Anton Zajac is enjoying a sustained wave of revenue growth at ESET, the security software company he heads as president and CEO. Zajac says a recent study by United Consultants surveying 20,000 security software users found those using ESET products have a “much higher” confidence rating over those of competing products.
The second bit of information out of the study that Zajac liked was that ESET products are popular among computer experts. To him, that’s the highest product endorsement possible. “They can filter out the hyperbole of the major players in the market,” he says.
And recently, he got a firsthand report from a Florida customer he helped over the phone. After answering the customer’s question, Zajac asked him why he bought the ESET product. “He says, ‘A friend bought it and I used it fraudulently for three months. But it was so good, I decided to buy it.’ ”
Microsoft Exchanges
In 2001, he got an e-mail from somebody at Microsoft wanting to know technical questions about the company’s security software. They exchanged 10 e-mails or so and then Zajac says, “I didn’t hear back for two weeks. I thought I had made a mistake.”
Turned out the Microsoft guy’s computer had been hit by the “love letter virus.”
Zajac couldn’t help but notice the irony. “Our product would have protected him from that,” he says.
ESET’s growth has earned national recognition from Inc. Magazine as among the country’s fastest-growing private companies for the past three years. This year, the magazine ranked it No. 379 on its list of 500 companies.
The Business Journal ranked ESET No. 6 on its 2009 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for its 228 percent growth from 2006 to 2008, growing from $33.9 million in ’06 to $111.4 million in revenues last year.
And even though this year’s financials for the company aren’t…