or my brother to join the company. Reed had some interest in becoming a doctor, and I had a career in enterprise sales. When we came on board, we wanted to bring value. Having a few years of experience helped us do that.” COVID spurs growth Not long into the brothers’ tenure, COVID hit and the remote work trend fostered by the pandemic turned into an opportunity for Generation IX, growing their footprint throughout California and the U.S., and even to the U.K. “Several of our clients resulted directly out of COVID,” Watne says. “All of a sudden, they had a dispersed workforce and couldn’t keep up with onboarding and offboarding users and their equipment.” Although Generation IX had a lot of competitors in the space, many of them weren’t big enough or fast enough to adapt to the demands of a remote workforce. In contrast, Generation IX managed to get through 2020 and 2021 without any layoffs and only losing only one client. After several years of 20%-plus growth, the company’s next target is to top $10 million in annual revenues. One of their bigger clients is enlisting them to provide international 24/7 chat help desk capability, allowing offices all over the world to access the same help desk personnel. “Another area we’re seeing more opportunity is in the cybersecurity space,” Holden says. “Those threats are real, and they’re not just hitting large corporations—they’re hitting small and middle market companies, too.” The next generation Holden says that to this point, all of the company’s growth has been organic. “We’ve been bootstrapping things ourselves,” he says. “In the upcoming years, I could see looking at acquiring a smaller company or two.” Like many industries, high tech is challenged by a lack of skilled talent. To address their needs and the needs of their clients, Generation IX developed a six-month training program that trains junior-level staffers to take their skills to the next level. Equally important, they learn the Generation IX approach to customer service. “We’re all propeller-heads in our own right, but if you ask any of our clients over the years, they’ll also tell you we’re likeable and work well together—the opposite of what people usually expect from IT,” Watne says.
“We’d always been a word- of-mouth company. I didn’t even have salespeople—we would just try to do a good job for someone, and they’d refer us to other people in their network.” Kevin Watne Founder, Generation IX Technologies
company the day after Easter in 2018. “They both started in business development and after about a year, we saw that it made sense to separate the duties a bit,” Watne says. Reed moved into the technical operations side, while Holden remained in business development. “I remember as kids, when we’d be driving to a Dodger game and needed to be quiet as Dad was talking shop with a client,” Holden says. “So while I’ve been hearing that side of the business for a long time, there was never really a master plan for me
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