Microsoft consulting firm Nexwave celebrates its first birthday, aims for Australia-wide domination

Matt Salmanzadeh director and co-founder at Nexwave reflects on the year and looks ahead to what he wants to achieve before their second birthday.

Microsoft AI consultancy Nexwave has celebrated its first birthday, and Matt Salmanzadeh, director and co-founder has some plans up his sleeve for its second birthday.

Speaking to CRN Australia, Salmanzadeh said he wants to take his business nation-wide.

“[We want to] show what's possible when you have people and tech working seamlessly together,” he said.

“We want to build a business that people want to have a look to see what's possible. This year is about scaling out and leveraging everything we've built in year one.”

Salmanzadeh founded Nexwave with Carl Lowenborg, who has extensive experience at Microsoft, AWS and Arinco.

When they launched, they saw a gap around consulting firms delivering technology, but not addressing the change component as well.

“We also thought consulting world would change significantly with AI with a shift to more high value consulting and less focus on pure delivery and more focus on strategy and advice and normal delivery augmented by AI,” Lowenborg told CRN Australia.

Over the year, Salmanzadeh has made several hires including a director of growth and partnerships and a new CTO.

Looking back at the first year of business, Salmanzadeh said he is most proud of his 27-person team “100 percent hands down”.

“When Lowenborg and I started this business, we knew we would live or die by the strength of our team and we have been blessed to have such stellar veterans join us,” he said.

For the co-founders, they had several challenges as a new business in the market. From finding their first customers and staff that were willing to join a bourgenining business.

All what Salmanzadeh calls, “normal growing challenges”.

“Both of these in the end came down to relationships and trust,” he said.

“People that had worked with us before (either on our team or as our customer) and were crazy enough to join us which we are ever grateful for.”

He also knew they would stay within the Microsoft ecosystem, so their relationship with the tech giant was “foundational”.

"Our knowledge of how to scale a Microsoft TSP was extremely valuable,” he added.

“All this didn't mean everyone said yes when we asked, we had a fair few rejections). But we knew we would get there if we kept Pushing through.

For those who are itching to start their own business, Salmanzadeh said “be bold and different”.

“It's a difficult road and it's a crowded market. But if you have a vision and a passion and work to build it out you will get there,” he said.

“Lowenborg and I have been in this space for a while and didn't want to just copy the same formula even though we had seen it so many times. That didn't excite us. That's what each founder starting an MSP/ITSP. Has to start with that vision first.”

For the coming years, Salmanzadeh said he is “super bullish” on AI to the point where they are rethinking how they work internally.

“Being AI native and AI first doesn't mean everything is AI. And that's the key for our business. Knowing where AI should be applied to gain maximum advantage is important for us to demonstrate what's possible,” he said.

Salmanzadeh is seeing a platform push in the channel where everything is becoming commoditised.

He noted, “It's critical to find platforms that help give you maximum optionality.”

“That's why for us being in the Microsoft ecosystem was important. Every month there is another frontier model or a new capability,” he said.

“It's important to be plugged into an ecosystem which gives you the greatest set of options at the highest possible level of security and governance.”