Building An Enterprise Software Company From Europe: President Of Neolane North America, Stephan Dietrich (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In 2001, if I had been evaluating all of the marketing automation providers out there, what would have been the use case that would have made me pick Neolane?

Stephan Dietrich: One of our first clients was an online brokerage firm in France. They needed to communicate effectively with their consumers about daily trades that they might be interested in. People did a lot of daily trades in 2000 because the bubble had not yet burst. They were looking for a lights-out messaging capability on different devices. There was mobile, email, and instant messaging. From their mobile devices clients could ask for quotes and get responses. That was compelling for the broker, and they had a need to tie real-time information into personalized messaging to their clients. Personalization was very important. Our solution was inbound, outbound, personalized, and connected to real data feeds. That first contract allowed us to start the company.

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you were able to cater to European customers, whereas your competitors were more focused on America at that point.

Stephan Dietrich: Yes, to a degree. Prime Response started out of the UK and they had some early customers in France. They were not going as far as executing in the channels; rather, they were trying to be an engine to replace SQL queries. You had your database and you had to remap your tool on top of the database. They were an engine that allowed you to do selection for the call center or direct mail campaigns. You could not execute all the way to the channel.

Sramana Mitra: Who were the first customers? Who were your early adopters and how did you find them?

Stephan Dietrich: When you do not have any salespeople and you do not have a lot of money, you get creative. We started the company with our own money because we had done well with an earlier company. In 2001, it was impossible to find investors.

We started tapping into our network of contacts, which is when we ran into an online brokerage, Boursorama, who had a big financial portal. They had 80% market share in France. When we met them they had fewer than 10,000 customers on their mailing lists. We knew they had several million customers. We presented our vision and progressively we were able to convince a number of e-commerce players, particularly travel agencies such as LastMinute.com, to trust us.

Sramana Mitra: Were your customers all in Europe?

Stephan Dietrich: Yes. We started in Paris so our first customers were in France.

Sramana Mitra: How did the revenue ramp up?

Stephan Dietrich: The first years were horrible. It was great to create a company in the downturn. Only the best survive, and we like that a lot. In 2002 we were making $300,000. In 2003 we made $800,000 and we had 20 employees. From that point on we doubled every year. We did close to $4 million in 2005 and $8 million in 2006. We went up to $13 million in 2007 and we did $18 million in 2008. We did $21 million in 2009 and we did $30 million in 2010. We did $44 million last year.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Building An Enterprise Software Company From Europe: President Of Neolane North America, Stephan Dietrich
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