Scaling With VARs and OEMs: Nexenta CEO Evan Powell (Part 7)

Sramana: Have you raised funds from any venture capitalist?

Evan Powell: Last fall we announced that we took some money from a great fund called TransLink. They have offshore relationships throughout Asia in their fund. Our perception is that in the long-term, hardware makers in Asia are going to disintermediate the brands that sit in front of enterprise storage products. Some of our biggest customers are in that part of the world.

Javelin Venture Partners is also a fund that we have taken funds from. They are out of San Francisco and the partner we work with there used to run Google Earth. He knows the pain of being an application provider first hand. They would close deals and see all the money go to a legacy storage vendor.

We have taken a very different approach to financing. We walked away from a great term sheet last fall from the biggest VC. We walked away in part because they believed that we should sell hardware. They said they did not mind, but it kept coming up in conversations enough that it made us nervous. Perhaps if we sold hardware we could go public a year earlier. We wanted to take a longer-term outlook with our stance. A lot of venture guys can provide a lot of value but in storage they are still locked in the old form of business. We did not want that cognitive dissidence on our board.

I have decided to raise less money, continue to prove our business model, and get happy customers.

Sramana: It is always better to grow a business without raising too much capital. That is a core philosophy of 1M/1M. You have to be lean and capital efficient.

Evan Powell: You have one chance to form the DNA of a company. Making money should be a part of that DNA.

Sramana: What about your team? How are you able to attract the right type of talent?

Evan Powell: I always talk about team. I did not appreciate the attractiveness of an open approach to today’s great technologist when I first joined Nexenta. It is a lot easier for us to get the right people on board because we are seen as a positive force that enables people to use high performance IT. I can’t claim having thought that strategy through, but it is a neat idea to see that many businesses are rising because they are getting great people on board through open channels. We have people follow us and work for us because we are seen as a great place to work as opposed to other competitors who are not seen as a ‘fun’ place to work.

Sramana: Great! Thanks for sharing your story and I look forward to following your success.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Scaling With VARs and OEMs: Nexenta CEO Evan Powell
1 2 3 4 5 6 7