ATLCTO Event Recap: KMS’s Journey from 10 to 1,000 in 10 years
Starting a business in the midst of the Great Recession was risky. Successfully growing that business over the last 10 years has been a remarkable journey.
At this month’s ATLCTO event, KMS Co-Founder & President, Josh Lieberman and CTO, Kaushal Amin were proud to share this journey with other Atlanta-based technology leaders.
ATLCTO Board President, Minaz Vastani (CTO at Kava) opened the event by telling attendees a bit more about the organization.
ATLCTO’s goal is to build a community for CTOs and technology leaders to share innovative ideas, forge connections, and ask questions. By creating a collaborative network, professionals will have a peer group they can turn to for reliable, unvarnished, and expert advice. The group achieves this goal by connecting technology professionals at their bi-monthly speaker series and networking events.
The month’s event, hosted at CineMassive and sponsored by KMS, was attended by about 50 industry leaders eager to hear KMS’s story.
Minaz went on to introduce KMS, explaining that we recently welcomed our 1,000th employee, celebrated our 10 year anniversary, and have incubated 3 successful software product companies (QASymphony, Katalon, and Kobiton). However, like many good things–the road to success has not always been easy.
He continued, “today’s story is about grit…to start when [KMS] did and grow to where they are now, takes determination, making some good calls, and taking care of your customers.”
From there, Josh and Kaushal took the floor. Beginning by telling the story of KMS’s inception as an offshore development company, Josh explained that ultimately his and co-founder, Vu Lam’s goal was to build software products. By starting as a consulting company, they would be able to quickly raise capital to run the business and one-day fund product development.
This was the first successful, strategic move. And that move, followed by many more, has led to KMS’s success.
As Josh and Kaushal continued to tell about the company’s success and failures, one running theme became evident: KMS could link each major success back to supporting its people.
Whether it be customers, employees or in the community, by investing in building quality relationships, the company has continued to grow.
While this theme was woven throughout many of Josh and Kaushal’s points, there were two stories that really drove that message home.
In the first, Josh told the group about a challenging time in KMS’s early years. Due to an organizational shift, one of our main clients at the time needed to drastically downsize their contract with KMS. Scraping together resources just to make payroll, Josh explained that even then…when he could not afford a cup of coffee from Starbucks, they refused to lay people off.
At the time, Vu told Josh that layoffs would ruin the company’s reputation in Vietnam. So, they made it work. Josh continued to explain that we are now a leading employer in Ho Chi Minh City, a reputation that enables us to hire only the best engineers. By hiring only the best, we create value for our company and customers.
Later in the evening, Kaushal further reiterated this point. He told the group about KMS’s 10 year anniversary…and KMS Vietnam knows how to throw a good party! We are talking live performances, epic giveaways, and even awards for top employees. At one point in the evening, Kaushal went on to explain, they brought their first 10 employees on the stage to recognize their service.
One of these employees was the security guard. Kaushal told the group that as the employee walked on the stage, he was in near tears. He did not expect to be recognized, but as a critical member of the company, of course, he was.
After sharing a few more stories and lessons learned, the event wrapped up with a Q&A. Attendees began to chat and build those important connections that ATLCTO is based around.
Ultimately the event was a grand success and KMS was honored to be a part of it! If you are interested in joining ATLCTO, be sure to check out https://atlcto.org/ for more information. We will see you at the next event!
