From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How did they find out about you?

Eric Frenkiel: We were introduced to investor networks. There were investors who knew the startup needed a really strong database product. They put us in touch. We gave them a demo and they knew that was going to help them develop fast. That was our first customer. It was a lot of fun.

Sramana Mitra: What happened next?

Eric Frenkiel: That takes us to the summer of 2011. We concluded the first feature set and we launched in June of 2012. In six months, we had more than 10,000 developers using the software. We immediately saw the market resonance about in-memory database that was fully relational. It wasn’t the full vision though. This was a single-box version of the software. If you’re happy with the product at launch, then you’ve launched too late. We knew that we had launched an MVP. That was the first step.

Sramana Mitra: You said there were 6,000 developers who were already working with the MVP. How did you recruit these 6,000?

Eric Frenkiel: It was 10,000 over six months. They downloaded it after it was publicly available.

Sramana Mitra: What was your developer recruitment strategy?

Eric Frenkiel: We had a great launch. That was the starting point. We also launched with some great, snazzy lines that caught people’s attention and sparked their interest. A lot of people continued to download.

Sramana Mitra: Out of that 10,000 developers, I imagine, came a bunch of clients.

Eric Frenkiel: Actually, no. In all truth, the software was an MVP. It was not the full product but was able to prove value. We had a lot of verified customers using the product but it wasn’t a large customer base simply because the product itself was very early.

The first version of Tinder was built on MemSQL, for example. It was all anonymous downloads. So, when we launched the real delivery of the product, which was a distributed system, we would shift our model to a focused approach so that we could work closely with any company that needed MemSQL.

The first two years of MemSQL was in stealth mode. The next two years went into the public launch and release but with a model that enabled us to communicate and let our customers succeed by giving them a lot of help when they needed it. That was in the 2013 to 2014 time frame. Versions 2 and 3 of MemSQL was basically a 30-day trial and buy. There was no notion of a developer edition at that point.

Sramana Mitra: When we’re talking about 2013, are you still operating on the first $2 million financing?

Eric Frenkiel: 2013 was a crazy year. We raised $40 million in six months. We started hitting a ground swell of traction in late 2012. We did a Series A worth $4.5 million in March. Six months later, we did a $35 million Series B.

Sramana Mitra: At this point, were there more customers involved?

Eric Frenkiel: Of course. At that point, we had launched the second version. It actually fulfilled the vision around a distributed in-memory SQL product. Within six months, our pipeline was growing so much that we were now ready to build a bigger sales team. That spurred on the $35 million investment by the end of 2013.

This segment is part 5 in the series : From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel
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