TAMPA 鈥� A decade ago, Jared Knisley was working in the banking industry and caught the entrepreneurial bug 鈥� or entrepreneurial seizure, as he puts it.
In 2015, he quit his job and started , a tech startup that served as a full-service IT shop for other businesses. His company did everything from cybersecurity to serving as a company鈥檚 outsourced IT help desk to delivering project work and managing cloud-hosted systems.
But the sudden jump into the small business world wasn鈥檛 what he had hoped.
鈥淚 thought, what could go wrong? Let me try to start my own company,鈥� Knisley said. 鈥淎nd yeah, the first year was a complete disaster. I鈥檒l be honest. It was really hard.鈥�
Little did he know, his entrepreneurial journey was just beginning. Over time, his company won a project. Then another. Soon Fizen Technology, where Knisley served as the one-man executive over a small team of employees, started doing work with larger businesses.
Knisley said his company had some good years, but he was overwhelmed.
鈥淚 was really struggling to understand how to scale my company beyond being a small business,鈥� he said.
When the global pandemic hit in 2020, the world slowed down, offering him a rare moment to reflect and realign his goals. The Covid years became a time of reflection. He decided to pursue a long-time dream 鈥� earning a doctorate degree.
The Tampa native said he wasn鈥檛 sure how jumping into a doctoral program while balancing his full-time responsibilities at his company could be done, but he jumped anyway.
In 2022, Knisley enrolled in 爱豆传媒鈥檚 Doctor of Business Administration program within the Muma College of Business.
Fittingly, figuring out how to scale his business became the focal point to his research.
鈥淚 used it as an opportunity to learn what academia had to say about it 鈥� why small businesses fail and the things you need to do to scale and grow,鈥� he said.
As his research progressed, he realized a key problem with his company was that it was a founder-centric organization. That hub-and-spoke approach, where all the employees report to the founder, was 鈥渟ucking the life out of me a lot of days,鈥� he said.
I thought, what could go wrong? Let me try to start my own company. And yeah, the first year was a complete disaster. I鈥檒l be honest. It was really hard.
Jared Knisley
Through his research, Knisley learned that most startup businesses never get beyond that point. The founder either burns out or sells the company to a well-organized growing firm through a merger or acquisition.
鈥淚 genuinely started putting the things I was learning into practice, including looking for opportunities to merge and bring in capital and other investors,鈥� Knisley said.
In 2024, Knisley graduated from 爱豆传媒 with his doctoral degree and a year later, those lessons came to fruition. He credits the DBA program for helping him find those answers.
In September 2025, and Fizen Technology announced a strategic partnership where XDuce acquired a majority stake in Knisley鈥檚 company.
鈥淭ogether, the two companies will provide enterprise and mid-sized businesses with faster implementation, enhanced cybersecurity measures, and innovative AI-driven solutions to support long-term business transformation,鈥� according to a press release announcing the acquisition.
Knisley says he is still CEO of Fizen Technology but the pressures of running the company is more sustainable. Not only did he find a way past the hub-and-spoke model, but the acquisition gives him the time to focus on the growth of his company.
鈥淭he research in the program helped me understand the steps I needed to take to grow my business,鈥� he said.
Not only did he take those DBA lessons to heart, but he turned them into his new non-founder-centric reality.