Unique people, ideas and experiences all come together to build something powerful.
MEDIA 7: What was the turning point of your life that led you on the path to becoming AvePoint's CEO & Co-founder?
DR. TIANYI JIANG: Growing up in a first-generation immigrant household, I was strongly encouraged by my parents- who came to America as exchange research scientists working for the federal government- to follow a reliable trajectory: Go to the best schools and work for the best companies. In other words, keep your head down, study hard, and play it safe. And I did that for years. But on September 11, 2001, I realized how little of one’s life is under our own control. I was working at Lehman Brothers, where my office was in the World Trade Center, North Tower. Luckily, all of my friends and colleagues survived, but as I watched the towers collapse and the smoke fill the air from across the way in Jersey City, I knew that life was too precious to take for granted.
A life-altering event that shook the economy and our emotional cores was what it took for me to leave a stable, well-paid job on Wall Street and to enroll in a part-time MBA program (and later, PhD studies) at New York University. I had also reconnected with a former friend and colleague from Bell Labs, Kai Gong, who had started AvePoint and decided to join him. It was scary but I needed to take the risk, and never looked back. I began serving as COO in 2005, Co-CEO in 2014, and CEO in 2020. Along the way, I have worn many hats as our business grew globally and evolved into a world-class B2B SaaS company. Looking back, I am grateful I took the leap of faith.
M7: According to you, what cultural factors make the business successful?
TJ: Especially today, corporate culture is critical, and at AvePoint, our culture has always been the center of attention. Our company name represents the point at which avenues merge – where unique people, ideas and experiences all come together to build something powerful. At the same time, our logo represents both a rising sun above a mountain and a person with a bowing head. That duality captures our mission: to dream big and make a positive difference, but always with humility.
As a CEO and leader of this business for over twenty years, I have witnessed how critical it is to identify core values and live them. As AvePoint has grown, we’ve invested in programs that further our culture like building employee resources groups, providing incentives for continuous education and professional development, and supporting philanthropic efforts. In addition, inclusion, diversity, equality and allyship have always been in our DNA and I believe that making people feel like their authentic selves is vital to business success.
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There may never be a right time to make big decisions.
M7: What SaaS solutions do you provide that support and manage small and mid-sized business customers?
TJ: The beauty of AvePoint is that all our enterprise-grade SaaS solutions can be used for small and mid-sized businesses too. Many SMBs today rely on our digital collaboration security product suite to help protect their cloud data. To give you an example, many small businesses use our FLY migration tool to move data from on-prem to the cloud or from cloud to cloud. Similarly, thousands of small businesses today leverage AvePoint Cloud Backup to protect critical business data, whether that’s in Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or Salesforce. SaaS data protection and self-service enabled recovery is especially important in recovering from Ransomware attacks. In March, our SaaS solution will also include automatic Ransomware detection features to further enhance business security and responsiveness.
M7: AvePoint mitigates, manages, and protects data to secure collaboration across different platforms. How do you ensure that the highest safety measures are maintained?
TJ: AvePoint takes its security responsibility very seriously. We have a dedicated security, privacy and risk team committed to both ensuring our products are rigorously tested for compliance, and to training all employees on best practices to mitigate potential threats.
We maintain numerous certifications like FedRAMP in the United States, ISO, and SOC 2 Type II which affirm and validate our commitment to security. It is critical for us to uphold these certifications given the hundreds of petabytes of data that we protect for customers across both the public and private sectors.
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Dream big and make a positive difference, but always with humility.
M7: What piece of advice would you like to give to entrepreneurs of this and forthcoming generations?
TJ: If you’re starting a business or thinking about doing it, there may never be a “right time” to make big decisions. It likely will not be glamorous to start, but it will be worth it if you’re going after your dreams and doing what brings you purpose. When my co-founded Kai and I started AvePoint, we worked out of a public library in New Jersey. The company did not make a single dollar for three years, and it wasn’t for another decade that I could pay myself more than my Wall Street salary. But the journey was worthwhile because we believed in the vision and surrounded ourselves with hardworking and passionate people along the way. That’s critical to building a sustainable and resilient business.