Building Large Scale Enterprise Software Companies: Louis Tetu, Founder of Taleo, CEO of Coveo (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: There are a lot more hubs that have developed where interesting companies are built. You probably know Greg Gianforte who had built up a very interesting unorthodox place like Montana into a very nice technology destination.

Louis Tetu: Technology is ubiquitous. Regardless of where we are, we all have the challenge of distributed teams. At Taleo, we have 500 employees in the East Bay. It wasn’t easy to recruit them nor was it easy to keep them.

Sramana Mitra: It’s absolutely incredibly difficult to recruit right now.

Louis Tetu: Of the core team that moved over in 2005 from Copernic, 5% churned and 95% is still there. That’s critical because the aggregated knowledge is kept intact. That’s really important.

Sramana Mitra: You cannot do that in Silicon Valley typically. On that score, you’re much better off doing it in one of the places that is not as big of a hub because you can’t do this in Bangalore, India either because that’s also an incredibly competitive employment situation. Many of the other Indian locations where people often do software development have become incredibly high-attrition.

Louis Tetu: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: You’re better off doing Quebec, Montana, Salt Lake City, which are not as competitive and have a much more stable workforce.

Louis Tetu: The counterpart of that in our companies is that we have our own travel department. Everybody can buy a plane ticket. We bring people together very often. We have quarterly team meetings. We bring the field all together every quarter. While many companies do it every year, we do it every quarter. In the day-to-day operations, we use virtual communication, but I am a firm believer of in-person meetings and having people interact. We go and meet customers. I travel literally all the time. I spend three to four days a week on the road visiting clients and our people. My job doesn’t happen in my office. I really believe in in-person interactions. Plane tickets are cheap from that perspective. That’s also one of my key guidance towards the entrepreneurs that I coach. It’s towards the idea that people buy from people at the end of the day.

Sramana Mitra: It’s true only up to a point because if you’re selling a software or solution that is at a price point that does not support face-to-face selling, you cannot really go.

Louis Tetu: Yes and no. Unless you’re working in a company that is literally by itself. We had 6,000 customers at Taleo. I couldn’t have possibly physically met all of them. I think in this day and age, many entrepreneurs miss or underestimate the importance of personal relationships. That’s a little bit exacerbated by technology in a way. I’m not talking about high-velocity, self-service models. Even in those companies, there are people who have to work together that are distributed teams or alliances. You have to be out there and get to know people.

Sramana Mitra: We have a slightly different philosophy on this but unfortunately, I don’t have the time to debate. Enterprise sales are all done well in-person, but there’s a tremendous amount of business that’s happening without people ever meeting. A lot of it is very efficient including managing virtual teams. A lot of small companies operate on pure virtual team basis. The reason I want to make that point before ending the interview is because that is a huge part of why people are able to build these small companies, efficiently validate, get customers, and so forth.

Louis Tetu: I agree with you. I’m talking about a different level.

Sramana Mitra: It was a pleasure talking to you.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Building Large Scale Enterprise Software Companies: Louis Tetu, Founder of Taleo, CEO of Coveo
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