Bluewave CEO: ‘This is a super important market for us’
By Stephen P. Schmidt – Reporter, Louisville Business First
Updated May 2, 2025, 3:40pm EDT
Bluewave COO Wayne Dietrich (left) and Bluewave CEO Seth Penland stand in the outside seating of one of the Starting Gate Suites at Thurby on May 1, 2025. Photo credit: Stephen P. Schmidt
Story Highlights
- Bluewave Technology Group acquired three Louisville companies for $70 million.
- Louisville generates nearly 30% of Bluewave’s revenue despite operations in 23 states.
- Bluewave has made 19 acquisitions since its founding in 2016.
Bluewave Technology Group is not based in Louisville, but if it was an airline, it would certainly have a hub in Derby City.
Since the fall of 2022, Bluewave — which refers to itself as a “technology advisory and sourcing partner” — has acquired three Louisville-based companies to the tune of $70 million in those deals alone, according to Seth Penland, the company’s CEO and founder.
That would be Virtual Telecomm (November 2022), SinglePoint Communications Group (February 2023) and most recently, JIL Communications (September 2023).
On Thursday, I visited Bluewave’s location in the Starting Gate Suites at Churchill Downs for Thurby, an annual tradition for the company since acquiring Virtual Telecomm.
I spoke with Penland, as well as Bluewave’s COO, Wayne Dietrich, and its newly named Louisville-based vice president, Tony Scribner, to talk about, in part, the company’s connections to the city. Note: I stopped last year to find out how two former competitors became teammates.
Penland has estimated that he has been to Louisville somewhere around 11-12 times. This was his third time at Churchill Downs.
“This is a super important market for us. … There’s a really good client base here that I think value advisors. They care about wanting to make great decisions around their technology choices, and they like to lean on advisors to help them make great decisions, so we’ve been really fortunate that clients value what we provide,” Penland said.
Penland added that a little less than 30% of the company’s revenue comes from the three companies that it acquired in Louisville — in spite of Bluewave having operations of various capacities in 23 states.
At the event on Thursday, there were approximately 145 people milling between two suites. The crowd was composed of a mostly equal mix of Bluewave employees and clients.
Recently, the company announced it would be sponsoring José Ortiz, the jockey who will have the mount for the 151st Kentucky Derby on Sandman, one of the race favorites. Ortiz will have a Bluewave logo on his pant legs.
“[We wanted to] make a public statement to this market that we value this market, we value this event and we like to back winners,” Penland said. “Hopefully, he wins.”
With approximately 20 employees in Louisville, Bluewave ranks as the telecom company with the sixth-largest presence in the metro area, according to our most recent list that was published in November 2024.
“We’re continuing to grow every single year across the country, and I imagine we will be here as well. … We want to add more people. We want to add more clients. We want to continue to acquire more if we can here,” Penland said.
A different type of trifecta
In addition, out of the company’s 10 vice presidents (and one senior vice president), three of them are now based in Louisville. They are Nic Jones (VP of Sales, Alliances & Indirect), Jason Hulsewede (VP of Sales, Midwest) and Tony Scribner (VP of Solution Advisory).
Although Jones (SinglePoint) and Hulsewede (Virtual Telecomm) joined Bluewave through acquisitions, Scribner was hired externally in September 2024. While based in Louisville, he had been working as the chief information security officer and CTO for Austin, Texas-based Ntirety, an IT services and cybersecurity firm.
Tony Scribner is one of three vice presidents at Bluewave Technology Group who lives in Louisville. Photo credit: Stephen P. Schmidt
Ntirety has served as a provider of Bluewave, so Scribner had direct communications with many of the members of the company’s leadership team.
“I was a new hire, but the rest were all acquisitions, so they thought enough about the companies in the area to not only buy the companies, but also keep the leadership,” Scribner told me. “That speaks volumes.”
Scribner said that having lived in Louisville since the ’90s, he could directly play a role in helping add to Bluewave’s Louisville headcount.
“I know a lot of people in the region and their technical talents, and so it would be an easy way for me to add really good talent,” he said.
With approximately 135 employees, the company is largely remote, but still maintains the office space where Virtual Telecomm was based, located at 3410 Office Pointe Place in Jeffersontown.
Penland added that Bluewave did not want to expand for the sake of getting bigger, but to add more services and capabilities for its clients. Virtual Telecomm, for instance, had long been recognized as an expert in the field of SD-WAN (software defined wide area networks) and UCaaS (Unified-Communications-as-a-Service).
Bluewave was originally based in Parsippany, New Jersey (in the New York City metro area), but has since moved its headquarters to San Clemente, California (south of downtown Los Angeles), where Penland lives.
Since Penland founded the company in 2016, it has made 19 acquisitions of telecom companies located throughout the U.S. The acquisitions efforts were bolstered by a $100 million capital influx from Virginia-based Columbia Capital in 2021.
“Nineteen companies coming together. It’s not trivial. It’s a fully integrated business,” said Dietrich, who resides in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “So not only do we have people coming in from all locations to participate here [at Thurby], but all of those people now are under one roof. … Our clients are noticing how interconnected we are as a business.”