UPSTACK, a growing platform that combines the industry’s leading advisors, advanced technology and dedicated customer support resources, announced it acquired Stellar Connect, an independent, full-service provider of IT services based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Stellar Connect, founded in 2014, provides consultative, vendor-agnostic IT and telecom procurement, management and support primarily to small and mid-market businesses. The company’s areas of expertise include voice, data, cloud infrastructure, UCaaS, network, business continuity and disaster recovery. Stellar Connect was built on long-term partnerships with its clients and providing solutions to their evolving and complex technology challenges.
As part of the investment, principals and co-founders Nanette Kische and Mike Eaton will join UPSTACK as partners. Additionally, Stellar Connect’s operations manager will join the UPSTACK support team.
“Built on a strong partnership between Nanette and Mike, Stellar Connect is a successful and respected technology services firm with decades of in-depth experience,” said UPSTACK Founder and CEO Christopher Trapp. “Their entrepreneurial spirit and holistic approach to solving complex IT challenges align with ours, and we’re excited to welcome the Stellar Connect team to UPSTACK.”
Kische and Eaton first met on a high school ski trip. Eaton began a career in IT, eventually becoming a serial entrepreneur, creating and selling several technology ventures. Meanwhile, Kische spent her early professional life as a public accountant. One of Kische’s accounting clients, a telecom agency, encouraged her to sell telecom during her slow accounting months. By the early 2000s, she had made the career switch.
Kische and Eaton serendipitously reconnected while working on a project for a mutual client where Kische served as a telecom agent and Eaton as a cloud and managed services provider. They worked together as projects allowed and ultimately formed Stellar Connect to provide both telecom and IT solutions to their customers.
“Our business philosophy is about relationships,” said Kische. “If you do them well, you’ll be successful. And if you don’t, you won’t. Solving IT problems is what we’re known for but helping clients we care about makes it meaningful.”
Kische and Eaton said joining UPSTACK will enable them to scale their services, giving their clients access to more resources and professional experience. It also provides a continuity plan for Stellar Connect’s valued clients.
“UPSTACK has built a talented team coupled with the support to take care of our customers,” said Eaton. “That’s pretty powerful. It allows us to scale in a way that would be difficult on our own and still provide the level of service we’re known for. Joining UPSTACK allows us to do more for our clients, and that’s exciting.”
For more information about UPSTACK’s agency investment program, contact partners@upstack.com. To learn more about UPSTACK, go to upstack.com.
