Datto CEO and founder on market debut

Vista-backed IT software provider Datto CEO Tim Weller and founder Austin McChord join The Final Round from the New York Stock Exchange to talk about its public debut, as well as competition in the data protection market.

Video Transcript

JEN ROGERS: Welcome back to "The Final Round." We've taken a little bit of a dip lower here after holding marginally in the green. We are below the flat line now on the three majors. The Dow is off just about 2/10 of 1%. One stock trading modestly higher after pricing its IPO at the top of its range today is Datto.

And we've got Tim Weller, the CEO, and Austin McChord, founder, joining us from the New York Stock Exchange. So first of all, your brand new company making your debut. Well, you're not a new company, but you're a new IPO making your debut here. Tell us about your company. I want to start-- let's start with you. What is Datto? What is the pitch here?

AUSTIN MCCHORD: So Datto makes tools and stuff for managed service providers who provide them to small businesses. We do data backup, disaster recovery, as well as a whole suite of IT and security products. We are the ones out there building the protection layers for those small businesses to prevent things like ransomware attacks and other IT disasters.

JEN ROGERS: So Austin, how's business been? We all know-- we've all been moving to the cloud. Everything's been going to the cloud. Everybody's working from home. Has the time since COVID been, you know, a boost to you?

TIM WELLER: I think that there's two pieces that have come into play. So one, it's certainly caused everybody to look at their digital transformation. And everyone has become more reliant on technology. And that speaks very positively for what Datto does and what we build.

And then at the same time, you know, small businesses have taken a really hard hit during this pandemic. And that has slowed things a little bit. Combined together, Datto is still growing. And we're really excited, you know, coming out of this pandemic to just continue to accelerate things moving forward.

JEN ROGERS: But talk about the process of going public right now, sort of why you decided to make the move now.

AUSTIN MCCHORD: I think, Tim, that's--

TIM WELLER: Yeah, there's a couple of reasons for that. This year has actually been a very good year for us. We continued to grow throughout the pandemic. We were set up by Austin in over a decade ago with software as a service. And the public markets have been, of course, very receptive to SaaS technology companies this year.

And we think coming out of COVID, there'll be real tailwinds as small, medium businesses continue to digitally transform their companies and move to more online models in what many call the new normal. So a number of macro events have come together to make this the right time for us.

JEN ROGERS: We've got about a minute before we have to go. I'm just curious. We had Netflix results after the bell yesterday. The stock softened. And one of the reasons is just this kind of pull forward of demand that we've seen.

And I'm wondering if that-- you said your business has performed pretty well in this space. If that's a concern for you. Do you feel that we have pulled forward demand, but we might [INAUDIBLE] in future quarters?

TIM WELLER: Yeah, no, not at all. We, in fact, struggled a little bit in the beginning of COVID for a month or two, but have definitely seen the business reaccelerating. All the trends in small, medium business technology that our partners, the managed service providers, deliver as CIOs to those enterprises, those are all still there. They've accelerated.

We think they'll accelerate more post, but I wouldn't say that we've seen any of that pulling in just yet. It's a long race. We're set up for the long term. And we think long term. So, optimistic about where things are going.

JEN ROGERS: Datto is the IPO. Great to see you guys at the New York Stock Exchange. CEO and founders both there. We're going to be back with the closing bell.