The growing demand for streaming and two-way video services, 5G and the future of IoT continue to increase bandwidth needs, putting the pressure on growing markets. In today’s episode, Scott D. Willis, CEO of DartPoints, shares the strategies responsible for DartPoints’ explosive growth. DartPoints aims to deliver unique alternative solutions for sustainability in their commitment to innovation within the industry. Tune in to this episode of 5G Talent Talk as Scott and Carrie discuss the future of DartPoints’ growth, company culture, leadership and hiring strategy in this new world of work.
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Closing the Gaps at the Edge with Scott D. Willis of DartPoints
I’m excited to have with me one of my special friends, Scott Willis. He is the CEO of DartPoints. We have known each other since I’ve been in the industry.
It’s about 2016 or 2017.
You were one of the first people I met.
It’s been a fun journey.
Tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you get to the seat that you’re in now? I know that you have such a rich history and so much experience. Let’s hear all about it.
First and foremost, thank you for having me. I’m always excited about the opportunity to talk about DartPoints and share. You asked me about the journey. It’s the journey we’re on, which is what we are but we’ll go into that a little bit later. Probably when you ask me that question, we probably got to go back to my early days when I came out of school, because it describes a little bit about who I am and how I approach. I’ve been so blessed to be part of such a great industry. This industry has been wonderful for me professionally, both in what I wanted to achieve as well as in overall satisfaction and contribution.
As you think about all the things, technology does an impact on society and impact on our lives, the quality of improving everyday lives, regardless of what background or community you’re in. We got a lot more work to do in that to make that available for everybody. I came out of school and I got with my counselor. I wasn’t one of these individuals that were driven out of school. I knew what I want to do. I was an undergraduate.
I was coming out with a Finance degree and I knew what was important to me. It’s some of the things I’ve mentioned. I wanted to be in an industry that would be explosive for my entire working career and be able to work with very talented people. I wanted an industry where I could have above expectations. That was important to me financially. I wanted to be part of an industry that would have an impact on society. Those were my parameters.
When I look back, I came out in the mid-‘80s, it’s one when four industries popped up. One was the legal profession. If you think about it since the mid-‘80s, that would’ve been a wonderful choice. I didn’t have a lot of interest in going to law school. Another one was medical healthcare. If you think about how that industry has evolved, that would’ve been a great choice to be part of that industry since the mid-‘80s.
The financial sector was one that was natural. It’s my finance background and was an area I was comfortable in. This industry then popped up with telecommunications. I’m like, “What is that?” My roommate was a Computer Science major. He had a Tandy 64k that we played games on. I had a basic class in that I did some computing, and then we sent across the school fax system. I walked across campus, picked it up, and turned it in to class. That was my view of telecommunication. I researched that and got started with Sprint. I had a great ten years with Sprint.
I’ve evolved since then. I spent the first half of my career on the operator service provider side. The back half has been on the wireless side. That’s where I’ve been. I stepped out of my previous role a few years ago when I was 57 so I’ve got a lot more road behind me that’s in front of me. I began to soul-search for what I wanted to do. I wanted to be in a part of the industry that was going to be explosive through my working career as long as I wanted to work. I wanted to do something a little bit different than what I’d done on the wireless side.
I wanted to be part of an industry that was new to me where I could learn and grow. That’s where edge data centers popped out of that. I was fortunate to get connected with Astra Capital. We’re private equity backed and they’re our owner. I got involved with them in mid-‘19 and did a little investment thesis work. We closed on our first platform company right when COVID kicked off in March 2020. We’ve been going ever since.
I’m thrilled to be part of DartPoints and the journey we’re on. I’m excited about the data center space. I refer to it as one of the three-legged stools of digital infrastructure, fiber, towers, and data centers. You couldn’t go wrong in any of those three. They’re all going to be explosive for years to come. We’re excited about what we’re trying to create here at DartPoint. It’s been a great and fun journey and I’m excited about what we’ve still got to accomplish and what we’re trying to do here at DartPoints.
Sounds like you’re getting started at 57.
Every day when I wake up, it has that feeling to it.
We’re wiser now.
We got a little more sense of what we’re trying to do and accomplish, which is what makes it more fun.
Tell me about DartPoints, the story behind it, and where you are now. I know you’ve had explosive growth. I also want to hear what’s behind that.
A lot of people that don’t come or don’t understand the data center space look at us as a single industry. It’s not that. It’s far more complex than that. It’s very verticalized. You’ve got hyper scalers, more enterprise-centric, colocation, and cloud-managed service providers, which is rich. It is where we fall. At a simple level, that’s what DartPoints is. We’re an owner-operator of colocation cloud and in a little bit of managed services. That’s what our portfolio represents and that’s what our target customer base is that we’re going after. We’re different if Edge gets thrown around and Edge means a lot of things to a lot of people.
You know this. You run into this every day. I tend to use this analogy many times and it’s comical because others do the same. If you line up 10 people, you’re going to get 12 to 15 different definitions of Edge. In many ways, that’s exciting because there’s an opportunity, but in other ways, it can be a little bit confusing to the market. When you describe DartPoints when say Edge, what do you mean? Here’s our version and what we mean. We’re not trying to do something completely unique as it relates to Edge. We’re trying to drive down a previously hate road.
If you think about our industry, you could debate me maybe on time, but directionally, I’m right. If you want to go back to the late-‘90s, that’s when the internet hubs started. I refer to that as the first ring of the digital highway. That’s Northern Virginia, Chicago, New York, Dallas, LA, Northern Cal, and Seattle. Fast forward 7, 8, or 9 years, whatever time, the next ring of the digital highway was built out. That’s where cities like Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Atlanta are. That larger tier 2s and smaller tier 1s were built out. From DartPoint’s perspective, all we’re looking to deploy is that third ring of the digital infrastructure highway.
We’re targeting smaller tier 2s, larger tier 3s, and in some cases, at least initially, some larger tier 4s. All we’re looking to do is enable the same quality of service, the same capabilities, and the same competitive pricing that customers in Chicago, Dallas, or New York receive. We want to deliver that in Greenville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Ohio, or Charleston, South Carolina, which are the markets that we’re targeting. That’s our definition of Edge.
As workloads are being pushed further and further out and much closer to the end user, we want to enable the same capabilities that you can get in Dallas in some of those smaller communities and deliver it in a very competitive way. That’s how I try to simplify who DartPoints is, what our vision is, and what our definition of Edge is. Our definitive of Edge will evolve as workloads even push further beyond that. Over time, we will migrate and push closer and closer to the Edge. For the foreseeable future, that’s how we think about the Edge. That’s how we’re building, deploying, and leveraging M&A from a growth perspective to realize the vision of what we’re trying to do at DartPoints.
What are some trends that you’re seeing in the data center space? Maybe talk a little bit about sustainability concepts that you see out there from the horizon.
A lot of the trends that we’re seeing in particularly driven around the tailwinds of 5G and Edge Compute are leaning into the vision or the definition of what I described as Edge for DartPoints. That’s one, but clearly, we’ve got a lot of trends that are taking place in our industry. One in particular that you hit on is sustainability. It’s well known that data center providers are significant users of power.
Sustainability has to be an important piece. Whether you’re a large hyperscaler, you’re drawing down a significant amount of power, or you’re at the other end of the spectrum which is where we play. You’re talking megawatt or two megawatts and it’s not as intensified, but it’s still incumbent upon us to think about sustainability in how we look at technology and how we look at delivering different solutions. We’ve got a number of opportunities as a data center provider that we’re looking at. One of the things that we rolled out earlier in 2022 is what we refer to it as the Liquid Edge℠ solution that we’ve deployed in five data centers now. We’ll be eleven data centers by the end of 2022.
It’s an alternative technology. It’s more of an HPC-driven, High-Performance Compute type of use case, but it is two-phase liquid immersion, so it looks at alternative uses to power, especially around HPC, where there’s a lot of density, demand on cooling, and power in a small footprint. This is an alternative to that where you can eliminate that power demand very much in an air-cooled environment and deliver the same capability in an alternative way.
That is one example of how we’re looking at sustainability to be innovative within our industry. It’s incumbent upon us to deliver what we believe are unique alternative solutions, but we want to do it in a way where we’re also good corporate citizens of how we use technology to look for alternative uses around sustainability. There are lots of trends. That’s an important one. That’s at the forefront of what we’re doing. We’re excited to be one of the leaders and on the emerging edge of how we deliver more sustainable solutions, yet still deliver the capabilities and the solutions that the market’s demanding around compute processing and storage at a local level.
Scott, over the past few years, I’m sure that your company culture at DartPoints has evolved and it sounds like it’s still evolving right now. Talk a little bit about that evolution particularly as it relates to the M&A as well.
This is one of the things that I get excited about because creating culture is fun. Throughout my career, I’ve been involved in large corporations and I’ve had some big roles there. It’s difficult to have an impact whereas in a smaller organization, you can have that impact and you can create. You know that. You’ve developed a wonderful culture within your organization that many can look at and try to strive to repeat. That’s the fun part. That’s where we are.
In a smaller organization, you can have an impact, and you can create a wonderful culture within your organization that can look at and tries to strive to repeat.
The challenging part is because M&A is such an important piece of our growth strategy and it will continue to be an important piece of our growth strategy, at least for the foreseeable future, when you bring companies together and you bring different cultures together, it’s a challenge. It’s also one that’s fun because we can pick the best of breed in those companies and we can choose to implement how we want to evolve our culture over time.
I shared with you earlier, we started out with the initial platform of DartPoints in March 2020. We acquired Metro Data Centers, MDC, in Columbus, Ohio in October of that same year then we closed on Immedion in the summer of 2021. We’ve put together three. As I said, we’ve got an active pipeline and I think M&A will continue. We’ve got three cultures of companies that we’re dealing with.
In many ways, it’s challenging because the employees that have been legacy employees and have been with those companies for a long time and there are certain things that they like, you’ve got to bring them along. You’ve got to develop them and bring them into the process. We work hard at DartPoints in doing that. We want to engage the employees because ultimately, it’s going to be our culture of DartPoints that we’re going to have. We’re still very much on the evolution curve of our culture as it continues to develop because we’ve got we’ve had so much M&A activity. It’s also a fun part of the process because you get to pick the best of breeds and we spend a lot of time talking about this.
As we figure out whom we want to be and what type of culture we want to have, this is creating the opportunity to do that. It’s fun to be part of that process and bring people from the organization into that process. At the end of the day, it’s not Scott’s culture or it’s not the leadership team’s culture. It’s our organization, whom we want to be, and what we want our culture to represent. We’re having a lot of fun in that process right now.
I was talking to someone about this exact topic. You said it’s fun. I said the exact same thing. Again, Broadstaff is only a few years old, but I remember in those first few years that it was a lot of fun. Everybody who joined us then, we were creating this together and it was so much excitement and energy around that. There’s something special to come into an organization at your place where DartPoints is right now and enter into the organization, join that team, and build it together. Even though there are challenges with the integration here and there, but you said it multiple times.
It is fun and it’s a good time to enter. I’m curious, are you struggling with hiring right now? Are you facing any challenges? Maybe you have specific strategies that are working for you when it comes to hiring. At Broadstaff, we work with DartPoints and we love working with you. The candidates that we have placed there love it there. I’d love to get your tips as an experienced leader.
We’re no different from any other organization. We struggle to compete. We work hard to retain our talent and keep people part of the process. We’re all in an environment where we’ve been experiencing some turnovers, but we put a lot of emphasis on the hiring process. You’ve worked with us and you’ve placed some candidates with us, which we couldn’t be happier with.
There are a couple of things. 1) Generally, you’re our size. Hiring is important because whether you’re hiring a frontline working level person, a mid-level manager, or a senior level, they’re visible in the organization. In our size, they have an impact. 2) When you’re an organization that’s our size, in many scenarios, you are single-threaded with skillsets and competencies. Having the right person and skillset is very crucial. That’s important. You have to make sure that you bring in because if you make a mistake or you bring the wrong person in, it’s impactful in a significant way versus some of my previous companies like Ericsson or Nokia, some of the bigger ones. It doesn’t diminish that hires aren’t critical for those organizations as well. They’re amplified in a smaller organization like DartPoints.
When we determine we have a need, it’s important. We work hard to leverage the organization and the relationships that people have in the organization, our networks, my networks, WHO, Astra, and our capital of their networks. You know this as well as anybody in your business. If you know someone and you’ve got experience with someone and you know their capabilities, that goes a long way in adding credibility to the hiring process. We try to focus on and leverage that. Sometimes that works and sometimes, you can’t get the right candidate.
You talked about culture. It’s finding someone whom we think is going to be a good fit. It’s tough because it’s finding someone who will be a good fit in our culture now, but also knowing where we want to take and how we want to evolve our culture. Will this person be a good fit as we’re looking to evolve? That’s an important part of what we do.
As a manager, I talked about my leadership team all the time. Sometimes, it’s easy to hand that off or hand it over to you to do the whole process. What we try to engage with the team is to be very involved because at the end of the day, the organization, me, the leadership team, and the managers that are hiring own that process. They need to be involved in that decision-making process.
Engage with the team to be very involved because the organization, the leadership team, and the hiring managers own that process. They need to be involved in that decision-making process.
There are many important things that are on our plate on a daily basis, but getting the right team members, as we bring them into DartPoints, is crucial, and it’s one of the higher priorities. You got to invest time into that and focus on it. If you don’t, you shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t get the end result you’re looking for. That’s how we approach hiring and that’s how we think about it.
I’d love it that you said the leaders have to be involved. I know that it’s important to all leaders, especially now more than ever, but leaders are very busy and they tend to sometimes not give feedback, put it on the back burner, get too busy to respond, or look at the resumes. The way that talent is flying off the shelves is so important. You’re right. Your leadership is involved and committed to the process. Talking about leadership, I’ve known you for a number of years and I know that you are a tremendous leader, I’d like to know a little bit about who is Scott Willis as a leader and maybe some of the principles that guide you.
I have a lot of fun in the role I have. I enjoy what I do. My approach to leadership is that it’s not Scott. It’s not me. It’s a collaborative team environment that I try to create. At the end of the day, do you have to make a decision to move forward? You do. I work very hard at instilling all the way down the organization. I was in the Carolinas and we were doing account reviews with the Southeast team.
Whether I’m talking to that go-to-market team in that region and I’m trying to instill ownership, “This is your region. You own it. You make the decision. You drive it.” That’s important to me. It’s a collaborative approach. That’s one. Two is communication is hugely important to me. I work very hard at communicating down in the organization and I want communication to come up. I would be surprised that and sometimes even to a fault on filtering down to my leaders. If we’ve got an issue or a challenge, I want it to be out there. I want us to own it as a team and understand it. If we’re not aware of it, then there’s a risk that it can impact our organization.
That’s been a big piece of mine. The other piece is that if you relate back to our culture, what’s big to me is being purpose-driven. That, to me, is one of the most important things that I can instill in an organization and I want all of us to be. I want us to all wake-up and have a purpose in what we’re doing. I want us to know what that purpose is and all collectively buy into that. That’s an important piece of leadership as you look at any individual. It is your organization. Whatever the purpose is. Are you purpose-driven in everything that you do?
At DartPoints, we’re purpose-driven and we’re passionate around delivering services to our customers. Our value proposition is not only geographical, the definition that I gave of Edge, but it’s also around customer service. At a local level, we want to wrap our arms around our customers and we want to deliver best-in-class solutions. That’s purpose-driven. That is part of our culture, and it’s what we’re trying to instill up and up and down the organization. You’ve known me. I like to have fun with the team and our leadership team.
I want us to grow, be successful, and achieve our objectives when we set out for any given year. I also want us to recognize that if I use the word purpose, we’re there with a balance too. People have personal lives, families, and personal interests. If you can bring all that together and achieve collectively as an organization what you set out to do, any leader in that organization is going to be viewed as a successful leader. That’s what I try to work towards.
People have personal lives, family, and personal interests. And if you can bring all that together and achieve collectively as an organization what you set out to do, any leader in that organization will be viewed as a successful leader.
Scott, tell me about your vision for DartPoints.
It’s pretty simple. It’s what I stated earlier. We want to deliver world-class solutions into markets in a price-competitive way that delivers the same capability in Greenville, South Carolina that you can get in New York, Chicago, or LA. We want to be community agnostic in terms of what our services and our capabilities are. It’s hard. We’re in an industry that, at the end of the day, is driven by investment capital, and dollars are driven by where the large populations live. That’s why these major cities are the first ones to receive these technologies.
Our vision for DartPoints is to deliver that same capability in a price-competitive way to enterprises, K-12, local government, and state governments. Pick the vertical that we’re going into. We want to deliver those capabilities into those communities where they live and where they invest that we’re focused on deploying in. We want to do it in a way that delivers and meets their expectations as if they were living in Dallas, Chicago, New York, or LA. That’s a real clear level of what our vision is and what we’re trying to accomplish at DartPoints.
I know it’s challenging but one thing I love that you said was that we wrap our arms around our customers. Not only that, Scott, but you have a strong focus, no matter how challenging it is, for people in these areas that are potentially underserved or businesses and enterprises in these areas that are underserved. You’re climbing a mountain to make sure that they’re taken care of as well with that purpose in mind. I love that.
It’s critical. As I said, beyond geography, it’s our value proposition. If we’re in a cloud environment, we’re competing against a big public provider of Amazon, and they can take off and take their services, Amazon, we want to wrap them locally around our services and try to keep them in our cloud at a local level. To me, that refers back to the purpose of wrapping ourselves around our customers and taking care of their needs on a local level. That’s what drives us in what we try to accomplish on a day-to-day basis.
No matter the advancements in technology, that’s what we want as humans. We still want someone who’s going to be there, who’s going to care, and who’s going to respond. We want that high-touch connection. Scott, this has been fantastic. Are you hiring? I know you are. Where can we learn more about your open jobs and DartPoints?
We’re hiring. You’re helping us and working on a few key hires, and that’s going to continue. We’re growing and expanding. We need the right people with the right skillsets and mindset that works within our culture to help us grow as we’re going down this journey. There are a number of ways to reach into DartPoints, but certainly DartPoints.com. If you hit our website, all the information about DartPoints, how to access or get into DartPoints, any white papers, and anything about our locations, our data centers is all there. If anything that you would initially need to start to understand who DartPoints is, you can contact us and we will quickly follow up and work with you. That’s a good starting point.
Scott, thanks so much for joining me on the show. I could talk to you forever. I enjoyed it. Thank you for your friendship, and thank you for all you’re doing in the industry.
I enjoy it. I appreciate you having me. Thank you very much.
Take care.
Important Links
About Scott D. Willis
Scott D. Willis, a recognized leader in the telecommunications industry with more than 30 years of executive experience is the President and CEO of DartPoints, a leading provider of Edge Colocation Data Centers. Previously, he served as the President and CEO of Zinwave, a leading global provider of in-building wireless solutions. After joining the company, he immediately made an impact by resetting Zinwave’s global strategy and repositioning its integrated marketing efforts, priming the company for aggressive growth. Under Scott’s direction, Zinwave relocated its corporate headquarters to Dallas and established the company as the global leader in distributed network solutions.
Scott’s strategic leadership helped solidify the company’s reputation as the only fiber infrastructure, future-ready, full-spectrum in-building DAS solution in not just North America but also the rest of the world. During a time of change in spectrum and technology, Scott successfully lead the charge to innovate new products and solutions and change business models, resulting in an industry transformation toward a cost-effective solution to the indoor cellular coverage problem.
Over the course of his career, Scott has served in senior leadership roles at respected wireless telecommunications technology companies including Ericsson, Nokia, BellSouth and Sprint. With a passion for creating customer relationships and a keen ability to lead global initiatives in finance, operations and business development, Scott has the right balance between technical expertise, strategic vision and operational leadership that is required to be a global leader in the industry.
Before Zinwave, Scott served as Executive Vice President, Chief Sales and Marketing Executive for Goodman Networks, a privately held leader in the design, engineering, deployment and integration of wireless communications networks. In his role, he was responsible for all commercial strategy, sales and marketing and lead the growth of the organization from $400 million annually to $1.2 billion in revenue. Prior to Goodman, Scott was Executive Vice President and General Manager at Ericsson, where he oversaw more than 6,500 personnel across the U.S. and Latin America and helped grow annual revenue from $5 million to more than $3.5 billion in five years. Previously, Scott served as Vice President and General Manager at Nokia Networks, where he grew the business to $1.5 billion in revenue in less than 3 years and established Nokia Networks as a market leader in North America.
Scott is active in the business and civic community. He currently serves on the board of directors of DartPoints and as an advisory board member for Aerwave and Parallel Infrastructure. In addition to being a past member of the board of directors for Zinwave, he has also served as a past board member of the Dallas Regional Chamber Board of Advisors, the Kansas City Area Development Council, NextLevel Corporation, Somera Communications (advisory board member), Raleigh, NC Triangle United Way, The North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance and as an advisory board member of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA).
Scott graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s degree in finance and he received his Master of Business Administration degree from Wake Forest University. He has also received continuing executive education certificates from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
Scott makes his home in Dallas, where he lives with his wife Kelley, and children Savannah and Chance.
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