All-in-WUN

WUN Systems founders Dale Hersowitz and Victor Vasev turned a start-up provider of an all-in-one technical platform into a national — and potentially international — company.

The company, which has its engineering office in Reno, ties together basic office equipment like phone service, email, Internet and door security, plus programs for sales, accounting, office management and more.

Hersowitz, the CEO of WUN, compared the company’s platform to a high-performance automobile.

Like an Audi, you turn it on and it tells you the tire pressure is fine; you need to change the oil in 5,000 miles; what traffic obstacles are on the way to work; and it reminds you that Sirius is about to expire, he said during a phone interview from Miami.

The WUN system is tied to the Internet of Things (IoT), in which technologies become increasingly interconnected.

The WUN customer on the road can book a conference room in another city with a cell phone app. The confirmation includes pin numbers to open locks on the building, the floor and the conference room, as needed. The pin numbers only work for the duration of the booking.

For a business moving its location, the phone and other technologies can be packed up, moved and plugged into the Internet at the next location, and they’re ready to go.

WUN does that with cloud-based office systems.

“Being a cloud-company, we can provide services everywhere,” Vasev, the company’s co-founder and chief technical officer, said during an interview in WUN’s downtown Reno office.

“We need to make technology simpler,” Hersowitz said. “It helps us, but as we get more and more technology it gets to be almost a burden.”

Connecting it all into one platform simplifies the systems.

WUN system’s technology particularly lends itself to shared space offices, such as business incubators, and executive suites where one or two people have offices and manage hundreds of clients.

“We tie it all together into one platform that’s very easy for one person to manage,” Hersowitz said.

“We’re a one-stop tech shop,” Vasev said. “There’s one phone number to call; one place to go to provide service.”

WUN began eight years ago with one customer, Pacific Workplaces, a provider of on-demand and flexible workspaces mostly in California.

“Our first installation, we literally rented a U-Haul truck,” Hersowitz said. “We loaded our technology into the U-Haul and headed around. We slept in the back of the truck.

“Fast forward to 2016, we’ve built networks of offices around the country.”

WUN now serves 450-plus workspaces and has offices in Los Angeles, where it began, Miami, Sacramento, New York and Reno.

“Reno is becoming huge,” Hersowitz said.

Vasev operates from a shared–space office at One East Liberty, which has become WUN’s engineering headquarters.

When they decided to open an office in Reno — at Vasev’s urging — Tesla had yet to announce it was considering the market for its ion battery gigafactory.

Nevertheless, Vasev recognized that Reno was “going to be the next big city.”

Four years ago, they moved WUN’s engineering department from the Bay Area to Reno.

Hersowitz and Vasev see the timing of their Reno move as a huge advantage. On the heals of Tesla and Switch, more and more tech companies see Reno as the place to be. It’s close to the Bay Area, but much more affordable both to live and to do business.

Nationwide, WUN Systems employs about 80 people full-time.

The Reno office has eight core engineers, and support staff, with additional positions opening as they expand.