Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Borge Hald, CEO of Medallia (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I remember that you were bootstrapped for a long time.

Borge Hald: That is right. We were about 110 people and had $30 million in revenue when we finally decided to take the investments.

SM: So you have taken quite a bit of financing since then.

BH: We have. If you compare us to more traditional venture-backed firms, yes. Sequoia has invested about $55 million in Medallia.

SM: I would like to understand your position toward mobile and social and how your company is leveraging those trends.

BH: This is a huge thing for us. In some ways, mobile and social go together. They are not two separate trends. People are social when they are mobile. One of the key trends we are seeing is that people are sharing so much more than they used to. Mary Meeker [of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers] did a graph on sharing behavior in the world and how it is just exploding. It is about sharing of all kinds of things, but the customer experience is certainly one of them. When people go through any kind of experience, they like to share. They post reviews, they post on Facebook, they post on Foursquare, etc.

The U.S. is actually behind in terms of sharing behavior compared to other parts of the world. That is one key element of our business. The first thing we do is monitor all these sites where people are posting. We then make sure that the right people in the company get it and that they get it fast. That means they have to be able to get it when they are on the run. We are deployed all the way from call center agents to the coach or front desk manager of a hotel to the CEO of a company. So we are very broadly deployed in a company.

Some of our customers have as many as 50,000 users for Medallia. Their context is very different, but many of them are on the run. They need to be notified quickly and be able to respond quickly. First we monitor those websites, and then we make sure that on your phone – whether it is through our mobile app or through your e-mail – and you can be notified about it and take action.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Borge Hald, CEO of Medallia
1 2