Few corporations have had the meteoric rise — and influence — in San Antonio that Rackspace managed within the 2000s.
It was San Antonio’s personal piece of the tech wave that swept the American financial system. Rackspace introduced wealth, experience and life-altering alternatives for the lots of the corporate has and continues to make use of.
The affect of former Rackspace staff, the Rackers, has rippled far past the corporate’s partitions. Its core values and tradition of fanatical assist have had a second life as its staff tackle new alternatives within the non-public and public sectors.
The place are these Rackers now? And the way did their time at Rackspace affect their journeys and San Antonio’s financial system?
Rackspace, which was purchased by a non-public fairness firm in 2016 and returned to the general public market once more in 2020, has now shifted its focus into synthetic intelligence.
We spoke with among the Rackers who have been there for the corporate’s increase years and have stayed in San Antonio since. Their work has formed enterprise, tradition and politics in San Antonio’s tech scene — and past.
From tech to Metropolis Corridor
Speaking about Rackers within the public sphere has to begin with Marina Alderete Gavito, who labored at Rackspace in program and venture administration roles between 2010 and 2015 and was elected to San Antonio Metropolis Council’s District 7 greater than two years in the past.
“I cherished Rackspace. It was such a enjoyable place to be. I labored with actually sensible individuals,” Alderete Gavito stated. “There’s so many rules from Rackspace I take with me.”
Many corporations have slogans and values written on web sites and in workplaces, however Rackers keep in mind theirs like they have been set in stone. Alderete Gavito stated she has centered on servant management and selling a collaborative workspace together with her employees, two methods she gleaned from Rackspace the place staff have been inspired to study, develop and contribute.
She retains one in all Rackspace’s core values together with her throughout her work — substance over flash.
“Particularly in politics,” she stated. “Individuals assume ‘Oh, the good, shiny factor.’ It’s lip service, individuals, I would like the outcomes.”
Whereas at Rackspace, Alderete Gavito organized mayoral candidate boards and finally stepped up as the primary government director of Tech Bloc, a nonprofit that’s attempting to develop the tech trade in San Antonio.
Alderete Gavito’s father had served on metropolis council. That, mixed together with her growing civic engagement work at Tech Bloc, inspired her to take the following step and run for workplace.
She needs to make San Antonio into a spot individuals need to be. It’s a typical theme amongst Rackers — the need to make San Antonio extra interesting for expert staff and, subsequently, the businesses that need to make use of them.
Rackspace was a tech large on the outset of the 2000s, however few giant corporations have adopted in that trade. Teams like Tech Bloc are attempting to vary that and a part of Alderete’s work she says is creating alternatives for innovation, progress and entrepreneurship in San Antonio.
Following the corporate’s founders
Lew Moorman was a frontrunner at Rackspace for 16 years, serving as a board member, chief technique officer, president and one of many firm’s earliest leaders.
“I joined the corporate when it had roughly 30 individuals in 2000,” he stated. “It was a incredible expertise. It was a singular expertise.”
Moorman remembers Rackspace’s meteoric progress and key function in constructing the web as we all know it in the present day. After he left the corporate in 2016, he took time to deal with his household after which co-founded ScaleWorks.
ScaleWorks is a San Antonio-based funding firm that buys software program corporations seeking to develop or change and, properly, scales them up.
“We are likely to attempt to purchase corporations which are attempting to determine their subsequent step,” Moorman stated. “It’s actually simply taking over an organization that’s not a transparent winner … and giving them some course.”
That usually contains bringing that firm, its staff and its alternatives to San Antonio. Moorman grew up in San Antonio, he raised his youngsters right here and he believes in San Antonio’s potential.
He’s been concerned in efforts like Tech Bloc to assist understand that. Moorman needs San Antonio to be prepared for the following firm that sprouts up in San Antonio’s yard.
“We’d love for individuals to come back right here as a result of there may be alternative,” he stated.
Rising San Antonio’s tech sector
Whereas Moorman has continued to work within the non-public sector and Alderete Gavito has shifted her focus to the general public sphere, some Rackers have labored in between these worlds.
Lorenzo Gomez III grew up in San Antonio and spent a formative decade at Rackspace till he left in 2010. He joined the corporate with no faculty diploma and rose into management roles.
“I used to be actually indebted to Rackspace. I used to be an inner-city Hispanic child,” Gomez stated. “It actually modified my life.”
We have been watching and serving to the web develop,” he added. “It was thrilling, as a younger man, experiencing the web in a complete new method.”
He loved the mission-driven problem; Rackspace was an organization dedicated to serving others. That mission felt barely totally different to him when the corporate went public, Gomez stated, and he departed seeking different missions to tackle.
Gomez has labored carefully with Graham Weston, one in all Rackspace’s founders, on the 80/20 Basis and Geekdom. Gomez, Weston and a gaggle of former Rackers have centered on altering San Antonio’s city panorama and downtown core.
“For about eight or 9 years, I ran 80/20 and Geekdom on the similar time,” Gomez stated. “I didn’t understand how a lot I might fall in love with urbanism.”
80/20 donates to teams with an eye fixed on fostering job progress and entrepreneurship. Geekdom began as a coworking area and has broadened its work as a startup incubator. Gomez stated he noticed numerous Rackers go away San Antonio after they left the corporate. He met different tech staff who would by no means think about coming to San Antonio.
“Anybody that was a hiring supervisor at Rackspace realized the futility of attempting to recruit younger single individuals to San Antonio,” Gomez stated. “This can be a downside. There must be a complete bunch of jobs that we should always be capable of go to for our subsequent careers and that simply by no means was there.”
After leaving 80/20 and Geekdom, he has labored as a author and began Voice of San Antonio, a media platform the place individuals can share their concepts and journeys within the metropolis.
From entrepreneur to investor
Pat Matthews didn’t come to Rackspace, Rackspace got here to him. His software program firm was acquired in 2007 and he moved to San Antonio to assist run the Rackspace cloud.
“I planted roots right here,” he stated. “It was an unbelievable time at Rackspace.”
He stayed on the firm till 2013. Rackspace was bold, he stated, competing with giant tech corporations and obsessive about efficiently serving prospects. It was a profitable formulation that gave all its staff a chance to develop and be part of that, Matthews stated.
“I used to be all the time a really entrepreneurial man and Rackspace all the time put me in essentially the most entrepreneurial positions,” Matthews stated.
He left Rackspace and ended up founding Energetic Capital. That San Antonio-based enterprise capital agency is much like ScaleWorks, in that it helps companies study and develop, however focuses on very early stage corporations which are discovering their ft.
“I needed to be an investor, however I additionally needed to be an entrepreneur, so I mixed these,” Matthews stated. “I’m completely in my candy spot.”
Matthews can be a part of a broader effort to develop tech in San Antonio and serves on Tech Bloc’s board. Tech, and the wealth that accompany it, foster different investments in eating places and native companies, Matthew stated.
To him, a civic focus and giving again are components of the tech trade’s ethos. It doesn’t shock him that Rackers have stayed concerned in San Antonio and need to make it higher. It’s sentiment many Rackers share — desirous to see no matter comes subsequent be wildly profitable.
“Each guardian needs their youngsters to succeed,” Matthews stated. “I like catalyzing founders and entrepreneurs to go pursue their ardour and their life’s work.”
The tech success story you didn’t hear about
Josh Odom was one the wildly profitable tech tales that emerged from Rackspace and stayed in San Antonio when he and co-founder Will Conway offered their firm Mailgun for $1.9 billion in 2021.
He joined Rackspace in 2007 as an intern and labored there for seven years earlier than he left after which returned to assist spin Mailgun out from below the Rackspace umbrella and into its personal firm.
For Odom, Rackspace’s interval of fast progress was the place alternative emerged.
“I may do various things. Each quarter, when the corporate is rising like that, you must reinvent your self,” he stated. “That creates alternative for individuals who simply soar in and determine issues out. Job titles virtually didn’t matter.”
Odom has continued to work in that area. He enjoys the early days of tech corporations and the issue fixing that comes with it. He needs others to have the chance to study and develop in the identical method in San Antonio.
“I actually aspire for individuals to have extra choices right here,” he stated.
It’s why he serves on Tech Bloc’s board of administrators and he and Conway are domestically centered for his or her subsequent enterprise.
“We’re going to place a heavy emphasis on prioritizing hiring individuals domestically in San Antonio,” he stated. “We need to make sure that we’re investing within the functionality and expertise of individuals right here.”
‘All of this got here out of Rackspace’
Conway is reflective in terms of Rackspace. He joined the corporate in 2008 and finally labored on Mailgun with Odom. The expertise taught him worthwhile classes.
“I’d all the time deliberate to go to regulation college, however after I acquired into Rackspace, it was rising,” Conway stated. “When it was rising, my profession grew.”
Rackspace’s increase years have been a chance to be on the forefront of web know-how, Conway stated. He began as an internet gross sales specialist, however constantly acquired new alternatives.
“I in all probability modified jobs yearly or so, however by no means corporations,” Conway stated. “The thrill was wonderful.”
A few of that was misplaced, Conway stated, when Google, Amazon and Microsoft began to compete with Rackspace. He discovered that entrepreneurial vitality, although, when working with Mailgun in 2012 after it had been acquired by Rackspace.
Mailgun had a smaller crew, Conway stated, and he loved making contributions to a tight-knit group unfold between the West Coast and Texas.
Mailgun was spun out of Rackspace in 2017, Conway stated. He and Odom labored to rent employees as funding and income grew rapidly. A lot of their new staff have been Rackers who needed to remain in San Antonio.
“It was so transformative,” Conway stated. “It’s loopy to assume all this got here out of Rackspace.”
Conway took classes from his time at Rackspace — some cautionary. He noticed a necessity for a extra performance-focused tradition. Conway needed individuals to be invested within the product’s success.
“We’re a enterprise, now we have to carry out for others. If we will’t do this, we will’t exist,” Conway stated. “Let’s not have this phantasm that now we have to be greatest buddies, however let’s be human. Let’s be smooth on the individual, arduous on the issue.”
Mailgun was smaller and centered on its market area of interest, Conway stated. However it nonetheless took pages out of Rackspace’s playbook, together with high-level assist employees.
“I all the time noticed it as an evolution of the Rackspace tradition,” he added.
The Rackspace tradition spreads
Erik Carlin, Chris Kiel and Chris Cochran met at Rackspace the place they discovered the ins and outs of constructing public clouds and cloud administration.
Carlin labored at Rackspace from 2008 to 2018. Now, he’s the chief product officer for ProsperOps, an organization based by the three Rackers which manages $5 billion in public cloud infrastructure to assist its purchasers lower your expenses.
“Rackspace gave us the context to actually change into consultants in cloud computing,” Carlin stated.
It wasn’t simply the technical work that Carlin discovered, although. These core values of Rackspace — servant management, a deal with customer support — are issues he works to emulate.
“Rackspace was a world-class tradition. A lot of what we’ve achieved at Prosper Ops we mainly stole from Rackspace,” he stated. “It’s not only a job, it’s type of a mission.”
Many different Rackers have gone on to work at ProsperOps and tech corporations throughout the trade.
“It’s had a huge impact in San Antonio, it nonetheless does, but it surely’s had a huge impact in different industries,” he stated.
Fixing issues with know-how
John Engates labored at Rackspace for practically 20 years, beginning in 2000 and departing as chief technical officer in 2018.
Engates has served in a number of CTO roles since then, first at Japanese firm Nippon Phone and Telegraph (NTT) and later at CloudFlare, a multinational firm that manages entry and safety for hundreds of thousands of internet sites. He additionally spends time in an advisory function at UT San Antonio and on boards for Frost Financial institution and his kids’s college.
Rackspace took a special strategy to the tech trade, he stated.
“Rackspace was constructed just a little in a different way. We knew we have been a buyer service-oriented firm, so we employed individuals who had a superb angle, who have been service-oriented,” Engaged stated.
Rackspace’s workplaces, inbuilt an outdated mall and in wide-open areas, emphasised a collaborative surroundings. Individuals have been excited to come back in and remedy issues collectively.
“We weren’t there simply to make cash,” Engates stated. “We have been there to unravel issues with know-how.”
He’s continued to emphasise customer-facing work his work at NTT and CloudFlare. It’s vital for him to fulfill prospects in individual, to construct belief with them and to hearken to their issues along with his firm when these do come up.
Rackspace’s leaders constructed that into the corporate’s tradition. The corporate telephone quantity was front-and-center on the web site and there was all the time an individual on the road, Engates stated. Rackers purchased into that mission.
“All people felt invested in and concerned,” he stated. “It was really a singular firm in that period. Even in the present day, it’s arduous to search out success tales like that in San Antonio.”
‘It’s in your bones’
Prashanth Chandrasekar joined Rackspace in 2012 as a chief of employees to one of many firm’s basic managers. In his seven years with the corporate, his function morphed and grew. There have been all the time alternatives to do extra, and Chandrasekar labored to handle a serious partnership with Amazon and the corporate’s foray into cloud computing.
On the time, he stated, there have been plentiful alternatives to develop when you confirmed expertise and promise.
“What I’m actually grateful for at Rackspace was I had some nice mentors,” Chandrasekar stated.
In 2019, he was named CEO at Stack Overflow, a coding and software program improvement platform.
It was a shift to a extra business- and sales-oriented function, Chandrasekar stated, however he nonetheless introduced classes from Rackspace to his new job. He’s tried to emulate Rackspace’s tradition and its deal with customer support.
“What you study at Rackspace is do every little thing you’ll be able to for the shopper,” he stated. “In the event you’re there lengthy sufficient, it’s in your bones.”
At Stack Overflow, Chandrasekar helped develop Stack Inner, a data base or library platform. The corporate has added services and products for companies and was purchased by South African firm Naspers for $1.8 billion in 2021.
He hasn’t forgotten Rackspace, although. Nor have many within the tech trade. Rackers have unfold far and huge throughout the tech ecosystem, he added.
“The Racker community is actually sturdy. Rackspace constructed this nice repute for service supply excellence,” Chandrasekar stated.
