The Future Is Now: Peter Quintas of SOMA Global On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up E-Commerce
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
People & Culture is EVERYTHING — Great people drive a great culture. A great culture drives great products and customer service. Great products and customer service create happy customers. Many may say “your customer comes first”, but I believe that “people come first”.
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Peter Quintas.
Peter is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of SOMA Global, responsible for driving product and platform development, defining business goals and executing through growth, and for general operational and financial health. Over the past 20 years, Peter has held executive and CTO positions in several technology companies such as Nomi, InterAct Public Safety Systems and True Systems. His experience and expertise has been focused on high-growth businesses in enterprise software and launching innovative technology solutions.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I grew up around technology. My dad was in tech, my brother was in tech, which naturally led to my interest. My high school had a computer science program, I continued with Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A lot of my classmates there were trending toward working for the big consulting firms — I was severely allergic to that corporate culture and joined a startup my senior year.
After running through a few startups, I was part of a group that acquired a public safety technology company, which is where I got my start in this space. After spending a few years working on that project and almost a dozen years later, I got back into the space, knowing that law enforcement and first responders were underserved due to aging technology and legacy vendors. They deserve better.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
That’s a tough one. Every week brings a new, interesting story.
Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
We are bringing a new era of critical-response technologies to public safety and government agencies. SOMA Global is the only company that has built a truly cloud-native, robust, configurable platform that addresses the nuance of state and local policies and procedures. Our partner agencies can access our applications from any device, anywhere and share data inter-agency with ease. Future innovation is accelerated on our modern platform allowing for low/no code development, interacting with rich media and devices and leveraging artificial intelligence to automate tasks. The SOMA Platform (as a whole) IS the cutting edge breakthrough.
How do you think this might change the world?
I’m not sure about changing the world, but domestically our law enforcement and first responders deserve cutting edge technology to help better serve their communities and serving them is our mission.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
I don’t watch “Black Mirror”. Sorry!
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
The roots of how the SOMA Platform and how it led to being a differentiating breakthrough started in the first month of founding. We partnered with 4 large agencies of varying types (State, County, Local, Campus) and built the SOMA Platform to serve all types. Coincidentally this has much broader implications rooting back to our country’s founding. The Tenth Amendment says that the Federal Government only has those powers delegated in the Constitution — If it isn’t listed, it belongs to the states or to the people. This created a divergent and complex set of requirements to support that nuance of state and local laws that we think the SOMA Platform solves.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
Time. The widespread adoption is happening more quickly than I had originally thought. The next 18–36 months will fly by quickly.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
Until 2021, we had largely grown through word-of-mouth. With our first outside investment, we recently started building a stronger go-to-market presence and will be continuing to invest over the next 18 months.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Hands down my Dad. He taught me tenacity. He taught me hard work. He taught me kindness.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I’d like to think that the mission of the company results in a better world. Internally we pride ourselves on our culture, health and wellness of our team. Externally, I believe the number one thing I can personally do to bring goodness to the world is be a good husband, father and role model for my kids.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why.
- Just Do It — SOMA Global is my first role as Founder and CEO. Although I played very entrepreneurial and principal roles in several startups, this is the first that I started (with my Co-Founder Nick Stohlman). I should have done this a decade earlier.
- People & Culture is EVERYTHING — Great people drive a great culture. A great culture drives great products and customer service. Great products and customer service create happy customers. Many may say “your customer comes first”, but I believe that “people come first”.
- Kindness Wins — In the long game, kindness wins over “cut-throat”. It also feels less stressful to stay kind in a cut-throat situation.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Respect and treat our law enforcement and first responders with kindness. They have an unbelievably difficult and dangerous job protecting our communities. They are largely overworked and underpaid. Appreciate them.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Genuine kindness is the ultimate strength” — @garyvee. I have a “no-assholes” rule and it has served me well both personally and professionally.
Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Hahaha. Interestingly, I don’t think about this much. I think more about how to continue to build a good team and culture, innovate on our platform and serve our customers best — value is inherently created from that. If you do it right, the value is obvious to VCs.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
@peterquintas on Twitter
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
The Future Is Now: Peter Quintas of SOMA Global On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
