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Top of Mind in Tech: Rewind’s Mike Potter sees blue sky ahead for Ottawa software firm

August 22, 2024

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Few entrepreneurs in Ottawa better understand the highs and lows of scaling a tech startup in a post-pandemic world than Mike Potter. The co-founder and CEO of Rewind has piloted the company to a position of prominence in the capital’s tech scene, but the journey hasn’t been without its bumps. Rewind, which makes software that backs up and recovers data for Shopify merchants, QuickBooks customers and users of other cloud-based software platforms, has been one of the capital’s fastest-growing firms since it launched in 2015. The company has raised more than US$80 million in venture capital and last year was named to CIBC Capital Markets’ list of Canadian tech enterprises most likely to become global market leaders based on criteria such as their ability to acquire capital, number of employees and head-count growth. But Rewind hasn’t been immune from macroeconomic headwinds that have dogged the tech sector for much of the past two years. In March 2023, the company laid off 37 of its then-135 employees after customers began to cut back spending amid a global downturn. Still, the firm remains one of the National Capital Region’s best bets to become a worldwide market force in its field. In this instalment of Top of Mind in Tech, Potter shares his thoughts on the ever-present threat of cyber-attacks, the opportunities AI presents and why the global economic outlook might be better than some people think. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Responding to rising levels of cyber-threats

“Cybersecurity is the biggest threat that people have out there these days. It’s always top of mind for us, obviously, with tens of thousands of customers. We’re trusted with some really important data from customers and we need to make sure that we are protecting that data and that it’s safe and secure. We continue to evangelize that for every business, that they’ve got all their proper security processes in place, that they’ve got all of their passwords set, multi-factor authentication is enabled if possible. The incident with CrowdStrike a couple of weeks ago, I think everybody wakes up when something like that happens. People just take a second look at what (cybersecurity measures) they’ve got. Companies every day are announcing data breaches. It’s definitely something that a lot of people are concerned about. We see more interest in (cybersecurity) than we did a year ago for sure.”

Leveraging the power of AI

“AI is definitely top of mind. What can you do to leverage AI either in your business as a product that you’re selling or having your employees using AI to make them more productive. We’ve got initiatives on both those fronts. We’ve got an internal project trying to figure out how we can leverage AI to build the integrations for our backup products faster, and then we are also actively encouraging our employees to use AI in their everyday work to be more effective. We had a contest, actually, in Q2 where we had a prize. Everyone presented how they used AI in the quarter and there was some really, really interesting and innovative stuff that people were doing. I was experimenting with it from a social media perspective. Developers were using it to help write code. It was really neat to see. Basically every department was using AI in some way. The applications for it are so broad. What we found is people really need very specific examples of how other people are using it. Evangelizing that internally with this contest was how we did that.”

Reading the economic tea leaves

“Are we going to get into a recession or are we not going to get into a recession? We have seen a slight increase in churn and customers being a little bit more price sensitive in the last four months or so. We’re starting to see signs that it’s getting back to normal this month. It feels like the worries about the economy are starting to diminish. You saw a bit of a freak-out last week on the stock market and then it bounced right back and it's at higher levels now than it was. There’s some good data coming out of the States that’s showing that consumers are spending, that people are less worried about (the economy). That’s good news. "Capital was so accessible two years ago and money was really, really cheap. Now money is more expensive. (Businesses) are being really cautious about what they’re spending their money on. I wouldn’t say we’re seeing deals slow down. But we also have newer products and we don’t necessarily have the history that (more established tech firms) would have over a decade of selling software. Some of our products are relatively new in the market, so we’re still trying to figure out what is the demand when the economy is thriving. It’s encouraging for us that if we’re able to sell at the level that we’re selling now when (money) is expensive, when interest rates come down and money becomes cheaper and wallets open up a bit, we think we can really accelerate those sales even further. That’s the exciting part.”