Outsourcing: Sanjay Dhawan, CEO of Symphony Services (Part 6)

SM: That’s exactly my point. You can, if you go into a niche that is an up and coming niche that is potentially underserved and you develop core competency – the real operating words are core competency.

SD: Yes. Their story, their focus was very UI and design focused. Immediately before this, like I said, I ran Aricent as its president. We had a similar model in previous company. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a company called Frog Design, which is one of the largest design companies in the world. They helped Steve Jobs design his first Mac. The original Mac design was done by Frog Design, and they were owned by my previous company. So, I have followed that whole life cycle of combining design with development. I think that was a niche that Globant started. Once you get your foot strongly placed, then you start achieving scale.

SM: I think the core competency is definitely one. The one that I was talking about is size related. I know for a fact that neither you nor Persistence, even Globant, would take these small little companies and do their product development in outsource mode. A prototype project for a little company is probably $15, 000, $30,000, $45,000, sub $50,000 projects. You’re not going to take these projects.

SD: You would be surprised. We do engage with many startups. Again, there is entrepreneurship DNA in many of us. Having started many small companies before myself, and others as well, we all realize that working with some of the early stage smaller companies, keeps you abreast of the latest and greatest from a technology and innovation standpoint. But also, many of these companies get acquired and/or become part of larger operations, and that becomes your entry into larger companies, as well. So, we’re do engage with smaller companies, too.

SM: But there is a much, much larger volume of startup activity today. The chances of a small startup getting your attention is very small.

SD: All I can tell you is that we do engage.

SM: You engage somewhat. You engage with companies that have some venture financing or some kind of financing, and you do your due diligence. It’s like Silicon Valley Bank. I had breakfast with the vice-chairman of Silicon Valley Bank about One Million by One Million, and we were talking and he said, you know, what you are doing is great, because these people have no access to anything, the very early stage entrepreneurs. We work with people who are at concept stage.

SD: By the way, I would tell you that we absolutely did a deal with a company. It’s a startup company with, literally, two people. That’s it. It’s an early stage company in a domain that’s of interest to us, and we’re absolutely engaging with them. Yes, obviously, from our business standpoint, we have to do the diligence to make sure that it is the right space, and yes, it will take off – both the company and the space – and it is worth taking the risk associated with the early stage engagement.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Outsourcing: Sanjay Dhawan, CEO of Symphony Services
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