‘I very much enjoy startup companies,’ says Empath Chief Product Officer Michael Riggs. ‘The size, the complexity, the speed that it all moves at is very engaging. It’s fun to have this much influence in a product at such an early stage and help it grow along.’
Training and education vendor Empath has hired a new chief product officer as the company looks to build on early momentum and sharpen its focus on partner-driven growth.
CPO Michael Riggs comes with deep experience in technology and cybersecurity across product, engineering and cloud operations. His background includes co-founding Beltex Insurance, serving as CEO of The MSP Store, acting as a strategic advisor to Phin Security and holding senior executive roles at Tampa, Fla.-based vendor Rewst, including VP of cloud operations and interim VP of engineering.
“I very much enjoy startup companies,” Riggs (pictured above) told CRN in an interview. “The size, the complexity, the speed that it all moves at is very engaging. It’s fun to have this much influence in a product at such an early stage and help it grow along.”
Kyle Christensen, Empath co-founder, said the Tampa, Fla.-based company’s mission has always been bigger than just learning and development. “It’s about helping organizations operate better,” he said.
[Related: Empath Raises $2M in MSP-Led Funding Round, Plans AI-Driven Growth]
“These aren’t ideas we cooked up on our own,” he told CRN. “They’re responses to real pain points around training, accountability and operational excellence. And honestly, there isn’t a great cohesive solution for that today.”
Riggs’ first 100 days will include improving usability and supporting faster customer onboarding, to name a few, as Empath’s sales funnel grows. “It’s absolutely fantastic to deliver better, more intuitive experiences for our customers,” he said.
Partner feedback will continue to play a central role in shaping those decisions. Riggs said that Empath already relies heavily on direct input from its partners through built-in feedback tools and regular conversations.
He added that building products in isolation would risk missing market needs, noting that Empath’s roadmap is being shaped directly by ongoing feedback from MSP partners.
“In the MSP space, people vote with their feet,” he said. “If we’re doing this right, we’re sticky. We help MSPs retain their employees, which in turn helps them retain their customers.”
AI will also play a role in Empath’s evolution and will be used to help reinforce positive behavior rather than punish mistakes.
“This isn’t about slapping ‘powered by AI’ on the product,” he said. “It’s a complementary tool, things like adaptive learning paths, guided skills assessments and surfacing the right content at the right time.”
Looking ahead, both Christensen and Riggs framed the next year as an evolution rather than a reset. “This is about helping people be accountable to their own success,” Christensen said. “Not being held accountable but understanding what drives them and reinforcing that.”
For partners, the message is simple. Empath is doubling down, with a goal of about 1,000 MSP partners by the end of 2026.
“You’ll see steady progress, more rigor and a platform that continues to mature without losing sight of the people it’s meant to serve,” Christensen said.
