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Dan Burkland: The Sky is the Limit

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Kendall Taylor Corporate Communications Manager

Kendall Taylor specializes in social media, internal communications, media relations, employee advocacy, and corporate communications. She is a huge fan of Inferno Pilates, the Kansas City Chiefs, and Arrested Development. Kendall holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in strategic communications from the University of Nevada.

Last week, the Five9 team flew down to Orlando, Florida for an epic week at Enterprise Connect 2019. Over the course of three days, theCUBE broadcasted 22 interviews live from the Five9 booth. Today we are recapping the highlights from Five9 President Dan Burkland’s interview:

Lisa Martin: “Let’s listen a little bit of by the numbers. Four years in a row, Five9 has been a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant... We were talking with some of your guys yesterday. Five billion recorded customer conversations of data. Oh, the opportunities in that couple thousand customers worldwide and a big strong finish to 2018. Lot of momentum, right?” 

Dan Burkland: “2018 couldn't have been better. We had wonderful growth. Capped off with a Q4 that showed 31 percent revenue growth year over year. We continue to increase our profitability as well. EBITDA being 23 percent. So, for us it was a phenomenal year. The combination of revenue growth, plus EBITDA, put us over 50. Often times companies are evaluated by the rule of forty, and we shattered that and came in over 50. So, we're very excited. It's helping fuel growth for us, which we believe is still ahead of us for the most part." 

Stu Miniman: “Dan, congratulations on the progress we've been watching. There's some big name hires that have happened in the company. Why I was excited to talk to you is not only have you been with the company coming up on ten years now, but you've got sales underneath you and when you watch a company that is exceeding the industry growth rate by like 2 to 3x… You know, hiring and culture are so important, so bring us inside a little bit. What's happening at Five9? How do you maintain the momentum? What is it in Five9 employees that you look for?”

Dan Burkland: “Stu, you just touched on it. We've been an execution machine for many years. Growing the top line of the business while keeping an eye on bottom line profitability, and we believe we’re doing that as well as anybody in our industry. And, what's very powerful now is those new hires that you mentioned. I wouldn't have guessed in my wildest dreams that we could attract somebody with Rowan's pedigree and really his reputation of being able to take companies, transform them, and take them to new heights. With his reputation, he was able to attract Jonathan Rosenberg, co-author of the SIP protocol and really a thought leader in the collaboration space for us.

So, we see taking what we've done over the past several years and we’ve grown the business into what's now a $250 million plus company and applying the thought, leadership and expertise to an already highly executing machine. Really, the sky's the limit for us, and I think what it now brings us is the ability to expand the product and really take our products into whole new areas, like artificial intelligence, and being able to leverage those technologies to really change the way our customers provide support and really evolved the customer experience as a whole.”

 

Interesting in hearing more from Dan? You can watch his full interview here.

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Kendall Taylor Corporate Communications Manager

Kendall Taylor specializes in social media, internal communications, media relations, employee advocacy, and corporate communications. She is a huge fan of Inferno Pilates, the Kansas City Chiefs, and Arrested Development. Kendall holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in strategic communications from the University of Nevada.

Call 1-800-553-8159 to learn more about Five9