Making SMEs Run Smoothly: René Lacerte’s Cashview (Part 3)

SM: How did you fund the first phase for Cashview?

RL: We had some Angels. We raised about $1.5M from some friends, which kept us going for a year and a half. I talked to 80 venture capitalist for PayCycle in the Fall of 2000. I had phone conversations with 20, meetings with a dozen, two meetings with 5, three meetings with 3 and ultimately 1 term sheet.

SM: That was a very tough time to raise capital.

RL: It definitely was. We were fortunate and received a very good term sheet. It was great for the company.

SM: Who was it you ultimately accepted funding from?

RL: It was August Capital.

SM: Who from August did the deal?

RL: David Hornik.

SM: How substantial was their funding?

RL: They kept us going for another two years.

SM: In between the Angel financing and the Venture financing did you complete your product?

RL: When we received the money from David, we probably had a handful of customers using our system. The product was built, but we did not have real paying customers. We had not done a thing on the marketing side. Now that is all figured out. It is amazing.

SM: What did you learn in that process which you can teach the rest of us?

RL: The first thing I learned about building a business is that you have to define the culture of the company before you build the company. That is really important. You have to establish the values of the company: how do you want your people to treat customers, how do you want them to treat each other? How do you want the company to look? When you put that in writing, it really makes a difference. We have our values. You have been to PayCycle and can see the values are easily visible. Here at Cashview, we have our values everywhere as well. They are on the walls and on mouse pads. We have our mission statement visible. You set people’s tone when you make it visible. I learned that at Intuit, and realized how valuable it was at PayCycle and respect it even more here at Cashview.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Making SMEs Run Smoothly: René Lacerte’s Cashview
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11