially seen the level of support that we provide for the customer, which for a lot of other competitors is is somewhat of an afterthought.

Alexander Ferguson 7:25
Where do you see the company five years from now? Well,

Arthur Chang 7:29
we, as I said, created our DNA is in multi cloud service, deployment and delivery. So, you know, we see the sky’s the limit in terms of we built a platform that has a common structure and a common back end for billing for support, for administration for security, for scaling, for reliability. And so now the opportunities expand on our feature set in those three carriers, communications, collaborations, and content sharing, but also to look at where businesses need other critical services, workflow management, business analytics, these are all areas that we are looking to expand on, as well as what we recently announced, which is our full fledged endorsement and support for C pass our communications platform as a service, which allows customers to use our communications infrastructure and back end, but then use their own front end their own CRM, their own front end applications, maybe it could be office 365, it could be Zendesk, it could be Zoho, it could be Salesforce. So we allow our stream solution to be used as either a UCaaS solution or a seapass solution, or both. And I think that’s really where the industry is ultimately going to go is give the ultimate flexibility to the IT departments to use the solution or to have a solution that encompasses both UCAS and seapass.

Alexander Ferguson 9:13
There’s always hurdles to overcome. And there’s always nice when we can share, understand what the hurdles are and already figured out what you need to do to overcome them and other entrepreneurs can can learn from from that same insight. So what do you see as your hurdles that you’re going to have to overcome to move forward? And how are you going to achieve that?

Arthur Chang 9:31
The most important aspect of scaling a business is your human resource. It’s the people you hire. It’s the people that create the family of the company. You can see that what for every great business, it starts with their human resource that people that essentially are there to passionately deliver the solution and passionately support their customer base and their partners. And so we take every hire here as If, you know we’re bringing a member of the family, and it really is a family, I know every person by name, first name in our company, and we make sure that our employees have a balanced life that they’re not unbalanced in their work and personal life. I think that’s important today, I think that’s one of the things that we want to make sure we don’t have is burnout. And yet we passion is really something that could ultimately leave lead to burnout. But you want passionate people, we’re all passionate here. We’re passionate about Panthera, we’re passionate about our customers, and we’re passionate about our partners. How are you

Alexander Ferguson 10:42
yourself? As a CEO and leader continuing to innovate? Where are you looking for where you look to for innovation?

Arthur Chang 10:51
You know, we I look to to every aspect everywhere, whether it’s talking to customers, which I get out regularly to talk to, it’s amazing how plugged in customers are to the industry. And so I get a lot of input from customers, I visit channel partners or channel partners quite often as well. I go to conferences, I’m happy to talk with our competitors. I was just at a conference on a panel with several my competitors. And you know, spent time afterwards. Because, you know, we’re all here to deliver the best solution for our customers,

Alexander Ferguson 11:31
you personally, do you have any books or podcasts or audio books that you’re listening to right now as an entrepreneur that you can share?

Arthur Chang 11:38
You know, I go through a number, I’m not necessarily going to share the ones I go through. But I think getting content getting input from as many places as you can TED talks, conferences, podcasts, the news technology sites, I think is important being able to filter that is probably more important. Our focus continues to be out our customers, our partners, our investors, obviously, in our employees, you know, that’s the group that we care absolutely about. And so we’re going to use every input we can to better all of those groups, their lives and their and their fortunes. Well, I

Alexander Ferguson 12:27
appreciate you, you’re sharing this insight and kind of direction you guys are going and also fascinating for this new launch that you’ve got the being the back end, allowing people to choose the different options at the end, which always is good for customers to give options. Where can people go to to learn more, and what would be the first step you’d recommend?

Arthur Chang 12:45
Well, certainly we have a website, www.Panterranetworks.com. We encourage people to go there. Obviously, you can get to us from that launching point in many different ways, whether it’s streams chat, or whether it’s a quick email, we we have the ability to do live demonstrations. And so we can give you a quick five minute live demonstration of the product, we have a free download app called streams. And you can download it on Android or on iOS, as well as desktops, Windows and Macs. And that allows you to actually experience the streams product from a free perspective. And so and then you can upgrade from that point of view. And we encourage you to talk to any of our channel partners if you have a channel partner that that is a partner of ours. So there are many ways we have social media out there you can get to through our website. So I think you can all watch from www Panthera networks.com.

Alexander Ferguson 13:55
That concludes the audio version of this episode. To see the original and more visit our UpTech Report YouTube channel. If you know a tech company, we should interview you can nominate them at UpTech report.com. Or if you just prefer to listen, make sure you’re subscribed to this series on Apple podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcasting app.