Building An Open Source ERP Company From Pamplona, Spain: OpenBravo CEO Paolo Juvara (Part 6)

Sramana: Tell me about your organization. Are you still based in the north of Spain?

Paolo Juvara: We have expanded over the years. We have the original office in Pamplona, and that is still our headquarters. It is a small town away from the major commercial centers, so in 2008 we opened an office in Barcelona. We also have a small commercial office in Calcutta, India. About two months ago I moved back to San Francisco, and I am now in the process of opening a U.S. office.

Sramana: How many people do you have, and how are they split up among the different offices?

Paolo Juvara: Overall the company has 64 people. The vast majority of our workers are in Spain. We have a few people scattered around, such as a person in Costa Rica, a person in the UK, and a person in the Netherlands. We have three people in India. In the United States we have the head of marketing and me.

Sramana: In terms of distribution of people, is most of your team focused on engineering?

Paolo Juvara: We have 26 people in product development. The rest are in the support organization, and we have 12 people in consulting. We have a very small team of commercial salespeople who support our partners.

Sramana: Do you do your engineering consulting from Spain?

Paolo Juvara: About a third of our consulting work is actually engineering consulting. Visas are an issue because we are getting a lot of technical demand we have not been able to satisfy.

Sramana: How has the company been financed so far?

Paolo Juvara: We have taken two rounds of venture capital. The first round was for 6 million euros, and we had another round in 2008 which brought in specific competencies on the software industry. We brought in technical VCs who can also help us with processes. That round raised 5.5 million euros among the three firms.

Sramana: You have raised a substantial amount of money.

Paolo Juvara: It is not easy to raise the money.

Sramana: Given the amount of money you have raised compared with the amount of revenue required to give your investors a return on their money, you are going to have to grow the company a lot, and fast. How do you propose to do that?

Paolo Juvara: Excellent point, and that is our big challenge. There are a number of benchmarks that we have to consider. In the early 1990s ERP companies did not require as much capital. Our investors understand our plan, and they are not putting too much pressure on us to accelerate because they see our plan. Thanks to the open source designation we have an avenue for growth that this market has not had before.

We also hope our new POS product will accelerate the growth of the company. We are refining our business model to further accelerate our growth. I will admit that our biggest challenge is to show that we can indeed grow this company.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building An Open Source ERP Company From Pamplona, Spain: OpenBravo CEO Paolo Juvara
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