RIDING THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE
From surfboard to snowboard to board of directors, Quantum Loophole’s CEO Josh Snowhorn has always been able to catch the next wave. Join this highly entertaining Nomad Futurist podcast to hear the story of a passionate industry leader, innovator and sports enthusiast who finds exciting synergies that keep him at the forefront of the critical infrastructure industry.
Snowhorn grew up as a scion of the successful Neiman Marcus family and the happy child of highly educated parents who lived a hippie lifestyle.
Nevertheless, Snowhorn was the black sheep of the family, eschewing Harvard for his passions for surfing and snowboarding which he subsidized by photographing tourists. Through a surfing contact he got involved in doing retrofits for telecom hotels which in turn gave him enough experience to land a job at Terremark, a Miami based real estate company that was involved in constructing data centers during the early dotcom era.
“I recognized very quickly that Terremark was going to be something magical. I had this amazing opportunity to really make something of myself and I knew that I had it in my DNA to achieve things.”
Snowhorn, who considers himself to be a proud nerd, soon became an expert in interconnection and peering and was responsible for extraordinary growth at the company. He also founded the Global Peering Forum.
“I was responsible for peering and interconnection and cross connects and the Global Peering Forum and all that at the same time, driving massive transactional business to the company. I approached it from a sense of friendship and camaraderie in the industry. The people I sold to were really my friends and they trusted me.”
After eleven years at Terremark, Snowhorn went on to work for CyrusOne where he grew revenue 23% year-on-year.
Snowhorn’s latest enterprise, Quantum Loophole, is focused on addressing the scalability, connectivity, and cost-efficiency challenges of today’s large-scale deployments.
“I looked at the elements that we needed in our industry; land, energy, water, and fiber. Those are essentials… that ecosystem just needs to be supported with mass scale facilities. That's what we're hoping to do…find the phase one perfect location, and then scale that out around the country and become a wholesaler to the wholesalers.”
Quantum Loophole is currently developing a first-of-its kind 2,100-acre data center campus in Frederick, Maryland that supports Northern Virginia’s data center alley.
Snowhorn is a committed futurist. He has an aversion to thinking inside the box and is constantly encouraging his team:
“I want you to forget about what you did in the past. That doesn't mean a thing. I want you to think about the future.…if we shape our business that way, we're going to be ahead of everybody.”
Snowhorn’s enthusiasm and generosity of spirit have been key to his success in sales and business development, and with regards to the next generation, he is clearly committed to paying it forward.
“When I meet the kids coming into our industry who don't go to college, a lot of them dropped out of high school, and I watch how they're trying to succeed in the networking industry, I can't wait to give them an opportunity.”
Josh Snowhorn is Founder & CEO of Quantum Loophole, Inc. which offers a rapid platform delivery for land, power, connectivity, and scale to support the needs of hyperscalers, enterprises and colocation providers. Snowhorn values approachability, accessibility, collaboration, innovation, and growth. These qualities guided Snowhorn’s leadership in the interconnection industry over the last 20 years and building over $10B of value along the way. He has pretty much seen and done it all through key founding and executive positions at Terremark, Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Cincinnati Bell, and CyrusOne (Nasdaq: CONE). Josh founded the Global Peering Forum, the annual meeting for the Internet interconnection and peering community where he serves on the board of directors. Josh serves on the advisory board of Telescent, the finest automated interconnection machine on the planet. He is an avid speaker at conferences globally including networking, data centers, real estate, edge networking, and quantum computing. He has been a surfer for 39 years and a snowboarder for 25 years, traveling the globe in pursuit of experiences. Josh loves cars and racing. He founded TrackRats, LLC, the premier car club for track enthusiasts.
