What. A. Day. Beyond 2025 kicked off with big energy, bold ideas and unforgettable breakout moments. Let’s look at the highlights:
Community Keynote
Pax8 President and Chief Commerce Officer, Nick Heddy, kicked off Day One sharing the unique power of the Pax8 community and “the fierce urgency of now.” One thing was clear: the Pax8 Marketplace continues its exponential growth, now supporting 42,000+ partners, 700,000+ SMBs and 22M+ unique users. More importantly, Heddy highlighted the effectiveness of the Marketplace for partners, with partners experiencing nearly 52% revenue growth with Opportunity Explorer, a 123% increase in order value with Storefronts and a 96% increase in their order value using the Marketplace tools.
He then dropped exciting additions to the Marketplace. First was Public Storefronts, easily allowing your brand to become a lead-gen machine. He then introduced the Integrations Hub, which will give you more control over how intelligence flows through your business. Next, he revealed AI Guided Growth, offering step-by-step guidance and tailored AI solutions. Finally, he showcased Voyager Alliance Rewards, promising more engagement leads to more Pax8 perks.
His closing message hit home: Every innovation, every breakthrough, every step forward — Pax8 takes with our partners, because this isn’t just a Pax8 story…it’s a global revolution.
Visionary Keynote: The Agentic Inflection Point
At Beyond 2025, Pax8 CEO Scott Chasin delivered a keynote that marked a defining shift for MSPs and the broader business landscape: the arrival of the Era of Managed Intelligence. Framing this moment as an Agentic Inflection Point, Chasin explained how Agents, AI and automation are forces powerful enough to upend the traditional economy.
In their place, a new intelligence-powered ecosystem is emerging — one where SMBs are no longer constrained by scale, but fueled by it. He outlined how execution is no longer the bottleneck; ideas can now run themselves. Agents are moving from chatbots to full digital workforces, triggering the birth of the Idea Economy — a world where small teams (or even solo founders) can deploy AI-native businesses with global reach. In this new world, MSPs aren’t just tech providers — they are transformation architects, responsible for turning complexity into capability. And that’s exactly where Pax8 is headed.
To help partners make that leap, Chasin unveiled the Managed Intelligence Toolkit, a first-of-its-kind offering purpose-built to accelerate AI adoption across the Pax8 ecosystem. In Chasin’s words, “The Managed Intelligence Era is where your expertise becomes the gateway to intelligent execution, changing everything from how you serve, how you scale and how you lead.”
A companion report that dives deeper into each facet of this new Agentic Inflection Point will be available for download on June 12.
Microsoft Keynote: Climb Your Mountain
Titanium sponsor Microsoft brought Travis Walter, CVP of Small Medium Enterprises and Channel, Americas, to deliver a keynote rooted in his personal journey of climbing 38 of Colorado’s 14ers. Using that metaphor, he outlined a clear, three-step path for partners to capitalize on the $515B SMB AI opportunity: first, implement AI internally (“Be Customer One”); second, prepare customers with the right strategy, culture and governance; and third, drive adoption of Copilot and agents to transform every business process. Walter closed with a powerful reminder: “The best view comes after the hardest climb.”
SentinelOne Keynote: The New Cyber Frontier
In his keynote, SentinelOne Chief Business Officer Eran Ashkenazi explored the New Cyber Frontier, highlighting how advanced threats now span endpoints, cloud and identity — and are increasingly wielded by cybercriminals, not just nation-states. With 1.5 million endpoints protected via Pax8, he introduced SentinelOne’s AI-powered defense strategy, designed to augment human capabilities, not replace them. From the Purple AI platform to the new Athena release, the company is pushing intelligent security forward — culminating in their Managed AI Defense solution: a turnkey bundle of EDR, threat hunting, vulnerability management and agentic AI built to help MSPs scale with confidence.
Breakout Sessions
AI and Engineers 101 and 201:
In back-to-back sessions at Beyond 2025, Pax8 Senior Executive Coach Rob Hird and Pax8 Technology Fellow Eric Stevens laid out a powerful blueprint for MSPs ready to lead in the AI Agent era. In “Reskilling for the AI Agent Era,” Hird emphasized the need for clean, structured ticket data and clarified that AI isn’t just automation — it’s dynamic, context-aware intelligence that demands thoughtful rollout and oversight. He shared a phased approach to adoption, anchored by a 5C framework and practical prompts MSPs could use immediately. Then in “Architecting the Infrastructure for Intelligence,” Stevens urged partners to go further — rethinking their role from infrastructure managers to intelligence architects. With AI rewriting the rules of productivity and system design, he argued that culture — not just tech — is the ultimate differentiator. Together, the sessions reframed AI not as a tool, but as a catalyst for reinvention.
From Founder to $5M: How the Role Evolves
In a powerful and candid session, Shawn Freeman — Founder of Always Beyond — walked attendees through the real journey of scaling from solo founder to a $5 million MSP. He spoke openly about the early chaos: wearing every hat, surviving on grit and taking a 50% pay cut to bet on the business. The hardest part? Learning to let go. From the first uncertain hire to breaking through the $1M ceiling, Freeman highlighted the shift every founder must make — from operator to leader, and eventually, to architect.
From Stress to Success
In this uplifting session, Pax8 Chief People Officer Deon Macmillan sat down with JP Keesy, Founder and CEO at F1 Information Technologies. He opened with a story about urgently driving his young son to the hospital after an accident (thankfully, his son was okay.) In that moment, he realized that no one knows what anyone else is going through from the outside. As a result, he now actively asks questions, so he knows what’s going on with everyone he interacts with. Professionally, he’s most proud of diving into Pax8 Academy. It caused him to scrap his core values at the time, create a new leadership team and develop new core values based on gratitude. Between personal and professional journeys, he has adopted the motto “Too Blessed to Stress.”
Cracking the Code
Jeremy Nelson, Director of Partner Enablement Sales at Pax8, introduced his five-layer growth pyramid, which starts with sales foundations and culminates in hiring and leadership. He emphasized the importance of choosing a vertical to target marketing efforts effectively. He stressed the need for both inbound (blogs, SEO, testimonials) and outbound (webinars, shock-and-awe boxes, marketing calendars) marketing strategies, and offered smart tips for maximizing Market Development Funds through networking, referrals and compelling outreach. Nelson’s bottom line: Be interesting, be intentional and don’t be afraid to pick up the phone.
I Passed My CMMC Level 2 Assessment: And Why You Should Run for the Mountains
Joy Beland, VP Cybersecurity Compliance, Summit 7, led a conversation with Bobby Guerra, CEO, Axiom; Adam Evans, Compliance Officer, Axiom; and Lawrence Cruciana, President, Corporate Information Technologies, that had attendees locked in from the start. When asked how many in attendance have DIB clients who need CMMC, nearly 90% raised their hands. So it was clear the stakes couldn’t be higher. One of the recurring themes of the session was that pursuing CMMC requires complete commitment from your whole organization. The panelists were in agreement that if your MSP doesn’t have the appetite for that scale of risk, you should either stay away or find a partner and get help. For Axiom, it took their team eight months — full time — to complete.
This Title Has Been Redacted
Chris Roberts, Artificial Intelligence and Deepfake Cyber Strategist at World Wide Technology, said out loud what many attendees had on their minds. We’re unleashing AI to the world without giving people guidelines on how — or why — to use it. He challenged the audience to look beyond the buzz of AI and instead interrogate the behaviors it reflects, reinforces and reshapes. We must shift from passive trust to active inquiry, requiring MSPs to engage with AI not as a black box, but as a system built — and influenced — by humans. By reframing how we question AI behavior, we can begin to hold systems accountable by questioning more and trusting less.
SuperOps
On the mainstage, Damo Vasudevan, Vice President of Product Management at SuperOps, laid out challenges facing partners today, including tool sprawl, a talent shortage and higher customer expectations. But he quickly contrasted that with their answer — the SuperOps Agentic AI Framework with three levels of engagement: Informational (smart suggestions only), Semi-Autonomous (guided decision making) and Autonomous (full contextual action). In short, it’s AI that plans, acts and evolves contextually — from suggestion to action. But the larger point was the human possibilities unlocked by this AI’s efficiency: more time to meet and collaborate in person.
Gold Sponsors Rapid Fire Pitches
Dancing mascots. Unexpected pinch hitters. Butchered last names. Even leopard-print undergarments. All was revealed by our 21 Gold sponsors as each took their turn giving their best elevator pitches on why attendees should visit their booths at the Vendor Expo. It might be the toughest 30 seconds in the channel. So attendees — support each of them by visiting their booths before your time runs out! And non-attendees — make sure you’re here next year!
Carl Lewis Inspires Beyond Again
Ten-time Olympic medalist and two-time Beyond keynote, Carl Lewis captivated the audience with candid stories from his iconic career. Lane Brannan, EVP General Manager of Americas, led the conversation about Lewis’s mindset, discipline and relentless drive that propelled him to global stardom. It was a masterclass in sustained excellence.
Lewis explored the mental toughness it takes to compete at the highest level, but more importantly with yourself. “I went into every event looking to be the first one to cross the finish line. I wasn’t looking to beat anyone. I knew I was prepared to win.” He emphasized the importance of preparation over talent, and how that mindset powered his success not only on the track but also his leadership off of it. Clarity of purpose, commitment to growth and belief in possibility can translate into any arena, from business to personal development.
Where Is Beyond 2026 Headed?
At the close of Day One, Jen Bodell, CVP of Marketing, announced the location of Beyond 2026. Pax8 is raising the bar and taking this event to one of the fastest-growing tech hubs in the country: Salt Lake City, Utah.
