'It wasn't a conscious decision' - Meet the security distie that launched during lockdown

MD Chris Walsh opens up on the rationale behind starting a channel business during a pandemic and where the opportunity lies in an economically turbulent UK market

Distie ABCD Services was formed as a result of the challenges startup vendors were experiencing due to the pandemic, according to its founder and MD Chris Walsh.

Walsh - who has held senior roles at Exclusive Networks and Fortinet - had been doing consultancy work on the UK market with American and Israeli startups since leaving his role as a director at Alpha Generation late last year.

The idea for ABCD Services formed as he was recommending a vendor client to partner with a distributor he had no affiliation with, and realised he could take an agnostic approach to his business.

"One of the things that I realised very quickly was that I knew the market and knew my competitors, which meant that it was very easy to give a vendor looking for UK market awareness an honest answer as to who they should be talking to," he told CRN.

The idea took shape in April when the boss of an emerging vendor approached him to for assistance when it had to pause the recruitment of two people who were expected to establish a UK presence for the company.

"The whole world changing sort of lead to the creation of ABCD in April," he elaborated.

"It came on the back of a CEO approaching me for help because they had stopped recruitment of two people in April and they asked me to bridge that gap for them - that was really the birth of the business.

"I can't say it was a conscious decision, we kind of fell into it. But I realised there were a number of CEOs out there that had to change their business plans very quickly, and I had the time, the capacity and the market awareness to bridge that gap."

ABCD is a security VAD and Walsh has already signed Irish outfit Cyber Risk Aware as its first vendor, and expects to announce a few more signings in the next few weeks.

He also bills it as a "channel lifecycle business" where he works with new vendors on their UK strategy and helps them strengthen their proposition before approaching distributors who specialise in areas ABCD does not.

"In the past, I've fought for business from other distributors - and that's what happens - but we've got a very ethical stance on this and we can help implement and introduce vendors to other distributors, if we don't believe they're right for us," he stated.

"For example, if you are an MD of an Israeli technology and you want to launch in the UK, we allow those businesses to reduce their costs and initial exposure whilst building a partner ecosystem.

"The reason that we've found a sweet spot is that we're hitting it at the right time; CEOs generally have a concern about their initial outlay and if your initial outlay is quite steep, you're going to put hefty numbers on those people in the country at the start.

"We're a middle ground that allows them to launch in the UK without that massive initial outlay."

Walsh acknowledged that it has been "difficult" establishing a new business in an economically uncertain time, but he is bolstered by the success it has seen so far with clients. He was reticent on putting revenue goals on the first year of the business but expects to launch five vendors in its first 12 months - three with ABCD and two with other distributors.

At the moment, the company is comprised of himself and director Ryan Compagnone, but the MD expects to recruit a few more people to the team to further its growth.

"The biggest success we've had so far is that we've built a platform and a business process that allows ABCD to engage with a vendor at any stage of their evolution, that we believe is scalable," he said.

"By being focussed, we've kept the process simple and gives us a mass of confidence going into 2021."