Over the past 20 years, Marc Olson has held executive positions with McAfee, Johnson Controls, Siemens Business Systems, and Sybari Software, a provider of enterprise antivirus solutions.  Scott Lehmann, then a Channel Director at Sybari, says that Olson began that operation with “little more than a desk and a computer, and within 5 years grew it to $150 million with 130 employees in offices throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.”  When Microsoft acquired Sybari in 2005, Olson and Lehmann briefly went their separate ways, reuniting in 2006 to form Nayatek.  Amplifier recently asked Olson and Lehmann about Nayatek and its future.

Amplifier:  What does your company do?

Olson: Nayatek is a global provider of enterprise Compliance, Archiving and Security solutions designed to specifically assist organizations to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of their messaging and electronic document resources and to maintain objectively verifiable, robust procedures to comply with industry regulations.

Amplifier:  What problem does it solve?

Olson:  The volume of electronic “corporate content” continues to explode with no signs of slowing.  Companies see this problem manifest itself in three often overlapping areas: IT Management, Legal & HR liability and Regulatory Compliance.  IT departments have to find ways to deal with all of this information, to optimize system performance and ensure user productivity.  Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of regulatory and legal requirements driven by governments around the world have put enormous pressure on companies’ legal and compliance departments to ensure that they are actively taking steps to mitigate risk and minimize their liability.

While there are many products available most -- including the market leaders -- are falling short due to their 1990’s monolithic architectures, overly complex redundancy schemes, lack of security and compliance integration, and their significant dependencies and limitations.  Additionally, most of the solutions are “me too” solutions that provide little to no innovation and lack the geographical and “go-to-market” expertise to make the jump from small regional vendor to market challenger. 

The vast majority of clients have yet to implement a solution, even though most admit that they need to.  This illustrates the problems with the current available solutions, as well as the large addressable market opportunity that exists for the right solution.

Amplifier:  What’s unique about your company?

Olson:  The leading solutions are all based on older monolithic architectures and designs from the late 1990’s thus making it difficult for them to adapt to changing client requirements especially those that have emerged in recent years as a result of rapidly expanding regulatory and legal compliance.  We differentiate ourselves clearly from the many other solutions on the market by bringing a grid networking approach to the application level, integrated enterprise class high availability, built-in compliance and security functionality, and what should be best-in-class high performance scalability of the solution.

We combine at a very early stage the track record, experience, and expertise of having done it before from the management, sales and technical perspectives.  At Sybari Software we built the EMEA business from $0-$150m in total sales in 5 years across more than 20 countries. 

Lehmann:  We’re also Americans who have lived and have a successful business track record in Europe, so we have a good understanding of both markets.

Olson:  Yes, we’re comfortable on both sides of the Atlantic.  We know how to build low cost, high impact teams that can outpace the market growth rates, and we understand how to grow focused market share in multiple regions simultaneously.  Our technical and development team has previously architected a commercialized solution and has a clear understanding of the technical challenges and shortcoming of the leading solutions, as well as the reasons that the vast majority of customers have yet to implement solutions.

Combining our unique technical and design approach towards building and enterprise class archiving and compliance platform with our proven on the ground go-to-market acumen across multiple geographies, we strongly believe that we bring something extra to the market that can gain rapid market share on the market leaders and quickly outdistance the many “me too” solutions that currently exist.

Amplifier:  When did you start your company?

Lehmann:  We started the company in 2006 after the exit from our last company, Sybari Software, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2005.  We began development in late 2006 and launched the company in March of this year; we’ve been hard at work building our next generation solution.  

Amplifier:  How have you funded the company to date?

Olson:  The company is entirely self-funded to date, but we are actively looking to raise additional funds from the outside.  We have some had preliminary discussions with some VC’s, Angels and are also currently trying to raise some funding through family & friends. 

Amplifier:  At what stage of development is your company?

Olson:  The company is currently in a seed stage of development with our new solution due to be released in spring 2008.  We are already beginning to seed the market with an OEM solution under our own name in order to build credibility with clients and to introduce our new solution to potential enterprise prospects.

Amplifier:  What is your biggest current challenge?

Olson:  Our biggest current challenge is to raise sufficient bridge funding to take the pressure off internally so we can devote the majority of our time, efforts and resources to finalizing the product, preparing our go-to-market plans and to launching the product in the spring. 

Amplifier:  What would you be doing if you weren't an entrepreneur?

Olson:  If I weren’t currently involved in building Nayatek I would be spending much more time with the NGO I have started to help leverage technology and human capital in order to bring on the ground improvements in developing countries. I have already spent some time working in Africa on some humanitarian projects.

Lehmann:  This is a difficult question, but I would separate it into two different areas.  If I were in IT, I would still be working in a "startup" environment -- either in a true startup as part of a management team or in smaller up and coming company where I could play an instrumental role in the success of that company.  If I weren’t in IT, I would either buy a Riad (a medina house) in the old city of Marrakech and spend the time to restore it or I would be involved in the bike industry with a manufacturer or a professional cycling team's organization.

Marc Olson is Chairman and CEO of Nayatek.  He has been a frequent speaker at industry technology conferences and network security seminars.  VP Lehmann has traveled regularly to Morocco since his college days, and says that he sees “tremendous potential to leverage the talent of the large number of computer science majors there who are without jobs due to the political patronage system.”