Written by Michelle Wong – Marketing Specialist
We sat down for a chat with Josh Flores, our General Manager who has been with the company since before the launch of Comet Backup in 2017. This piece has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What is your role and how long have you been at Comet?
I’m the General Manager and I’ve been at the company for about 10 years, before Comet became Comet. I have done pretty much every job here at Comet, apart from coding.
Tell us about when you first started working with this leadership team.
I first joined the company when it was Nexus Data Backup, a large backup provider for medical centers, law firms, and other businesses across New Zealand.
A few years later, we sold that backup MSP side of the business. During this time, we had developed our own internal tool, called MyClient, for monitoring all the backup solutions we were using.
Then after a number of years, we launched Comet Backup based on our experience running those earlier businesses.
How did the team decide to develop Comet as a backup solution?
Running MyClient was interesting because we were the integration tool for all of these other backup products. We interacted with the MSPs that were using our tool to manage their backup solutions and we heard a lot from the MSPs about the tools they liked and didn’t like.
We also heard from the MSPs about what they wanted in backup software, but they couldn’t necessarily find. We were getting to the point that the MSPs were asking us to custom build features in MyClient to cover the gap in that functionality that they wanted in their backup software.
Since we were already doing some backup development, we explored the idea of building our own backup solution. That’s when we went through the process of R&D. After beta testing and development, we launched Comet in February 2017.
What excites you most about Comet?
Every day there’s something new. There’s always new types of customers, new advancement in the technology. Since the early days, our team has grown dramatically. We now have a customer base spanning 120 countries, and vendor relationships around the world. Every quarter, we’re expanding in really exciting ways.
How would you describe the team culture at Comet?
It’s amazing. We have a very dedicated team that are really interested in the company, in our customers, and what they’re doing. And that passion is contagious.
We also have a very diverse and international team, people from different industries and different cultures. All of that adds to the amazing team culture Comet. Work is always fun when you enjoy the people you work with.
How have you maintained the team culture as the company has grown?
We’re selective in our hiring process to prioritize ensuring people will be a great cultural fit. Occasionally, we’ve interviewed candidates who have an outstanding technical skillset, but they would have altered the team dynamic and we’ve passed on those opportunities.
I’d rather hire someone who’s hard working, eager to learn and has a positive attitude and train them up a bit. It’s incredibly important to me to nurture and protect the team environment we’ve built.
How does Comet support the culture of both the remote and office based teams?
Comet has a hybrid working model with a few days in the office and a few days where team members can work from home. We also have some team members who are fully remote.
We try and do absolutely everything we can do to ensure that if you’re remote, you still feel like one of the team. On Slack we have our weekly virtual coffee catchups. We really encourage people to talk, not just about work all day, but also to connect on a personal level because that makes spending time together so much more meaningful.
We have different Slack channels like the pets channel, food channel, games channel. People often share photos of their holidays. Stuff like that. It keeps things fun.
We also have CometCon twice a year where we get everyone together for a week for our internal company conference to connect and hang out in person.
Tell us more about CometCon.
CometCon is an opportunity for us come together to collaborate and connect in person. Teams that don’t work as closely on a daily basis will lead sessions where the whole company gathers to brainstorm and learn from one another.
A recent example of this is our marketing department did workshop on our website. And developers who normally wouldn’t give input on that area of the business had a say in the process.
Everyone is encouraged to share their opinions, to critique how we do things, to offer up new ideas. Anyone, at any level, can propose and give one of the scheduled talks on a topic they think would be useful to the company.
It’s also a chance to have some fun together. The social events and the food is always a highlight during the week, especially the taco truck. We spend a lot of time focusing on building the product, but it’s also really important for us to have balance and have fun.
What are some of your interests and hobbies outside of work?
In my free time I really like to chill out – I’m into movies, I do a lot of reading, going to the pub, walking the dogs. I’m also really into cooking and trying new stuff, like barbecuing.
