A Discussion on Disruption Between Burton and Rhombus

Burton M. Goldfield: Hello. I'm Burton Goldfield, president and CEO of TriNet. Today am pleased to be joined by Garrett Larssen, the co-founder and CEO of an amazing company, Rhombus Systems.

Rhombus is a great example of how small and medium-size businesses are changing the world. They were one of the first companies to develop cloud-based physical security systems for large companies. They're based in Sacramento, California, serving more than 1,500 global customers, and they are growing fast. Garrett's company is a valued TriNet client.

Thank you for making the trip and joining us today.

Garrett Larsson: Yeah, it's really a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and looking forward to our discussion.

Burton: So tell us a little bit about Rhombus, because you guys are disrupting what was a very sleepy industry.

Garrett: Yeah. So Rhombus, the best way I like to describe it is if you're familiar with Nest or Ring, it's like that. But for large enterprises. So we do security cameras, alarm systems, access control. So the badging that you're doing in and out of offices that we're doing a complete ecosystem, single pane of glass for our large customers. We do anything from health care companies, tech companies up to education in K through 12. So we really span all types of companies.

Burton: And what was the alternative before you guys came up with this idea?

Garrett: Yeah, so it's a lot of disparate systems. It's a lot of like single cameras. It's a lot of on-premise systems. So all of us are familiar with everything moving to the cloud. And so all of these systems were on premise before. Usually an IT person had to drive out on premise to manage each of these separately. So for organizations that had lots of locations, this was really hard on IT organizations.

Burton: So can you give us an idea of what it was like in the beginning when you formed the company?

Garrett: Yeah, it was really hard. There's all the, you know, just the tech. I'm a tech person myself, so we're developing new tech from the ground up. And there's, this is my third company, so then there's all the other sides of the company, which I know we'll talk more about, like just getting bank account setup, getting incorporated, getting HR systems set up. So there's all that part of it too, that people really under-appreciate.

Burton: Now you set up the company in Sacramento yet you were here in the Bay Area. What was your thinking and what were you trying to do when setting it up in Sacramento?

Garrett: Yeah. So i'm originally from Sacramento. Some of the other founding team happen to be from the Sacramento region as well. So as you mentioned, I was in the Bay Area, but when we were setting up this company, we were thinking, “Hey, we can do this in the Bay Area. And if we create a $10 billion company, we're one of many here. Or we can go back to our roots, set this up in Sacramento. If we create a $10 billion company there, we help change and impact the community.”

Burton: I think that's really interesting. And has it been hard to attract top talent? Can you talk a little bit about the talent?

Garrett: Yeah, it's a little bit different. Obviously, there's a ton of amazing talent in the Bay Area. We were a little bit nervous about that when we went to Sacramento, but what we found, and maybe this was a little bit pre-pandemic, is, or we are a little ahead of ourselves, is a lot of people were already telecommuting from the Sacramento region it's only… Many people don't realize… or if you go into Tahoe and you pass through it, you sort of realize it's only like 70 or 80 miles from here. But there's a lot of people that were already telecommuting in.

And so what we found is there's a lot of great talent that's in Sacramento that wants a tech job in Sacramento, so it's actually been a competitive advantage for us.

Burton: But you're not solely in Sacramento do you recruit from other places?

Garrett: We do. Obviously, the Bay Area is big for us. So we have about 60% of our employees in Sacramento, about 20% in the Bay Area. And then like a lot of companies these days, the other 20% are spread across the United States and even globally.

Burton: And we talked a little bit about innovation and starting the company. Where is the innovation happening in this field right now?

Garrett: Yeah, a lot of it's on the software side, so a lot of it's about bringing modern software to this industry, so getting all this essentially like upgrading the entire tech stack, so bringing this to the cloud, having modern APIs you can integrate into. Big enterprises, as you probably know, want to integrate into your systems. They want to essentially pull in your data, so bringing modern APIs into it and a lot is AI. I know that's the buzzword right now, but this was a big thing for us.

When we started the company, lot of advances were happening in computer vision and the ability for cameras not only to see the world and record it, but to interpret what's going on. Like, hey, there's someone there and they're there after hours and they look like they have intent to do something not good. So there's a lot of AI going into it as well.

Burton: So is deep analytics part of the solution?

Garrett: It is, and it's a growing piece and there's sometimes this misnomer like, this is here, companies know how to use it right now, but that's not always the case. I think for us it was about making just this infrastructure a lot simpler and that's what's near and present today. But I think increasingly, the analytics are becoming more and more important. And if you look at us in three, five and eight years, people will come to us primarily for the analytics. And it's like, of course it does security.

Burton: And what's Rhombus doing in the international market today?

Garrett: Yeah, we're still mostly in the United States, but we're in over I think it's around 100 countries today, but we are all across and that's a big initiative for us in 2024 to go a lot stronger with a lot more emphasis into other countries.

Burton: So what's next for you guys? I know you want to be at $10 billion. So do I. Yeah, we're getting closer.

Garrett: You are? Yeah.

Burton: We’re knocking on it. Tell me about what you think the future looks like.

Garrett: For us, we want to be… how do we get to be a self-sustaining, enduring company? We want to make a long-lasting impact and then eventually $10 billion company. Well, let's get to $5 billion first, and then $10 billion, and then a long-lasting, enduring company.

Burton: You know, that's very cool. Well, I know I speak for everybody at TriNet, I am so proud to have you as a customer. We will help in any way we can on your journey. I hope to get updates and get to know you even better because I believe you're going to be that $10 billion company. And I appreciate it.

Garrett: I really appreciate it. One thing I would say just to your team and everything, the consistent feedback I heard from my team members when I was asking for feedback was just how responsive your team was. We were again, with other platforms before and our number one gripe was just that we couldn't get anyone on our phone. We couldn't get anyone to help us solve our issues. And your team has really made a big difference there—that you guys really go above and beyond and get people on the phone immediately. Shout out to our reps. They've been really good about just being very responsive to us.

Burton: On behalf of all the colleagues at TriNet we appreciate you and thank you for being here today.