Gaps in Analytics: Jon Kondo, CEO of Host Analytics (Part 2)

Sramana: What is the background and history of Host Analytics?

Jon Kondo: Host Analytics was founded in 2000 by Jim Eberlin. He had the idea of rented software in corporate performance management. He bootstrapped the company for the first seven years. He waited for the marketplace to catch up to his vision. Once it did, he went out and raised money in early 2008. At that time, they moved the company from St. Louis to northern California and brought in a management team. That is when I was recruited to Host Analytics.

Sramana: How big was Host Analytics when you joined in 2008?

Jon Kondo: It was between $2 million and $3 million  in revenue.

Sramana: Until that point was the company entirely bootstrapped?

Jon Kondo: He had a very small outside investment from angel investors. It really was a bootstrapped company.

Sramana: What was the vision of the company being built when you came in?

Jon Kondo: It was to become the leading cloud provider of corporate performance management solutions. They essentially offered similar solutions to Hyperion. They provided advanced financial applications to companies to do advanced budgeting, forecasting and financial consolidation.

Sramana: When you came to the company, what did you find?

Jon Kondo: I found a company with great people. It had landed some marquee accounts for a small company. When I did my diligence on the company, I had some people help me with the technical diligence on the product itself. Jim had built a phenomenal product. It turned out to be a tremendous opportunity.

Sramana: What were the levers that needed to be pushed at that point?

Jon Kondo: We needed to get our sales and marketing engine going. We needed to get analyst relations going, establish our marketing programs, build our brand awareness, demand generation and sales. We also needed to start putting in more structure around the product development roadmap.

Sramana: What is the business model for Host Analytics?

Jon Kondo: One of the things that is really typical is the amount of questions we ask from a sales perspective. Who do we sell to? Do we sell by vertical? We made a pivotal decision to focus the core of our marketing effort on the upper mid-market. We clearly decided that companies with revenues greater than $75 million to $1 billion dollars comprised our core market. If you were a company in that market space, then you were clearly in our target market. You had more complexity than a smaller company but did not have the resources to afford and Oracle or SAP.

Sramana: What was the go-to-market strategy to reach these customers?

Jon Kondo: It was a combination of direct sales, marketing, demand generation, inside sales and our channel partners.

Sramana: What is the average deal size of the product you sell?

Jon Kondo: Our average deal size is over $100,000. We can support a direct sales force with that price line.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Gaps in Analytics: Jon Kondo, CEO of Host Analytics
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