Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Portugal: Paulo Rosado, CEO of OutSystems (Part 7)

Sramana: In the United States we are used to seeing VCs build a company in a 5 to 7 year window. You have had VCs for substantially longer than that timeframe. How do European VCs look at the time windows?

Paulo Rosado: We have so many strong relationships with gross equity VCs that at this point, if we decide to, we could basically replace the VCs that we have with new ones. The fact is that our VCs don’t want to leave because they see how big the opportunity is. We were very early in the market. If we had started in the United States, we probably would not have survived because we would have been too early.

Sramana: Cloud companies that came into existence before 2007 and 2008 had a much longer ramp to gain traction and adoption in the market. The ones that have gotten traction after 2007 are growing much faster because the market is much more attuned to cloud. Everybody knows how to buy cloud services.

Paulo Rosado: We have seen that trend as well. The phone is ringing today from companies who never would have called us earlier. We see an install base that has tremendous loyalty. We have virtually no churn and a very high recommendation rate. That is why we have so many investors trying to get into our company now. It is a good time to be in the company now.

Sramana: We don’t see case studies like this often, where European companies have built global businesses. It is always good to see that.

Paulo Rosado: That’s true, there are not that many. It’s tough. When you grow your business selling in multiple countries, it changes your perspective from day one. You develop habits that prepare your business to be a no-borders business. Today we are in 24 countries. We just have that in our DNA. It’s very difficult to crack your first 2 or 3 internationalization projects; you gain a certain level of scale and expansion. You can do that even if you are a company below $50 million. You can do it without compromising yourself. We are investing a lot in marketing and opening offices everywhere. We are really investing and yet are extremely solid financially. It takes time, but that is now a major advantage that we have against our competitors.

The United States is a cool market because you can build a company to hundreds of millions of dollars without putting a foot outside of the country. But the moment you do, then you have to adapt very quickly.

Sramana: I am delighted I had the chance to listen to your story. Congratulations on your success to date. This has been a fantastic story.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Portugal: Paulo Rosado, CEO of OutSystems
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