Nebula is the new umbrella brand for the company formerly known as TelcoSwitch. Howard Stevens came onboard as the company’s CEO in January 2024 and has been working to set the company up for continued success.
“It’s been a very busy year,” explained Stevens. “There’s never been a dull moment. When I joined, TelcoSwitch was a combination of companies. TelcoSwitch was the core company, then we had Yay.com, SureVoIP, PBX hosting, and Ziron, and a lot of these businesses hadn’t been properly integrated.
“One of the first things I needed to do, having got my feet under the table, was to pull all of these businesses together and reset where we were trying to go as a business.”
This gave a clear focus for Stevens when getting settled into his new role. He commented, “The majority of my first year has been taking the company through that journey and setting a new North Star, and making sure that the company is collectively focused behind that and going on that journey.”
This culminated in the company rebranding to Nebula in November. Stevens said, “The most visible aspect is the rebrand, because we had done a lot of work internally, but [the rebrand helped us] to visualise that for our partners, the wider community and our staff.”
The new name, Stevens explained, “gives a wider view of who we truly are”. He added, “Nebula is a brand of brands. We’re not losing the CallSwitch One product name, we’re not losing Yay.com, we’re not losing PBX Hosting. SureVoIP has been completely integrated into Nebula, but those other three main brands will absolutely stay going forward in 2025. It’s just enabled us to externally become more of a techco, rather than just a pure telco.”
A birthplace for stars
Nebula will also help the company get to where it wants to be. Stevens said, “We chose the name Nebula for a couple of relatively simple reasons. Number one, the Latin description of Nebula is cloud. And we are fundamentally a cloud business, so that was a good fit. Second, Nebula is a birthplace for stars and, ultimately, we are launching CallSwitch One and the business will be wrapped around that, along with Yay.com and PBX Hosting. It just all felt right.”
The rebrand had been something Stevens had in mind when he was going through the process of joining the company, but he explained you never fully know what journey you will go on “no matter how clear people are to you in terms of setting expectations and describing the type of company you’re coming into”.
He gave credit to Queen’s Park Equity, the owner of the business, along with the chairman for doing a very good job of describing the business and what he could expect upon joining. As such, no big surprises have come up along the way.
Informed and empowered people
Stevens’ prior roles as CEO of Tomia, and as chief commercial officer at OneOcean Group meant he came into this role with experience of coming into a new organisation as a leader.
“I’ve done this a few times now, so I’m not unfamiliar with the process of coming into a senior leadership role and getting to know the team,” explained Stevens. “The one thing I am utterly convinced of throughout my career, though, is that in any leadership role, if you don’t have a good team dynamic around you, things just will not go well.”
Stevens explained that a good or bad dynamic can stem from the most junior leader to the most senior leader. “You absolutely have to spend time making sure that you’ve got the right people in the right roles,” he said. “And they need to be informed, empowered, and understand the structure in which they’re operating. You all need to be looking at the decisions you’re making through the same lens to ensure you’re all going in the right direction.”
This has been a marker of success for Stevens throughout his career. He said, “I’ve had experiences where that’s worked really well, and I’ve seen the reverse where it’s just been destructive at a senior leadership level. So, I am very focused on getting this right.”
In the year Stevens has been at Nebula, the company has welcomed a new CFO and a new CTO. David McKay joined as CFO in June, with Lindsey Sutherland having joined as CTO in April.
Stevens is now confident the company has a leadership team that will enable it to reach its goals. He said, “The team has got a very good dynamic around it so we all work pretty effectively together.”
Everyone together
Stevens has also spent time working with all employees, so they understand what Nebula is looking to achieve. Nebula now serves 500 channel partners and has 200,000 daily active users. As the company continues to scale, all employees need to help ensure users and customers receive the same experience.
“Everyone needs to understand the role they play within a business,” said Stevens. “They need to understand how they can help the business move forward. And, given my background, I look to instill a customer-first attitude.”
He brings the company together every month so every employee can see how the business is doing, the part they play, where everyone is doing well and where they need to do better. Stevens added, “It’s extremely important for us to continue to grow that customer-first attitude so it continues to be pervasive throughout the company.”
This interview was included in our March 2025 print issue. You can read the magazine in full here.