Alessandra Lezama - CEO of AbacusNext

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast, where we discover cutting edge technology and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Blum, San Diego's tech ambassador, and together we're going to uncover what technology San Diegans are creating with our own blend of local lifestyle.

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Welcome back to the Tacos in Tech podcast. I am here with Alessandra Lazama, CEO of Abacus Next. Thanks for being here.

Well, thank you for having me. I'm delighted.

I'm so excited to get to know your story and get to know more about Abacus. Can you tell us what Abacus Next does?

Sure. So Abacus Next is a technology as a service provider, which really means that we provide professionals at large with an ecosystem very similar to what a cell phone, a smartphone is for you, but for the business sector where they can integrate all of their applications, like, for example, attorneys use, case management, time billing and accounting products. We integrate it to them, we provide it to them in a private cloud that they can access from anywhere in the world. And we protect against cybersecurity threats and we manage the platform for them.

That's great. Well, I'm excited to hear more about the company and where you guys are headed, but let's get to know you a little bit. Where did you grow up?

So I grew up a little bit here, a little bit there, so Spain, most of France on my upbringing. But I also had an opportunity to travel to Santa Monica, California. So I did a little time there. I call it in St. Monica's School and High school, and then I traveled to Mexico City and traveled back to Europe. So I always have a hard time pinpointing when people tell me, well, where did you grow up? I'm a citizen of the world and a little bit here, a little bit there.

That's great. Well, then, what brought you to San Diego?

My father. He loved San Diego. We've had family in San Diego and really the palm trees ultimately helped me make the decision to stay.

Yeah, for sure. It is not a hard place to fall in love with.

No, no.

So was your family in the tech industry at all or what kind of.

Not at all. Yeah. What'd you grow up in here is, you know, the icebreaker for me is my father was a professional bullfighter. Wow. So we got to travel, hence we traveled so much. So no, no technology in my background. My mom heavily into arts and my father a bullfighter. So I learned to love technology because I was always very inquisitive about how the phone worked and how the TV worked. And so when I had an opportunity to go explore areas of interest, I thought that technology was brilliant.

That's great. Well, sounds like your dad was a successful bullfighter because he was here and kept fighting bulls, I'm guessing, right? Yes.

Which is why our tagline is take the bull by the horns. It's very much embedded in. And he was a very ambitious man. And of course, I think that I took after him the, you know, the courage to tackle situations that hit you right up front. And so I have a great time with memories of.

And you put. Sounds like you put in your culture, which is cool.

Yes, very much so.

So how did you actually make the leap into being a technology professional?

Well, I met some folks that had a project for Alcatel Telecom, and that was back in the day, the 4,4000 series had not had great success, which is pretty much a pbx, a big phone system, had not had success in the financial sector. And so I had the opportunity to work for them and help them penetrate that sector when Siemens was the big competitor. And from there I encountered an opportunity with Comsat International. They had just privatized Intelsat and Inmarsat satellite consortia, and they had learned that I had had some success in some of the Southern America countries, including Mexico. And so they had a big project there to create an asymmetric Internet product. And so I helped them with their first teleport in Mexico. And then the Comsa International grew. And there were other countries where they had points of presence and I helped collaborate. Then kind of bridged over to Allegiance Telecom, then hosting.com. and one thing led to another and I found myself managing data systems and data centers. And so with that, there was a small provider here in town, American Digital Services, back in the day. And I connected with those folks and had a big project to expand data center operations in San Diego. And I had the opportunity to work on that project. And so grew what is now American Internet Services from a little 15,000 square foot facility into the largest in the Southern California market. Market expanded to Phoenix and then kind of took a rest, exited that, that venture very successfully, took a little break and Had a great friend called Judd Kessler and he's the founder of Abacus Law, the case management product. And that product had great success over the years in the market for three decades, but had not made the jump to the cloud. And so he asked me to come in and help him to look at ways to reinvent the business. And I got incredibly excited about the opportunity because he had captured over 250,000 attorneys worldwide over the course of his time in the market and it was clear that they had not been able to bridge their practice into cloud enabled technology. So with my background in data center operations and all the different technologies that I had work with, it got me very excited. Went out, surveyed over 250,000 of our clients and they all gave me great feedback and they said what we need is a turnkey solution. We don't have time to learn technology, we don't have time to understand even how to make decisions about technology. So I brought in my senior team, my cto, brilliant Jerome Fodor, and we build out what we call Abacus Private cloud, which is this ecosystem. And in this ecosystem we, we build and publish case management solutions in addition to document management solutions, email solutions, we integrate it all and we provide all of the management and all of the updates and patching, more importantly the consulting services. So we truly become the solution of record. But more importantly, the entrusted CIO as a service sort of speak, right? So we do the full enchilada for clients and we take the burden of the capital expense off of them. Okay. Because we provide enterprise class technology for even the smallest legal firm they can leverage. From all of that, they don't need to invest in equipment and, or in hiring very expensive engineers to manage it. They can sign up under a very cost effective subscription. We do everything for them, including providing them with the hardware.

Got it. Really cool. So that was. How long ago did you come to Abacus?

So I came to Abacus five years ago. It was just my fifth year anniversary.

Congratulations.

And so since then we're, you know, we're excited about the growth, more importantly, because we have a very noble mission and that is to help improve the lives of professionals in the legal space. We recognize that in doing that, the growth was eminent. We had created this product or this platform that was agnostic not only to software, but also to industries. And so through our research we recognized that there were other areas that we could help. And accounting, for example, the profession was another. So over the course of the last three years, we've grown from 29 employees I was employee number 29 five years ago. Five years ago to over 450 employees that we are today. We have also had the opportunity to, to grow by acquisition by recognizing brand products in the different verticals, legal and accounting, that are pivotal to the success of firms. And we've acquired them, we've cloud enabled them, we've integrated it into our ecosystem. And so we can offer all sorts of applications to our clients at their requirement.

Sure.

Because everyone is a little bit different.

Yeah, yeah, that's really great. And along that time, I mean, you obviously grew as a company. You have a beautiful new building now.

We do. We're so proud. So that's one of my favorite stories. So I started out 29 employees. We were in 5,300 square feet of space. And one of our dreams. I'll never forget my very first all hands meeting. I had 17 people in there and I said, mark my words, in less than five years, we'll have our name on the top of our building. And here we are five years later. We've just moved into this beautiful city, 69,000 square foot, three story building at the top of the hill here in San Diego. We've got a beautiful view. I can see the ocean from my window here. And we are excited. We're attracting very high quality, talented technologists. And that's really the secret gravy behind the extraordinary service that we deliver.

That's great. Yeah, it sounds like, I mean, you went from tech enabled to a tech company in that time. Right. So what else besides the growth of the company, new sectors. I mean, what have you seen as you've been growing, anything else you've been experiencing within San Diego growing over those five years too?

Well, I think that we're attracting and we are transplanting a lot of technical knowledge from other areas. For example, the Bay Area. And I think that San Diego as a city has a lot to do with that because of what it offers. I haven't met anyone that doesn't fall in love with San Diego, including myself, and that wants to find a way to build roots in this beautiful city.

Not a hard place to fall in love.

Not a hard place to fall in love. And that coupled with the extraordinary universities that we have here that are also producing these very talented engineers. And it's just a different mindset in how you view the world through the eyes of technology. That we've had great success attracting these extraordinary individuals that come and really buy into the vision of enabling people's lives through the use of better technology.

Got it that's really exciting. Can you tell us where you think the company's headed? Have you given them your next five year vision?

Yeah, well, you know, five years is a long time nowadays and with technology we're probably looking at 2, 3 tops. Right. So business plans nowadays, I remember studying, they used to be five and ten year plans, now they're 18 months, they're 18. 18 to three years.

Right.

But so the vision is clear for us. We want to become the, you know, worldwide partner of record of professionals that are driven by highly regulated and compliance regulations. Right, got it. And for that you really need to have a good understanding of all the moving pie of the practice. And so currently we have our headquarters in San Diego, but through the acquisitions that we've made over the course of the last three years, mostly six acquisitions, and the different brands for both of these markets, we are creating a suite of products that is a seamless, fully integrated turnkey solution for the professional markets that we serve. We have now a point of presence in Toronto, we have a point of presence in Edinburgh as well. And so we're moving very quickly into every English speaking country in the world. And that would be the first step, but to continue to integrate the products that make the difference in the success of primarily the smaller to medium sized practice. So our sweet spot is we help professional services sectors that range between 1 to 100 users the most. And the reason is because they have the least resources to invest in, in technology. As you know, technology is heavily driven by Capex. Right. And although they don't necessarily have all the, the deep pockets to invest, they certainly have the requirement. Right. To get themselves to that point. And nowadays you can't future proof your practice if you're not in the cloud. And what is the cloud when it, when it comes to regulation? Well, regulation speaks very highly of where your data lives and that's where the private cloud comes in.

Got it.

Which is the platform that we've created.

A lot of other industries to get into then.

Yes, for sure, we're excited. Yeah, lots to do in the legal and the accounting profession, but lots of other professions to expand into.

Yeah, absolutely. So beyond being a great place to attract talent to, what about you, what do you love doing in San Diego?

I love San Diego because it offers a little bit of everything. Right. Nature. I'm very much into nature. That's what where I find solace. And that is also my space of inspiration. And so I love the ocean, the beaches, they're just magnificent. But I'm also big into horseback riding. And I love trails. And so we have some of the most magnificent trails. I like how easygoing people are. They're very just down to earth. You can find people cycling all over the streets. I love to do that. Or just a stroll in the park. Every day is a perfect day in San Diego. So I can't help but just be happy to be here.

Yeah. Well, we love having you guys here too.

Love the food too. Great authentic Mexican food and tacos. Those are the best. Right? So we have an all hands meeting every two Wednesdays and we actually cater every Wednesday, either lunch or breakfast. And it's always Mexican food. That's. That's the favorite, right? For sure.

Common Anonymous between all of us. We all love good Mexican food here.

That's right.

That's for sure.

That's right.

Well, we will absolutely make sure that people are getting to know your social followings for abacus next, please. LinkedIn. Yep.

Hey, we're on LinkedIn. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter and I'm sure if we call my marketing department here, they'll tell you about other four that we're on that I'm not sure of.

Yeah. But it was so great getting to know you a little bit.

Thank you.

We're excited to keep watching Abkis next grow.

Well, thank you. And I encourage everyone to visit Abacus next dot com.

Absolutely.

All right, thank you so much.

Thanks for joining us on the tacos and tech podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. This has been a partnership with the San Diego Venture Group and the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation's SD Life Changing campaign. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eealbloom and on LinkedIn.