Building a Virtual Company to $20 Million: Rob Cheng, CEO of PC Pitstop (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How were you addressing the blacklist issue? How were you detecting if something wasn’t blacklisted but was a problem? How were you figuring that out?

Rob Cheng: What we’re doing is the opposite. We’re creating a white list of everything that’s good. We’re looking for every single good program that we can find that our customers are running. Then if it’s not on that list, we don’t let it execute.

So, that’s what we’ve done. There’re all these different kinds of viruses out there. A lot of them are able to escape detection and ours was the only one that blocked all the viruses back then.

Sramana Mitra: Your homegrown anti-virus, was that part of PC Matic or did you do a different anti-virus product?

Rob Cheng: It was part of PC Matic.

Sramana Mitra: So nothing changes. You’re selling the same product with just a stronger product. You’re selling to your consumer audience basically.

Rob Cheng: Consumer audience over television.

Sramana Mitra: How many users do you have at this point?

Rob Cheng: We have millions of users. Now, we have 3.5 million.

Sramana Mitra: In 2019, which is 10 years since you launched this PC Matic product with 3.5 million users, where are your revenues?

Rob Cheng: So, let me tell you the rest the story so you can understand the timeline. Back in 2012, it was 100% consumer. The next big event after 2011 is 2016. We’re still very profitable.

Our profits are down because we’re spending all this money on TV advertising. But I wanted to be bigger than $5 million a year. We’re just doing this on the momentum from our relationships with the partners and the popularity of our website.

So, with television, we have a way of continually getting new customers. In 2016, we decided to go and create a business product. We created PC Matic Pro and then we created a relationship with a very large company called SYNTEX that’s primarily here in South Carolina. That’s what they call the channel.

This is business sales. The sale happens through a distributor who sells to resellers, who ultimately sell the product to the end businesses or government agencies.

Sramana Mitra: Now you have consumer and business?

Rob Cheng: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What has it done to your metrics?

Rob Cheng: Honestly, not so much so far. The channel has been challenging in some ways. Just in January of this year, we created a direct sales force.

The goal is for our direct sales team to go and sell to the government agencies or the businesses. Then, once they have the business secured, then we give it to the reseller. Now, we can control what is being said to the end customer and also how frequently it is happening.

So, we’re still very much a consumer company, but I believe that with this direct sales force, we’re going to start breaking that mentality that people have about us. There’s a misconception. I frequently hear, “I thought you were just a consumer company.”

So now that we have a direct sales force, we can say, “We’re here to protect our product and get a demonstration.” We just started this in January of this year, but it’s working really well. I’m very pleased with what we’re doing right now.

Sramana Mitra: What are the numbers now? How far have you come in terms of revenue?

Rob Cheng: Last year, just right around $20 million.

Sramana Mitra: How many people now?

Rob Cheng: 65 people.

Sramana Mitra: You’re still doing the virtual company model?

Rob Cheng: Another thing we’ve done is that we started hiring. Because we’re running national TV ads, we’re getting people in every single day.

Sramana Mitra: Okay, I think this is a great story.

Rob Cheng: Yes. We’re really unique.

Sramana Mitra: I wish you all the best in figuring out the next part of your journey where you’re trying to penetrate the B2B market. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building a Virtual Company to $20 Million: Rob Cheng, CEO of PC Pitstop
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