Conserving Cash: Veodia CEO Guillaume Cohen (Part 6)

SM: Where do you go from here?

GC: We have been investing a lot in building the teams. A year ago the focus was to find the right financial partners. It has taken us more time to grow than we initially planned, which is not unusual.

SM: Do you have a head of sales?

GC: No. We are now focusing on hiring product marketing people, trying to make sure we are not driven by technology but rather by the market. We also just hired a marketing communications person to generate more awareness and leads. The next phase is to grow the business and sales. For now, most of the sales are done by me and another guy who is in charge of client services. We did not want to invest in sales until we had the formula completed.

Timing is everything. I am trying to optimize things and make sure we put money where we need to at the right time. I do not want to be too early for the market.

SM: How long will the money you currently have last you?

GC: That depends on how quickly we grow revenue. At least a year and a half. We raised a big round. We want to get as much value out of that as possible. We want to really grow revenue.

SM: What I really like about what you have just said is that you have not gone and hired a lot of salespeople. Until you figure out repeatability in the sales cycle, there is not much use hiring sales managers. They are not good at figuring out those things.

GC: They are not going to define the product for you. Obviously ,with the success we have had, we have been able to narrow the plans and align the product with our strategic goals. We know who we need to market to.

SM: Can you talk about how the Sun Microsystems deal happened? Do you know how you penetrated that account?

GC: In most cases it is people from the business groups. In that case, the guy who found us is the CTO of Learning Services at Sun. He wants to find solutions to improve learning, and that is usually the best way for us to get the product up and running. That is generally the best way for us to target someone, because the business users are the people who best see the value. With other organizations we get approached by IT. It is a cultural thing, some companies have IT groups that are forward-thinking. However, if there is not a business group sponsoring the project, it is not going to happen. IT generally is focused on protecting themselves. That is why we think the best approach is through the business groups, and the later IT is involved, the better.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Conserving Cash: Veodia CEO Guillaume Cohen
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