Ridge Trailblazers: Lightyear Rewrites the Telecom Procurement Playbook
A much-needed facelift for the $1 trillion telecom industry
By Yousuf Khan, Partner at Ridge Ventures
Light years ahead
The B2B telecom landscape has been stuck in neutral for decades. I saw it firsthand as the CIO of companies like Pure Storage, Automation Anywhere, and Qualys, but experienced it most acutely when I was part of the global IT team at Education First. Whenever we opened up a new office, campus, or facility in any city or country, the IT team would spend an inordinate amount of time setting up a network.
Had Lightyear been around, the slog of telecom procurement — researching providers, communicating with ISPs, comparing quotes, making a decision on a circuit, overseeing the implementation, and managing network inventory — wouldn’t have been a slog at all.
Leading Lightyear’s Series A last summer, and joining its Board of Directors, stemmed from a Zoom call with co-founder/CEO Dennis Thankachan. Seeing Lightyear’s quote comparison feature in action, let alone its other impressive bells and whistles, was like CIO and procurement catnip. I knew hundreds of IT executives who always spoke about an “Amazon-like experience” for telecom procurement. Now it was a reality.
One year after Ridge Ventures’ investment in Lightyear, here is why it remains in a league of its own.
The cure for telecom procurement
At the heart of every Ridge Trailblazer is a transformative customer experience. In the case of Lightyear, the company is addressing a pain point that’s plagued telecom buyers since the days of Minesweeper and NetZero dial-up.
With Lightyear’s all-in-one platform, customers can shop thousands of business telecom services and find the best and cheapest option in a jiffy. A process that previously took days, weeks, even months can be completed in just a few minutes. No more digging through old emails to find renewal dates and network details, or working with independent brokers/telecom agents who are partial to certain vendors — instead of finding the best deal — and (hooray!) no more spreadsheets. After purchasing the circuit, the Lightyear customer success team stays in touch with the customer on progress and ensures a smooth install. At any time, customers can log in to Lightyear and view their entire network inventory in a millisecond.
Customers are understandably singing Lightyear’s praises through a bullhorn. Take Campus Technologies Inc, an Internet provider for student housing across 16 states. Campus Technologies tapped Lightyear to solve its frustrating circuit procurement problem: a revolving door of new telecom brokers and the equally painful alternative of reaching out to telecom services directly.
Since switching over to Lightyear’s vendor-agnostic platform, CTI has saved 25% on high bandwidth circuits. Most significant, however, is the time saved. Carriers are now managed through a single point of contact; circuit installations are free of logistical speed bumps; and leaving contract and inventory management to Lightyear ensures CTI doesn’t lose money or accidentally renew an unwanted circuit.
The inefficiency of enterprise telecom shopping is glaring. Just as apparent is the magnitude of Lightyear’s value proposition, which helps companies like CTI forgo the old school procurement process and salvage time and money.
Just getting started
Standing at the frontlines of Lightyear’s telecom procurement revolution are Dennis and co-founder/CTO Ryan Schrack. The dynamic duo combined Dennis’s business savvy and Ryan’s technical know-how to create the first tool for buying telecom infrastructure on the web, as well as a strong and inclusive company culture.
Before co-founding Lightyear, Dennis soaked up plenty of knowledge during his time as a Goldman Sachs hedge fund investor focused on the telecom industry. In that role, and his experiences at PointState Capital and Naya Ventures, Dennis recognized the snail’s pace of procurement. Ryan, a self-taught programming whiz who scaled the engineering ladder at ExxonMobil, was tasked with building a Kayak-like telecom product capable of upending the entire industry. Safe to say Ryan delivered (and then some).
The Lightyear team’s collective elbow grease is paying dividends. Aside from raising its Series A — in which billionaire and Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban also participated — Lightyear has doubled both its revenue and workforce over the past year. It’s also garnered some notable industry buzz, including honors from the AOTMP Vendor Awards and Global Telecoms Awards.
Judging from the corporate real estate numbers alone, Lightyear’s best days are ahead. Commercial real estate investment jumped 45% YoY in Q1 2022 ($150 billion), highlighted by industrial & logistics ($32.2 billion) and office ($31.9 billion). Whether it’s factories using IoT devices or tech companies setting up their office networks, Lightyear’s singular, monumentally efficient means of procuring network services will be in high demand for the foreseeable future.
Congrats to Dennis, Ryan, and the entire Lightyear team on their continued momentum — and congrats to all of the CIOs and IT workers who can now save budget, resources, and time during the procurement process.
Keep those rocket boosters on hyperdrive, Lightyear! Proud to be along for the ride!
