There’s a common misconception out there that entrepreneurs have to come up and execute a great idea from scratch. But the reality is that the person with the original concept might not be the right person to turn that idea into a viable, scalable business.
That’s where things like search funds come into play. Traditionally, a search fund is an investment vehicle that helps bring strong operators (typically those coming out of top MBA programs) into businesses through an acquisition.
The “entrepreneurship through acquisition” model was what brought Markus Scott into the CEO seat nearly a decade ago. After college, he ended up in public accounting at EY before moving over to work in mergers and acquisitions and private equity. He felt pretty confident that he could build a successful and meaningful career in that space. But as he started working more with startup operators, he found himself drawn to the idea of building a business. But crucially, he didn’t necessarily want to build something from scratch.
After earning his MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, he raised a search fund that ultimately went on to acquire EyeQ Monitoring, a Marietta, Georgia-based business innovating the remote video surveillance space.
EyeQ, previously National Video Monitoring, piqued Scott’s interest because of the ability the technology had to make a real, tangible impact on people’s lives.
“If you’re protecting people and their assets…that’s a great way to spend your day,” Scott told Hypepotamus.
Evolving The Monitoring Space
Remote video surveillance is an important part of physical security since guards on a property at all times can be expensive. In 2014, when Scott started looking at EyeQ Monitoring, the industry was going through a massive change. Video surveillance was moving from analog to digital cameras, allowing for more opportunities around layering in emerging AI. Scott believed he could grow EyeQ Monitoring’s already established business even more by adding in new use cases for video data.
Early on, AI in video surveillance was about activating alarms remotely based on pixel changes. That evolved to be all about object detection. That meant that cameras could determine if something is a potentially nefarious intruder or just a person walking by.
Now, Scott said the industry is focused on self learning analytics.
“We’ve moved out of just being virtual guards to a focus on loss prevention,” Scott added. “Now, we do a lot with people to help them improve their operations. We’re doing some work to help people actually drive incremental sales. That’s really where our business is headed as we continue to grow as we are using those cameras around the clock to be [our customer’s] eyes and ears across multiple pain points that they have.”
While EyeQ Monitoring was an established business when Scott took over, he still gets to flex his entrepreneurial muscle as the team rolls out new products.
As the potential use cases for remote surveillance grows, Scott said it is his job to ensure the company remains “disciplined” on their target audiences. Right now, that is automotive dealerships, commercial real estate buildings, and multifamily complexes.
Having institutional knowledge of these industries means that Scott and the EyeQ team can build new products for customers. For car dealerships, for example, EyeQ has built out its Virtual Walk Around tool that helps dealers get a 360 degree view of any damages to a car. This keeps dealers from searching through hours of video to see when any damage might have occurred. EyeQ has also found new revenue driving opportunities through its customer relationship-focused Virtual Service Advisor.
Lessons From The CEO Seat
“Like all good CEOs. I’ve definitely been unfocused at times. I think that’s the challenge. But we’ve had to get really disciplined to try to identify the pain points of the customer and start asking: What’s the real opportunity? How big of a pain point is this? I think it’s just getting into the discipline that if you land in a good industry that’s growing and you’ve got a good product, you can add to it over time and not have to race and try to be all things to all people.”
When Scott took over, the team was 15 people. Today, it’s 140. Business has tripled since 2021 alone.
In 2024, Scott said the team has reached the coveted point of “escape velocity.” He is now focused on making sure he has the right leaders in place across the company.
And as a CEO, he knows he has to be ready to jump in and help any area of the business at a moment’s notice.
“If I gotta roll up my sleeves and clean a toilet, I’ll do it. If I could go jump on a sales call, I’ll do it. But it hasn’t gotten any less busy than it was 2015 for sure,” he added.
He’s also focused on how AI can be a continued value add.
“AI will continue to drive efficiency in our business and we need to be on the leading edge,” Scott said. “But we fortunately work in an industry that’s really sticky. Security continues to become a bigger issue, especially in down economies. We saw that in 2020 that crime rates went up. We know in down times, our services are frankly more needed.”
