Bootstrapping Using Services from London: Ajay Patel, CEO of HighQ (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of projects were you taking on during that time?

Ajay Patel: Development projects.

Sramana Mitra: So it had nothing to do with the legal industry?

Ajay Patel: Not much, to be honest.

Sramana Mitra: You got whatever you got and you did whatever you could get.

Ajay Patel: Absolutely. That’s what it was in those days. The whole point of earning that money was not about salary. It was about how to grow the business, how to get more development done, and how to make this the best product we can. We realized early on that not having financing meant that we didn’t have the marketing spend of our competition. The only way we can build a sustainable business was to build the best product in the market. Today, I can turn around and say that we have the best product in the market. HighQ today is 150 people. 75% of our workforce works on the product. That certainly worked for us. We don’t have any client churn, which I think is important.

I think we’re different from many companies and certainly from those that are VC-backed. Our sales and marketing is 12% of our workforce and 75% work on the product. Normally, you see those ratios reversed in financed businesses. I’m glad about what we’ve done, but I think we need to change a little bit now. Up until now, it’s been the right strategy for us.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s actually go back to the time when you got your first law firm. What deal size was that and what happened there?

Ajay Patel: The way it started was one of the partners was quite frustrated with their own in-house system. He had heard of us and asked his IT team to speak to us. This is the difference between small agile companies and large IT departments. I went to see him and he said, “The following things are wrong.” We literally fixed those things in two weeks. He was very surprised that we were able to solve his issues in such short time period. His experience with IT was very different. He was very impressed. To have a sponsor like that from the business made all the difference. Our biggest fear was IT hurdles internally. When you get a partner, you get through the hurdles very quickly. If we went directly to IT, it wouldn’t have happened. The revenue at that time was about £40,000.

Sramana Mitra: From the client?

Ajay Patel: Yes. We got more work from that client.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services from London: Ajay Patel, CEO of HighQ
1 2 3 4 5 6 7