If you’re familiar with Apple, you likely know Steve Jobs’ famous 2007 Keynote address and watched the company’s historic rise to becoming both the first $1Tn and $2Tn publicly traded company in the United States. Earlier this year, the company announced that it had surpassed 1.5Bn in total deployed devices, with few signs suggesting a slowdown in its increasing footprint. Public investors have agreed and have further defied the law of large numbers by pushing Apple’s stock up over 80% in the last 12 months.
Apple’s success has not only come in the consumer market but has also begun to catch hold with enterprise. As of 2019, Mac devices held an 11% market share in the enterprise, and that share is expected to grow to 14% by 2021 (IDC, 2019). Today, 55% of small and mid-sized enterprises use Mac devices or explicitly approve of their use within the company. Given 71% of college students today would prefer to use a Mac at work, market share is expected to increase as Gen Z shifts into the workplace.
Much of this Apple share growth within business can also be attributed to enterprises implementing programs such as Choose-your-own-Device (“CYOD”). In the last few years, IT departments have become more flexible in allowing employees to choose preferred phones, tablets, and laptops for work purposes. This trend has been accelerated by the impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent shift to remote work environments.
Given the proliferation of Apple products and an increased need in the enterprise to effectively manage employee devices, there is a real, growing need for mobile device management (“MDM”) solutions, in particular those catering specifically to Apple hardware. Today, this need presents a market opportunity of roughly $10Bn-$11Bn that is expected to more than double to $23.4Bn by the end of 2024 (an ~18% CAGR).
This is why B Capital Group is excited to announce our investment in Kandji, a device management solution built exclusively for businesses that run on Apple. The company offers an industry-leading, cloud-first platform that is designed to make life easier for IT teams looking to invest in an MDM solution or those operating on legacy MDM platforms.
Most notably, the product includes a library of 150+ pre-built automations and workflows that streamline the most common and complex tasks for Apple IT administrators, saving IT teams hundreds of hours writing and maintaining scripts or manual configurations.
Upon meeting Kandji’s co-founder and CEO Adam Pettit, we were blown away by the strength of his team’s founder-market fit. Aside from being obsessed with this product and opportunity, Adam and his co-founders Wesley and Mark bring decades of experience in Apple MDM. All three were at Apple before co-founding an Apple-certified consultancy that worked with large enterprises to deploy these MDM solutions. Given their track record, these three may know the market and existing customer needs better than anyone, and inevitably are best suited to build a product that serves those needs most effectively.
Aside from the team, we are particularly excited about the company’s explosive growth, best-in-class performance metrics, and early customer relationships. Since the end of 2019, Kandji has grown revenue by more than 10x and has produced extremely positive customer feedback (>95% satisfaction rate). Despite only having launched from stealth in Q3 of 2019, the team has acquired several marquee customers, including companies like Attentive, Canva, Remitly, Crunchbase, and others.
At B Capital Group, we believe this market is only at its fledgling stage. As Apple devices continue to permeate the business landscape and data continues to be stored and accessed remotely, nearly every company with an IT team, both in the U.S. and internationally, will need to implement an MDM solution. For those with Apple devices, a number that will certainly continue to increase, Kandji is positioned to best serve new market entrants and constituents looking to optimize for IT team productivity. Our team is looking forward to working with Adam and the Kandji team in the next phase of growth as they build the next-generation solution that changes the landscape of Apple enterprise management.