My first six months at Daisy

Written by: Gordon van Zuiden
Founder, cyberManor
Branch Partner, Daisy Silicon Valley

It’s Saturday morning September 7th, 2024 and I’ve just finished attending my 21st CEDIA EXPO in Denver, Colorado. The first 20 EXPOs I attended as the founder of cyberManor in Los Gatos, CA. This EXPO I attended as a 6-month employee of Daisy. In all of my previous years attending EXPO, I would always be asked what were the exciting new products that I saw on the show floor. This year I was primarily asked “How is it going with Daisy?” In the busy environment of a trade show I was typically only able to give a 1-2 minute “Cliff Notes” answer - but a complete, and more accurate answer required a much more detailed response . So, I thought I would write down my thoughts for my integrator peers that really want to understand my personal experience with Daisy to date, what Daisy has done for cyberManor, and what Daisy is trying to do for the home technology custom integration channel over the next 1-2 years.

Setting the Stage:

After a thorough but quick acquisition process, cyberManor was fully acquired by Daisy on February 26, 2024. On that date, all of my employees, including me, became Daisy employees. We were Daisy’s second national acquisition. Led by founder and CEO Hagan Kappler, Daisy has a seasoned executive team of 24 people financially supported by an initial round of seed capital. See our team here.

The founders of Daisy have a seasoned background in establishing and running nationally trusted brands in home services (Merry Maids, ServiceMaster, Terminix, Trane to name a few) and strongly believe that the smart home would benefit from a nationally trusted brand supported locally by the custom home integrator channel. Their acquisition of cyber Manor, and the several acquisitions that have been completed around the country over the last 6 months have given the executive team at Daisy in depth and detailed knowledge of our custom installation processes, customers, and vendor partners. Utilizing this information the Daisy corporate team is crafting a compelling franchise offering for business owners that want to start their own smart home installation and services franchise or convert their existing custom installation business into a Daisy branded franchise.

To date Daisy has made 6 acquisitions, primarily in California, Florida, and Connecticut and has 5 franchise operations. By the end of this year, they plan to have 20 locations nationwide and by the end of 2026 over 150 locations nationwide, with a national presence in the $29 billion dollar smart home products and services domestic market.

On October 1, 2023, Daisy had 2 employees. At the time of this year’s 2024 EXPO we now have 134 employees (half of which came to CEDIA EXPO and are shown in the photo below).

When we were acquired by Daisy the executive team used seed money from friends and family. Over the last 6 months Daisy has now raised over $20 million from established venture capital funds in both Series A and B over-subscribed rounds. They are using that capital investment to continue the build out of their support team (up to 28 people now), acquire and/ or convert new existing custom integrators, start up new franchisees, and incorporate their enterprise grade software platform infrastructure into Daisy branches nationwide.

Day 1 at cyberManor, February 26, 2024

The day we closed our acquisition half of the Daisy executive team came to our office to give an overview to our employees on who Daisy was, their values, Daisy’s interest in cyberManor, and what Daisy is striving to do for our custom installation channel. As one can imagine there was apprehension over this change of ownership since many of my employees have been with cyberManor well over 5-10 years and no one had heard of Daisy prior to this day. But as they listened to the Daisy story from Hagan Kappler and the Daisy executive team they began to better understand the potential positive impact Daisy would have on cyberManor, our customers, and their own personal career growth. It certainly didn’t hurt that they were now getting a full health care benefit plan, including vision and dental insurance along with a profit sharing plan and stock options in the new Daisy company.

6 Months Later

I found that my employees confidence in Daisy’s initiatives took longer than the concerns that our customers may have had in regard to Daisy’s acquisition of cyberManor. From our customer’s point of view - as long as there we no personnel changes among the front line of employees that installed and serviced their home technology systems they were happy.

For our employees it has taken longer to embrace the Daisy acquisition and name change since we’ve been known as cyberManor for over 25 years. To alleviate their brand transition concerns our vans continue to have the cyberManor name on them but with a “Powered by Daisy” decal next to our cyberManor name. Our front office signage and shirts read “Daisy, fulfilled by cyberManor”. This soft transition to the Daisy name has greatly helped our team feel more comfortable during these initial six months.

I also learned that the more our sales, project management, service, and finance teams interacted directly with the members of Daisy’s executive team managing those roles the more comfortable they became with the enhanced tools and expertise that Daisy was bringing to make us more productive and profitable. Six months later that effort is still a work in progress but we’ve come a long way in that time period I expect that by the end of the year we will have fully implemented the CRM and Learning Management Tech Stack, have full access to Daisy’s remote support team (staffed by highly skilled techs), Daisy’s sales tools, access to significant supplier savings, proposal software and the NetSuite accounting platform.

When this software is fully implemented and completed we will have a complete end to end software backbone for our business that will give us a customized information record for each of our new and existing clients. Each client will have a centralized, searchable and AI enhanced database that will include:

• The initial phone call, email, walk-in lead information
• The subsequent follow ups, including all call and text communications, visits and proposals
• Proposal revisions and acceptances (or losses)
• Proposal designs, products procured and installed, and labor resources utilized over the lifetime of our relationship with each client
• All documents and photos related to any and all projects by customer
• All material and labor associated with any and all projects and services transferred seamlessly for billing and collection to the NetSuite accounting platform
• Service plans, communications and actions taken during each and every client service visit
• A customized login portal for each client to view their home technology installation documentation, the network health of their system, and all related installation and service visits, including detailed warranty information

The Future: How Daisy plans to improve the business model for the custom installation industry

Today the custom installation channel is highly fragmented without a trusted national brand. It’s been that way since its inception over 35 years ago. That model works when the services required by custom installers serve only a very small percentage high-net-worth US families that employ our channel to design, integrate and install their home technologies. However, today the national demand for our smart home integration knowledge exceeds the manpower capacity of our channel to provide customized installation and ongoing smart home support services. Living in a smart home is no longer a luxury - it is a necessity. And it takes a nationally trained and recognized smart home work force to meet this demand. Ask Daryl Friedman, the CEO of CEDIA and he will tell you that the number one challenge facing our industry is that the consumer does not recognize the name, or value, of the CEDIA brand and more broadly the custom integrator challenge.

To address the custom integrator brand recognition challenge, Daisy has been implementing the following initiatives across all of their branches nationwide:

• A national recruitment and training program to bring more new and young talent (men and women) into the custom installation industry
• A technology stack based on a Microsoft Dynamics platform that will serve as the Custom Relationship and Learning Management backbone of our national company that will provide a level of knowledge and consistency that will be used to earn the ongoing trust of our clients
• A nationwide marketing effort that will educate the homeowner on the value of a smart home and having their home designed, installed, serviced by a trusted national brand.
• A trusted 24/7/365 ongoing home technology maintenance program called DaisyCare

As the weeks and months pass, the cyberManor team and I are increasingly excited about what Daisy has already done for our company. Already, the recruiting arm of Daisy’s executive team has been able to hire a first class branch manager for our Los Gatos office and several outstanding technicians. In the custom installation business we are only as good as our team and the Daisy brand and benefit programs have already attracted the attention of some of the best talent in our industry.

Our recent successes, coupled with the amazing growth that we have already seen in Daisy’s national footprint has boosted our moral and enforced the strong belief that cyberManor’s future is much brighter now that we’re part of Daisy’s national family of custom home technology integrators. I will be turning 70 this December and I was ready to retire soon after the acquisition was completed. I have a 2 year contract to stay on with Daisy of which I’m now 6 months into that contract. But instead of thinking that I still have to endure 18 more months on my contract I’m concerned that I only have 18 months left on my Daisy contract. I’m truly re-energized to be part of this incredible Daisy journey to improve the performance and long term value of our company.

I think my future pickleball career will just have to wait a few more years.