An avid life learner, David Moeller thrives in a challenging environment with all things tech. The team of nine at CodeGuard know how to hustle having over 75,000 customers since their start in 2010. Each day they work to help everyone from individuals and startups to enterprise level companies back up their web content. David has a wealth of experience and a knack for always wanting to learn something new, which helped him launch CodeGuard into the successful company it is today. Here’s his story:
How was CodeGuard created? Was it all of a sudden or more organic?
I was actually building a website while completing an investment banking internship, and all of a sudden the hard drive crashed. I freaked out because we needed it for an upcoming spot on the reality show, American Inventor. As you can imagine, I panicked. But at the same time two thoughts came to mind during that chaos:
1.There’s got to be a better solution.
2. I wonder if there are any other boneheads like me that lose their website’s information.
I knew I wanted to solve this problem and make sure I never lost my hard work ever again.
Would you consider yourself a forerunner in this industry?
Yes — we were and are definitely establishing a new industry. At the time, website backup was not a widely discussed solution and most people didn’t even know companies like us existed as a vertical. Now we have a number of competitors in our space, but they all focus on different niches than CodeGuard. We are still paving the way.
How does CodeGuard work?
First, we connect to your server that powers your website, take in all the data, and store it in the cloud. We look at the servers once a day or more to monitor any changes or red flags that something has gone wrong. If anything changes, we back it up and store it in the cloud. If anything goes wrong, you can restore your site based off of the previous information that has already been backed up. It’s all completed through an open connection so there’s no need for installations or a large setup process. Basically it’s exactly what I wish I had access to during my hard-drive-crash-freak-out.
Our customers rave about how fast and reliable our restoring ability is. Over half of the restores completed on CodeGuard have been initially caused by someone accidentally deleting a file or a file becoming infected with malware. We often like to give the example that if someone were to update their WordPress plugin and their site goes down (which is a common occurrence), they can use CodeGuard to restore it to the previous version instead of having to quickly troubleshoot a plugin problem that you may or may not know how to handle. Instead, you’re back up and running in no time.
What made finding a financial partner so important to growing CodeGuard?
The number one reason we needed a financial partner was to navigate our cash to accrual accounting, which can be really difficult to calculate. On top of that, we have big partners who pay monthly, as well as lots of retail customers, so revenue recognition is not an easy thing to come by. The books were messy and hard to keep up with, and Acuity has been a great partner to grow with us from zero to over $100,000 in MRR. They keep us on track and we know we can trust them.
As any startup with investors knows, our books need to be accurate so our investor and board can see how the business is truly performing. Acuity knows this space really well and has strategically helped us navigate the numbers and ensure they are accurate. They’re really responsive, so when our partners or board members have questions I know I can get answers quickly. Their price is fair – to be able to depend on your books and know they are completely accurate at all times? That is invaluable to me.
See more of David’s Story – Check it out.
