This is the 2nd time around for Parachute360 co-founders Lyle Deitch and Tom Naylor. Lyle and Tom previously worked together at Advanced Telemetry, a venture backed energy management hardware/software solution for small commercial buildings that was acquired by Siemens Building Technologies.
Tom was the founder and technical brains of the business, Lyle worked for one of the VC investors and joined Advanced Telemetry full time as COO to help grow the Company. Since exiting Advanced Telemetry, Tom and Lyle remained friends and looked for an opportunity to work together again. That opportunity is Parachute360.
Lyle Deitch
Prior to launching Parachute360, Lyle operated Parachute Advisors a turnaround and succession planning advisory firm. In his advisory role he worked with several companies that would have benefitted from a solution like Parachute360.
Previously Lyle co-founded Swing King, a golf technology company automating the hole in one prize industry and operating on more than 300 courses nationwide.
Previously Lyle was COO of Advanced Telemetry, a cloud-based energy management solution acquired by Siemens Building Technologies.
Lyle also was an operating partner with 21Ventures, a venture fund focused on clean energy.
Lyle holds a BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the University of Oxford. In his free time Lyle enjoys hiking, horses, and takes an odd pride that he finally learned to swim competently about 40 years after most other people do.
Tom Naylor
Tom is an early pioneer in cloud software systems and has founded several technology startups, including Advanced Telemetry, a cloud-based energy management solution that was acquired by Siemens Building Technologies in 2011.
In 2014 Tom founded Cloudline Solutions, a professional services organization specializing in cloud computing projects for customers including Siemens.
Tom has a long-standing passion for cloud software systems. He served for 2 consecutive years on the software design review panel for the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Tom continues to spend a great deal of time staying on top of the rapidly evolving landscape of cloud technologies and is currently focused on AWS as a preferred cloud platform.
Thank you for taking some time to click here and to read about Parachute360. As a business owner you are undoubtedly busy and your time is precious. I’d like to share with you how Parachute360 came to be and why it’s a must have for your business.
Like you I am a business owner and have been for a long time. Until reaching a certain scale and level of organization, most every business I’ve owned or worked in shared a common problem - how was the business going to function if the owner operator wasn’t there tomorrow? It’s a problem that was consistent across industry and owner age group. As I continued talking with small business owners about it, I learned that the problem was more prevalent than I imagined.
Most business owners said they were “too busy” to get their key business data out of their head and truly organized so that the business could run without them. And even if they had the time and desire, they lacked a great system for doing so. And from that, the idea of Parachute360 – your business emergency preparedness system was born.
The lack of emergency preparedness and turnkey readiness for sale and growth dogged my last business and almost all of those that I have encountered in my 20+ years working to start, scale, turnaround and exit small and medium sized businesses.
So Tom and I created Parachute360 as a solution.
It’s a solution that not only prepares you and your business for an emergency, but also prepares you to scale and grow your business even without your physical presence. Parachute360 isn’t just an emergency preparedness tool for you – it is good business. So where did Parachute360 really begin? Well, it started with golf…
So I’m a really bad golfer… But I started a golf company! We grew and grew.
We had amazing employees, found supportive and excited investors, and went about building a business to automate the hole in one industry by using video cameras as the witness for the shot.
My business partner and I got on great and communicated effectively.
But at the end of the day, he had no idea who our payroll provider was and I didn’t know our installation schedule. He didn’t know our revenue per customer and I didn’t know our hardware vendors. The business was in our separate brains. And it was a major risk. A smaller risk than if it was just in one of our brains but a risk nonetheless. We were growing as fast as we could and documenting every now and again but the problem was ever present. What would happen if either of us, or worse, both of us, was absent from the business for a period or permanently? We didn’t have Parachute360 and we didn’t have a Parachute Plan. So the problem remained.
This problem gnawed at me as I launched my consulting practice after leaving the golf world and my infinity handicap behind. I focused on succession planning and helping small and medium sized business maximize value for sale – no matter if the sale was next year, in 5 years, or sale meant passing on the business to the next generation. As I started meeting more investment managers, accountants, lawyers and business owners, the horror stories I heard piled up.
There was the owner who was going to sell his company for 10x earnings and the day before the contract was signed he passed away. The business was in his head and was eventually liquidated in an asset sale.
There was the man with the $10M revenue business who passed away with no plan, and his son in law had to leave his job (and family) to dig out of a mess that included tax liens. After a 2 year battle, the assets were liquidated.
There was the young owner of a growing company whose infant son needed a heart transplant. He had to leave the business to its own devices while addressing his son's needs. His son thankfully got the help he needed, but there was no business (and no income or value) left to return to.
Sure those are the egregious stories, but there were countless stories about value destruction, and buyers and investors walking away from deals due to the lack of organization on the part of the business owner. And sales that happened at a much smaller multiple than what they should have sold for. And businesses that just disintegrated because they couldn’t organize and manage growth to scale.
So in the wake of all of that I created Parachute360, and I couldn’t be happier to address the massive problem of emergency preparedness in business. How do we address it? Simply by creating a product that helps you organize and operate your business on a daily basis. The mission of Parachute360 is clear, and how we go about it is based on:
As we grow we will continue to work tirelessly to improve Parachute360 and to innovate other emergency preparedness tools for business owners. I have an idea or two already…
A business ready for an emergency is a simply a well run, well organized business. And that is a business that is ready to grow, ready to sell. With Parachute360 you are Always Prepared. So… if you’re ready to take that step and to get the peace of mind and extreme value creation that comes along with it, I invite you to try Parachute360 today and to create your Parachute Plan .
Thank you so much for reading. I deeply value each and every customer, and you can reach me directly with questions and suggestions at lyle@parachute360.com.
