Built for the Hustle: Why SMBs Are Central to How NinjaOne Operates and Grows

May is National Small Business (SMB) Month. This is particularly relevant because NinjaOne wasn’t just built for small and mid-sized businesses. It was built because of them. The need to be highly agile, efficient, and to stay relentlessly focused on creating positive experiences for our customers are all core values that have helped shape our company from day one.

When founding NinjaOne back in 2013, our co-founders Sal Sferlazza and Chris Matarese wanted to take an antithetical approach to what was already available in the market. Out of a handful of existing products providing lackluster support for the actual needs of MSPs, we wanted to find a way to build and deliver a suite of tools that could help technicians better manage their endpoints in an intuitive way; all with a look and feel that didn’t make them want to gauge their eyeballs out. That commitment to simplicity, power, and design continues to define how we build and evolve our platform to this day.

Most of us at NinjaOne started our careers in the small-business space, giving us an intimate understanding of the nuanced needs of SMBs and the way they operate. Sal started as a developer. I’ve worked for and managed small IT departments. Most of us have been in the technician’s shoes and have lived the reality of limited resources, growing demands, and wrestling with tools that don’t always cooperate.

While over the years we have grown as a company, that perspective and lived experience remain central to the way we work, innovate, and support our customers. That’s why months like this are so much fun to celebrate! They’re a helpful reminder of where so many of us come from, and the myriad SMB customers we’re still so lucky to serve.

The biggest small business you’ve ever seen

It’s been said before that NinjaOne operates like the biggest small business you’ve ever seen. We stay close to our customers. We invest heavily in their success (2–3x the industry average in customer success and support) because we know that great software alone isn’t enough to navigate the complexity of today’s modern IT environments. It’s partnership and support that makes the difference.

Internally, we’re about as flat an organization as you can find. Escalation without restrictions is encouraged, which makes us a lot more agile when it comes to product development, customer support, and everything in between. We believe that our key mission is to provide an amazing product that is built from our customer feedback, and deliver that product with the backing of world-class support that is dedicated to providing transformative experiences when questions or concerns arise. This lack of silos – between people and departments – keeps us focused on this core mission. Even as we scale, we’re focused on remaining approachable and adaptable at all levels.

Simple. Powerful. Built to help you scale

Our product strategy has followed the same philosophy. NinjaOne is cloud-native and multi-tenant, designed to be easy to deploy, easy to use, and easy to scale (whether you’re managing 50 endpoints or 50,000). We focus on delivering real power without adding unnecessary complexity. Because for SMBs especially, complexity is costly, and it can be crippling. Time matters. Efficiency matters. Every tool must move you forward, otherwise it’s holding you back.

As we’ve scaled, we’ve been deliberate in how we grow. In an industry driven by acquisitions, we’ve stayed true to our core build vs. buy philosophy. Over the past decade, as a business, we’ve only made one acquisition (Dropsuite, which has already made a proven difference for over 15,000 customers and counting) because it was a clear fit for our platform, our customers, and aligned perfectly with our company culture. Everything else, we’ve built ourselves. And we’ll continue to place a significant emphasis on internal growth and development, because it allows us to maintain control and agility as we grow. In turn, allowing us to move quickly, adapt to changing needs, and continue to serve our customers’ growing businesses.

Helping SMBs navigate what’s next

Today’s challenges are getting tougher. Economic pressure, hiring constraints, and an evolving security landscape are just a few challenges SMBs are up against. The last thing resource-constrained IT teams need is software that slows them down or takes time away from efforts that help them grow, differentiate their business, or spend more time with customers.

That’s why we’ve stayed so focused on delivering a platform and solutions that are easy to deploy, intuitive to operate, and simple to maintain. With feedback from customers of all sizes informing our product roadmap every step of the way.

This National Small Business Month, we want to honor the businesses that inspired us to build NinjaOne in the first place, and the ones that continue to push us to build and be better every day. To the SMBs we’re so lucky to partner and work with, thank you for trusting NinjaOne with the hardest but most critical parts of your business. We hope that every day you choose to work with NinjaOne you feel celebrated. Not just today or this May, but every day.