Rob Rae Talks AI and Acapella (EP 1022)

[0:12] Hello friends, Uncle Marv here, coming at you live from Salt Lake City. This is the new venue for Pax 8 Beyond. Here we are in 2026. New place, but same old conference, I think. And we're going to kick this off, folks. Rob Rae, Vice President of Everything. Vice President of Community, Ecosystems, and Partner Experience. The godfather of the channel. That's what I call them.

[0:45] Thank you. I don't think I'm that old or old enough to deserve that title. Or important enough to deserve that title.

[0:54] That's fair. That just means you're, you know, governing of all. Sure. I don't. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm not very good with compliments if you haven't noticed. I notice every time I try to get you one. I know, I know, I know. You're like, what? I don't know. All right. So, Rob, normally we have a interview a couple of weeks in advance. We tease Pax8. We didn't get to do that this year. I assume a lot of that had to do with the fact that new venue, new logistical things to deal with. And I think that there's so much going on in 2026. You were just probably too busy. Well, I mean, yes, busy is definitely a word. But I think it's more along the lines of, yes, we have a new venue. And of course, we've been fine tuning everything that we're doing around Beyond. Obviously, Beyond is bigger this year than it was last year. So a lot more moving parts. I think the more important one is innovation. It's the innovation part of this. And look, we all know this. Like everywhere in the corners of the MSP channel, AI is moving at lightning speed, absolute lightning speed. And, you know, what we're talking about now, you know, more than likely might not even be relevant by the time we actually, you know, come out with this podcast. I mean, that's how fast and everything is moving. And for us as well, you know, we want to come to this conference. We have, you know, our chief product officer, our.

[2:22] Operations officer, our CEO, our president doing keynotes here about the state of the market, about what's going on, about the innovation that we've got. And even, you know, by the time we get this out the door, there's still 10 more things that we still need to do and do it relatively quickly because of how fast everything is moving. So I think it's more of a condition of that is, you know, what we probably would have talked about two weeks ago is probably, I know for a fact that there are things that we are launching here live GA ready to go. I'm not talking about futures live GA ready to go that two weeks ago was still in beta. And it's, it's, it's moved very, very quickly, very quickly. So now I think it's more about relevance. How different is that from previous years when a lot of times the stuff you announced was still stuff that you're still having to tweak and roll out. It would come out later. So you're saying that. Everything or almost everything is ready to go that's being announced here this week.

[3:19] So there's probably about six or seven significant announcements coming out. And I want to say that all but maybe one RGA. Okay. Yeah, which is different because a lot of times, you know, you tease these things out and say, you know, this is what's coming in the next couple of months. But, you know, our development team is moving faster than ever before. And I think it's a combination of us really being narrowed in on both the marketplace story and the innovation that we've wanted and continue to build around the marketplace, the area where our partners exist and live every day, but also the future of this AI. You know, Scott Chasin, our CEO, is absolutely probably one of the most bullish, if not the most bullish person in the MSP space around what AI is going to do, how it's going to transform not only our businesses, but also the opportunity for the MSP. So, you know, he pushes real hard. He's also highly technical. And I love working for CEOs that are technical. It makes my life way easier when.

[4:13] You know, they're constantly looking at the innovation and the technology around everything we do, as opposed to, you know, just trying to increase your bottom line, which is obviously important, but innovation is why we're all in this space. So, you know, he's really pushing the agenda here. And, you know, we have that next step in the journey that's going to be talked about here over the next couple of days. So this won't release until after the show So I know I'm pushing it by asking you this Any of those announcements you can tell me now?

[4:40] Uh, not without losing my job. But what I can tell you, you know, what I will, uh, mention to you is that, you know, we, we've been on this journey where, you know, a couple of, a couple of years ago, um, you know, we were talking about kind of start thinking about AI, right. And the why we need to start thinking about AI, uh, the next, it's not even years, actually. We did that last year. That was last year. Last year was the big MIP announcement. Correct. The managed intelligence piece for sure. And then, um, in Amsterdam, which was only, uh, four or five months later, we actually brought out the how. And instead of just talking about the agentic future, we actually showed a playbook on it.

[5:17] We're now six months past that, and we are ready to talk about the actual implementation of it, how it impacts the different aspects of your business. What I will share with you, though, is that there's a lot of, as much as it's rapidly changing, and we were talking about Anthropic and the, MCP server, the model context protocol server, a year ago. And at that particular point, pretty much nobody had heard of either of those things. And then you fast forward to today, and that's pretty much most vendors now are developing MCP server within their technology and releasing it. And, you know, obviously, everybody knows who Anthropic is these days. But, you know, there's, there's a lot of very, very good news that's coming out of as AI is kind of settling a little bit, a lot of very good news around jobs reports, It's around opportunities, around how the MSP is fitting into it, where you have actually hardcore examples of how MSPs are making money at these things, how they're having the conversations, the objections they're getting. So we can now take that conversation into a much deeper level. Okay. Side question. So as I flew in yesterday, I actually sat next to two guys on the way to PAX 8. Oh, nice. And we got into the whole conversation of AI, MCP servers and stuff. And you're right. Everybody pretty much seems to know about mcp servers in fact one of my clients uh.

[6:39] Is trying to get me to do stuff so that they can run their own server their kid is helping them put it together, so it's interesting yeah but one of the things that tweaked my interest, um not just the two that were on the plane with me but a lot of MSP seem to be trying to do their own yeah and build their own and trying to do it without.

[7:04] The best way to describe it is without vendor support to try to replace the vendors and do this and we can just do it with ai and stuff like that what have you seen with that i mean you guys have been at the forefront i think yeah with the agentic ai everybody's trying to adopt the agentic you know framework themselves yeah um how do you see that that going you know it's interesting because, there are obviously numerous routes to market here uh and i think there's, i think there's a there's a certain relevance of trying to keep it within the MSP space because you have things like integrations with PSAs and RMMs, which are, you know, they're still relevant. They're still completely relevant or integrations with the actual technologies that MSPs are using in their stack. I think that there's also the SMB factor of it. You know, nothing in the AI world is created with the small business in mind or even the MSP business model in mind. It's all generally come to market with enterprise and then And they'll figure out at some point, you know, Matt Lee has this great line. He talks about how the MSP channel sits below this technology poverty line where we have to wait for tech to really get into the enterprise space, get well adopted, well accepted. And then ultimately price comes down, it gets commoditized, and then we get a hold of it. And we've seen this historically through. Well, but do you think it's that because sometimes I think it's actually.

[8:23] MSPs even below that because a lot of times even if it's enterprise starting first yes it may go to consumer it may go to consumer and then MSPs are kind of like oh crap how do we get in on this yeah because then we've got a you know i talked to a couple of vendors where they took a product that was, you know for consumers or whatever and then they're going to make it you know multi-tenant available for us yeah um so it's almost like we're now in this weird quasi space yeah in a sense Yeah, but so this is where I think everything, it's kind of like, you know, we use the analogy of the Wild West, right? It's just kind of like unruly right now.

[9:01] And I do believe that even some of the vendors that we're using today, even around AI, may not be the same vendors that we're using even a couple of months from now. And we see how fast a lot of these things change with privacy, with compliance, with governance. It's all, you know, still trying to find it. And yes, there are MSPs that are kind of running at it and taking the bull by the horns and doing a lot of their own things. But there are some that are coming back into the MSP world and leveraging the vendors that are doing these kinds of things, like what we're doing through our marketplace, what we're doing through managed intelligence. So, you know, I think it's a combination of all that. When I look at when I look at just kind of how wild and unruly it is, at some point in time, we're going to figure this out. We're going to dial it in. We'll templatize it. We will standardize it. We will govern it. We will, you know, have guardrails around it. And I think that's where we find our comfort zone. But one of the things, going back to what you were saying, where MSPs are already kind of dabbling in it, and that is true, there's MSPs that aren't even talking about it yet, and then there are MSPs that are actually building agents and finding productivity efficiencies and doing all those types of things.

[10:04] But at some point, you know, I think that there's going to be more common ways in which the average MSP can figure this out, figure out what the needs of the SMB end user are, and sell it.

[10:16] I draw the correlation back to the early RMM days because that's kind of where I started in the MSP space was back at level platforms of RMM. The RMM company or RMM technology gets developed because there was a need in the transformation from reseller to managed service or managed service provider where the MSP needed to add more value because we're losing margin on hardware. We needed to add more value to find a new revenue stream. RMM, PSA were the two technologies that kind of started that. Now, it's not on the same scale as AI, but RMM, what happened was you develop these tools, you give it to the MSP, the MSP pushes it out to the end user, and then here is a ton of information.

[10:54] There was no, and it was like, oh, by the way, you can build your own reports. You can, you know, build custom reports based on what your needs are. But again, you've got a thousand things to look at. I don't know what specifically I should look at or what are other MSPs doing? How do you form this into this type of report, this type of report? So then the RMM company started saying, well, you're right. Most MSPs are talking about this. So let's create a report for that. And then started kind of categorizing it into more consumable pieces. You can still build customized reports. You know, AI is basically doing the same thing. MCP server gives you the ability to go in and take a look at any data that you want. But are you even looking at the right one? What are you missing? What are other people doing? What's resonating with the end users? What's not? So, you know, I think there is this bringing it back to the community, having an event like this where, you know, everybody can sit there, learn, grow together, I think is going to be critical.

[11:47] So, let me now shift. I'll give you a minute to take a drink. You've got to stay hydrated. We are at, what, 4,000 feet altitude? Yes, yes. You've got to stay hydrated. Yeah.

[11:58] All right, let me ask you this. So, flying in. So, first of all, I told you last year when you announced Salt Lake, I'm like, really? Further west? I had to take two planes, man. Look, I do not enjoy. I live in Connecticut, so my flight is out of New York. I do not enjoy five-and-a-half-hour flights either. You will not enjoy next year, I'll tell you that. Really? Not if you don't want to go further west. Is it further west? Listen, this is not going to air until after, so tell me. San Diego? It's a beautiful city. I know it is. That's really where it is. It's an absolutely beautiful city, and they've got a brand new Gaylord down there. It's right on the ocean. It's absolutely gorgeous. Okay.

[12:45] Normally, you say ocean and sun, 72 degrees every day, and some people don't usually sigh and go, Yeah, but I already have that. That's the thing. I have that. And listen, we have a beautiful convention center in Fort Lauderdale that they've just upgraded. They've got an Omni hotel right next to it, just like this. And literally, you walk from the hotel to the convention center, we can support you in Fort Lauderdale. All right, so I'll push you on Florida. I'll push you on Florida. Because look, I'm an East Coast guy. I would love nothing more than my two-hour flight down to Florida-ish.

[13:19] But there's a million events in Fort Lauderdale. I've been to Fort Lauderdale like six times already. I've been to Orlando and Tampa. No, I have been to Fort Lauderdale at least four or five times already. And that was spring break. I mean, don't count that. No, no, no. Definitely not spring break. No, no. It's just there's already a lot going on there. I mean, when's the last time you were in Salt Lake City? Okay, never. Right. So you got an opportunity to come to a beautiful city that you've never been to. Okay, I understand that. But the draw was in Salt Lake City. Sure it was. No, it wasn't. The draw was, Pat said, Rob Rae's going to be in Salt Lake City. I'm going there. Fair. But there are people that are like, well, I'm here. Let's take advantage. Oh, that's true. The mountains are closer. That's true. I did not bring my family like half of the attendees here. That's very true. But I get what you're saying. New space, new venue, new place. New thing to look at when you look out your Marriott window. Yeah. And I took a great picture flying in as we were getting ready to land, you know, the city of Salt Lake against the mountains. Can't get that in Florida. No. I get it. Yeah. Um, but I just hate traveling west of the Mississippi more than I get it. I absolutely get it. I travel for a living. I, I hate the whole process of travel. I'm with you on this.

[14:28] It's going to be amazing. Okay. I promise. All right. I have to see if that's going to be my one trip, though. One of the best events that I ever organized and ran was DattoCon 19 in San Diego. On the aircraft carrier. On the aircraft carrier. People still talk about that. Of course they do. Gaslamp District's right there. That was your first Snoop event, too, wasn't it? Yeah. We had Snoop Dogg introduce Austin McCord one morning. Yeah.

[14:53] See, I keep up. Still remember that. And what was that? That was like seven years ago. Yeah. a lifetime ago but people still talk about it am not no party like a Rob Rae party in San Diego.

[15:08] All right um so now let me ask this so I m going to ask you one tough question just because i feel like i need to and uh you guys had a little rough bump last year okay when you guys did the credit card thing uh, yes okay um and i mean everybody i guess once you hear the explanation we get it, but of course people were still you know of course right and they complain and absolutely and the changes in the partner program and stuff like that and all of that stuff yeah um it seems as though, that's over i mean people stop complaining uh where are we at now with the partner program and all of that stuff yeah okay so this is a good one um, uh we have i mean we had a few bumps at 25 it wasn't just a credit card i mean that was just kind of the one that was kind of the trifecta beginning of the trifecta of things that we did that we shouldn't have done or not that sorry excuse me not that we shouldn't have done we're going to get in trouble for saying No, because I corrected myself.

[16:07] Not that we shouldn't have done it, but these were like there was, you know, we had a massive hiccup with our billing and invoicing. And then we had another massive hiccup with our tech support. We made some changes in our tech support, which did not go well. You know, we definitely work through that. And, you know, you say partners aren't complaining anymore. Partners are still complaining. They're just kind of come to acceptance of it that this is just the proper way to do business. It's a maturity thing. And, you know, we're just too big at the particular point of where we are in our journey to continue along that path. But I also understand why MSPs were unhappy. You know, it was a decision that, no, we went into this knowing that there was going to be a group of our MSPs that were unhappy about this. And it's not just impacting small guys. It was impacting large shops as well. But it was a maturity. It just, it had to be done. And then, yeah, and then you add in the invoicing issues, which fortunately, we are through and we've had some good bill runs now for probably the last four or five months. And then tech support's getting much, much better. Our CSAT scores are coming up. So, you know, these are all growth and they're all scaling. I mean, Pax8 really is only what? Pax8 is less than 15 years old. 12, 13 years. Yeah, I think.

[17:16] Yeah, these spurts have to happen. Of course. And every time you grow, you get a few bumps. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think the key for us, though, is at least it's always been important to me. And, you know, I had similar issues over at Datto. I had similar issues, growth pains over at Level. As these companies just get bigger, you have to look at things different ways and treat things different ways. I think this is the most important thing is just being a couple of things specifically in the MSP space. Transparency and answer your phone, even if the person on the other end of the line is going to be yelling at you. I think it's just so important that you're present and that you're active and involved and talking. So, you know, I did that as much as I possibly could through 2025. 2026 is looking awesome. We're now leading the way, as you mentioned, in the AI space and, you know, on to bigger and better things as time goes on, for sure. I will say of, I mean, there are.

[18:12] Other channel chiefs or equivalent in the space that are doing great jobs and they are like you in the sense that you know they will answer the call, at any time and good or bad yep and they will listen and they will explain and they will, to some degree commiserate and be like yeah we know but yeah we've got to push forward MSPs, also have the same things where if you want to go from 500 thousand to 1.5 there's some changes that have to be done and customers are not going to be happening if you want to go from 1.5 to 5 right MSPs do the same thing it's just, weird the way we you know, it isn't okay if it happens to us if it happens.

[18:55] So no and that's understandable but you know a lot of uh a lot of MSPs you know manage their businesses that way that's how they factor into their revenue and the benefits of doing business with certain vendors so it's completely understandable but yes it's absolutely a maturity thing, in the entire industry uh as a whole over the last, you know 10 years has been growing significantly there's more at stake there's more opportunity there's definitely more revenue out there revenue is there but the reason it comes with responsibility of course that's what i tell and maturity we have to be a lot more mature about the way we do things all right well rob i want to uh again thank you for uh coming on the show You have, once you, you know, said yes to me the first time, you have been... More than willing to come on the show and chat with me. And my wife sometimes is like, are you and Rob, were you really friends? I'm like, no. He just says stuff like that. What are you talking about? We're not friends? I thought we were friends. We're friends, but she's like, when we do the picture and she's like, we're really buddies with Rob. I'm like, not really. But Rob's buddies with everybody. No.

[19:58] Okay. All right. That's where our relationship sits. That's where our relationship

[20:02] sits. I'm not going to chase you if you don't want to be friends with me. Dude, I chased you. And I said, yes, you did. Um, all right. So just to round out, uh, the venue looks fantastic. It is. It is actually, my team's done an incredible job here. Absolutely incredible. Signage galore. I know. I know. It's, you know, this is the part of the issue with the conference centers. They're so big and so like cavernous and concrete-ish that you need to, you really need to dress it up. Um, I like the, uh, the lower level. Uh, was it your idea to have all the games out there? Day one and stuff? Yeah, it's something we've always done. And, you know, you think about our industry. Yeah, but at the other place, I think there was like a handful of games. There's like a hundred games.

[20:47] We have a better vendor that we're working with now and a lot more space here. Like, it's more stretched out, whereas the Gaylord is more kind of stacked in Denver. But, yeah, you know, MSPs, I mean, we're nerds. We're a little bit nerdy. We, you know, like games. We like pinballs, all those types of things. So why not put them out there, you know? Fantastic. Yeah. I saw Gallagher down there. That excites me, man. Did you try it? Well, no, I've been up here. Okay. Well. Getting ready for you. I had to make sure everything worked. Please. Yeah. We have jobs. Yes, we do. Rob Ray, thank you very much. Always a pleasure.

[21:23] I look forward to the conference and I'm going to start planning for next year. Awesome. Yeah. So. You didn't ask me who the musical guest was. You always do that. Because you never tell me. So you're just giving up. Okay. So here's, here's the question.

[21:38] I told you off air and I'll tell the people here, this will be the first year that I'm not staying for the party. Which you will regret. Yeah. But here's the problem. The flight home, I couldn't get, first of all, I can't get direct flights at a decent time. So I had to do the connecting flights. I was going to be in, I was going to be 11 hours if I flew out on Wednesday. Yeah. I couldn't do that. So I had to fly out on Tuesday. Yeah. So, yeah. Um. Anybody I know we'll start oh you absolutely know I absolutely know a hundred percent do I do I like their genre no of course not because you know the weirdest music I listen to all music I listen to all music listen and Nelly, I knew in love great Luda I knew in love okay um Snoop, I didn't i didn't we didn't talk about that we didn't talk about snoop no not last year yeah is those is DJ thing yes uh yeah I m with you did you did you get a lot of feedback uh, i personally didn't enjoy it as much as it was supposed to be okay all right, it wasn't it wasn't what it was that's not.

[22:59] Um it's not what it's not what we had envisioned okay all right yeah that was interesting i mean still you got an opportunity to sit 20 feet from snoop and the people that wanted to get high got high, that is true that is true there was others that were like what's that smell yeah, uh yeah no definitely uh it definitely you know always room for improvement and we uh we're improving it this year all right um, can i get a hint can you get a hint yeah it's not an acapella group okay, that narrows it down no it doesn't it takes it takes half of your Spotify half okay you left out country which everybody thinks that I m a country first guy I m not um, it's not is it well Let me ask, is it still in the R&B genre? Do you consider Nelly and Snoop Dogg and Luda in the R&B genre? No.

[24:00] Well, Snoop's kind of not R&B. But Nelly was kind of R&B. Luda? Luda, no. Luda's more rap, more... Let's go more that direction than R&B. Let's go more that direction. Oh, another rapper. Dude, do you ever have anybody but rappers? Rappers are fantastic. I know they're fantastic. You always put on such great events. Even if you don't... And first of all, I am a rap music fan. I always have. Okay, well... Okay, so that's part of it. There we go. That's part of it. Also, there is a cost factor to it because when you hire rappers, it's one guy with a microphone like you one guy with a microphone you don't hiring an entire band of people with instruments and you have to pay for five yeah but I m sure earth wind and fire is available, i don't know I ll check with my mother and see if she's still a fan they're on tour man great they got a they got a, they got a movie thing coming out great i yes your mother, your mother didn't listen to earth when I m sure she did I m sure she did um i didn't i didn't um but no i mean, it not only that but they always have so much energy they put on a great show and as much as you may not be able to name 10 songs of theirs off the top of your head you've definitely have heard them before so, you know it's there's iconic so it's not the weekend, um i don't think i could afford the weekend, all right so we're still in the single solo rap artist genre you.

[25:24] Yeah. We're still talking about this. Yeah. You, you asked me why I wasn't asking. Now I'm asking. You'll find out soon. Well, you won't, but you'll find out on social media real soon. Yeah. That's on your flight home to Fort Lauderdale, meeting your Delta chicken sandwich. Dude, I had to fly Southwest.

[25:43] What's the food like on Southwest? Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I get drink tickets. That's fair. So I sat up front. So I get a drink ticket. It's nice. I'm going to use them. it's nice do they have first class yet have they rolled that out it's not first class it's called, southwest extra or something yeah but it's i mean so the seats are like two inches wider okay and i get like six more inches of legs it's not bad it's not bad and i get a pillow on the thing oh nice okay so yeah so it was a little better nice i am a delta guy through and true, delta you're beyond delta comfort plus right uh no i mean i work within a budget, and uh no but you know delta has been very kind and yeah i did look at delta they didn't have a direct flight either um that i could work with actually they did have one but it was.

[26:39] Not it was three times the price of what i did yeah yeah yeah i mean that's another great part about why we picked Salt Lake is the airport is, as a Delta hub, like it's really easy to get to. We have Brits that came direct flight from London. Yeah. We have, we have, I don't think the Aussies, I think the Aussies had one connection. Normally they get about two or three Canadians. It's really easy to get here through WestJet. So, yeah. I mean, it wasn't bad. I'm not going to complain. You know, I didn't, I didn't have to sit back and coach in row 30. Yeah. So that was good. That's good. So, all right. Is it a duo or are we still single? Yeah.

[27:15] It's not like kid and play or i mean it could be it's, not Coolio you check your Facebook page around 9 p.m. on Tuesday all right one of these uh, you know what here here's the thing let me help you pick next year sure what if we do that yeah absolutely let's do that we'll do a collaboration and we'll talk okay uh you'll probably picked an artist for next year yet okay then we can do that, I'll create a list you create a list and we'll see if any of them match.

[27:48] I might surprise you man sure maybe it'll be interesting it'll be interesting it will so alright Rob thank you very much sir pleasure thank you look forward to the conference and, go AI go AI have they had a hit song in the last year no Okay. Not in the last year. Last five years. Last five years? Yes. Okay. All right. Sounds good. All right, folks. Thank you very much. We will move on with Pax 8 Beyond 2026 here in Salt Lake City. A beautiful place. It is beautiful. And, a great entertainer. Yes. Are the Spazmatics here? The Spazmatics are here. They're opening for me. Oh, because that was the thing. You got to keep them on the thing. Yes, absolutely. All right. Spazmatics in play. Rob Ray, folks. Pax 8. Pax 8 Beyond. See you soon. Holla.