The last 22 years have seen some of the nation’s most difficult times in recent history, but that didn’t stop David Rounds from building one of the most successful MSPs in Nevada.
Today, he’s helping his clients experience the same growth for their businesses – no matter what challenges inevitably lie ahead. When David Rounds takes a call from a Las Vegas business owner, it’s usually because they are at their wit’s end with their IT. They tell David how many hours they spend on the phone troubleshooting with one tech after another or watching helplessly as employees twiddle their thumbs because of a disconnected network.
Whether or not they have an IT team, they’ve been referred to David. He says that what prospective clients really want to know is, How do I stop thinking about IT all the time? “We know our clients want to be savvy business executives who get to enjoy life,” David says. “That means they need to stop having unexpected downtime and instead have reliable IT and more uptime – and gain a competitive advantage for their business and an overall positive net effect.”
David has built five businesses in his lifetime. He knows that, from one week to the next, there’s another complication or issue to be dealt with, not to mention that technology changes fast. At least every month there’s a new update to install or a new software patch to improve security or prevent the latest raging cyber-attack. Societal and political forces also change the way people work, like the Covid-19 pandemic or, more recently, the Russia-Ukraine conflict or the current inflation concern.
The pace and impact of unforeseen circumstances make anticipating technology needs at best burdensome and at worst entirely unmanageable. David understands this well because he’s managed a business through some of the nation’s most devastating events – three times!
Not only did David start uptimeLV (called NetEffect today) during the aftermath of 9/11, but over the course of the next two decades, his business survived the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic. While peers and friends closed the doors to their businesses, NetEffect and its clients grew more resilient every day. Between 2010 and 2014, the company experienced two mergers and subsequent acquisitions. That’s because David learned an important lesson from his grandfather – never give up, even after catastrophe strikes. More than that, he learned the importance of implementing a scalable, proactive strategy that protects a business no matter what problem (or global disaster) is at its doorstep. That’s how you spend less time thinking about IT and more time running your business.
Out Of The Ashes And Into A Continuous Business Strategy
A framed photo sits on David’s desk, tinged sepia from decades of sun exposure through his office window. In the photo, a small, six-year-old David stands wearing a yellow hard hat and an oversized suit jacket. Next to him stands his grandfather Irving Corben, who holds a shovel firmly in the sandy earth. It was the groundbreaking ceremony for his grandfather’s fourth business in Las Vegas – the one he started from the ashes of his previous company after a fire burned the building to the ground. The image is a landmark for David, evidence of his grandfather’s resilience. “The fact that my grandfather can overcome two complete wipeouts, rebuild his business and retire comfortably, even after everything that’s gone on, makes challenges I face feel like small potatoes,” says David. He may call them “small potatoes,” but the difficulties David has overcome in Las Vegas would have put the work of other hopeful entrepreneurs to rest for good.
David founded uptimeLV in 2001, during the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The company felt the tsunami of pressure from the Great Recession just seven years later, losing nearly 60% of its revenue and almost losing its office space. David and his wife, Shelly, soberly packed office supplies into cardboard boxes late into the night while their children slept on the floor. Still, David and Shelly didn’t give up. They decided to pick up the phone and call the landlord one more time to negotiate a compromise that would work for them both. They were able to keep their space and business running.
But David still needed to recover from the loss of business. Instead of resorting to a fast solution, he dug deeper into the community and technology industry. He partnered with tech leaders like Microsoft and became an expert in Microsoft 365 when the industry-changing software was just being released. “We dug heavily into partnering with our vendors and thought strategically about what’s coming. Because of that, we were better positioned to grow and emerge out of the 2008 environment on top of the market,” David says.
Microsoft began referring clients to David to get them started with the program. That year, under the leadership of Dave and Shelly, NetEffect was named Las Vegas Metro Chamber Entrepreneur of the Year. NetEffect also received Microsoft’s West Region Influencer Partner of the Year and Partner Excellence Awards – twice.
David’s grandfather’s story inspires him to keep going. But he didn’t want to start from ashes time and time again like his grandfather had. To avoid starting from scratch, David employed a strategy of forward-thinking and prevention, a business continuity plan that anticipated things like disaster recovery. “Business owners need to have the ability to work outside of their physical building after a fire consumes everything or a ransomware attack locks you down,” David explains. “A business continuity plan or disaster recovery plan allows my clients to start everything back up from the cloud; they never have to start from scratch.”
If David could go back several decades and give his grandfather a piece of advice, it would be to create a business continuity plan. It’s the approach he takes with his clients today, which positioned NetEffect as a leader well before the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Before Covid, nearly all our clients’ networks were set up for remote access. All our clients successfully navigated the difficulties of the pandemic because of the disaster recovery and business continuity plans we had put in place for them; some didn’t even realize we had done this. This strategic approach allowed them to work without being in their physical office,” David explains. For the few clients who did not have a remote setup, David and his team had them migrated in less than two weeks, with no downtime. “It’s our commitment to proactive services and strategic plans that allows us to navigate changes in the cyber security landscape,” David says.
A Leader In Customer Service First And Foremost
David understands that Las Vegas business owners have companies to run. They must attract new customers, manage their team and deal with daily operations on top of any IT issues. “The problem is that technology needs to be aligned with business goals,” David says. “When it’s not, that’s what makes business owners feel frustrated. At NetEffect, we believe that your IT experience doesn’t have to be difficult. If you have the right managed services provider, who is proactive and responsive, your IT will work.”
Thoughtful questions, David says, are how his team gets to the root of the problem and prevents future issues. “We do so much more than put a Band-Aid on and reboot a client’s machine. We see everything and ask, ‘Why did it happen? What do we need to do to prevent this in the future?’ We find solutions that stand the test of time and minimize clients’ overall spend and are more profitable for their business,” he says.
That kind of attention to detail requires above-and-beyond customer service, which was exclusively reserved for Vegas’s hospitality industry for many years. But David felt it shouldn’t be that way and prides himself on making exceptional customer service available to his clients. “We’re not the cable guy who says we’re going to show up between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. but shows up at 4:00 p.m. We provide the same kind of concierge-level service to businesses in Las Vegas as people expect from high-end hotels,” he says. Whether serving as a virtual chief information officer to offer top-level executive insights and strategy for the long term or taking a phone call from a frustrated community member, David ensures that business owners in Las Vegas get the IT support they deserve.
Creating An Elevated Las Vegas Business Community
Today, David, Shelly, and the NetEffect team are proud of their 100+ five-star ratings on Google, but that’s not the only thing that keeps them going. It’s getting knee-deep with clients to design creative solutions that get results, whether they are in an office, working from home or out in the field. The industry notices too. NetEffect is ranked as a leading managed services provider by the Channel Company’s CRN Magazine, one of North America’s most considerable resources for IT news, trends, analysis, and insight. With a notable forward-thinking approach, David and NetEffect have earned the Channel Futures MSP 501 award three years running and CRN’s MSP 500: Pioneer 250 in 2020.
David’s goal is to help clients create an IT strategy that is inherently aligned with a business’s goals. This way, they are part of an elevated business community in Las Vegas, no matter what national or global disasters are headed their way. More importantly, David’s clients spend less time thinking about IT and more time running the business they love.
For more information on NetEffect, visit www.neteffect.com.
