Bootstrap the First Venture, Raise Money for the Second: cVidya CEO Alon Aginsky (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think your point is also that there are different kinds of employees. There are certain people who are startup type of employees.

Alon Aginsky: Right. You have to be very precise about the people you hire. Most of the people that are in cVidya are veterans. Those are the people who join you for the long run. People that come for you to see if they can make a quick exit are not the right people for startups.

Sramana Mitra: The problem unfortunately is that in Silicon Valley right now, the market is full of these kinds of people who are looking for these quick exits. It’s mercenaries versus missionaries as we call them. In a talent war market where it’s very difficult to hire and be selective, you take what you get. It compromises the culture of the company. Where have you been doing all your team building?

Alon Aginsky: To be honest, until about two quarters ago, the entire management team of the company was in Israel. Most of the people, if not all of them, did have experience working for other corporations and some of them had some years working overseas either in Europe or the US. The management team was in Israel but two quarters ago, we added a group of sales people who are based in US. They have a lot of experience in working for small and large companies in telecom.

That is a challenge for a 300-employee company because the culture changes to be a bit more global. Even the meetings are in English now. In Israel, we are lucky that there are great talents that come from both the army education, which many of the employees have and Israelis who spend two to 10 years in the US working for the big guys and come back home after some years. They blend into local companies that have global presence. Don’t forget that only 3% of our revenues is from Israel, 97% of our revenues is from global.

Sramana Mitra: It’s very typical for Israeli companies that technology is built in Israel and then sold in the global market.

Alon Aginsky: We are very strong in Latin America, Europe, and North America. Asia, APAC, and Africa are areas that we are developing. We have some nice accounts there but not as much as we have in Latin America, Europe, and USA.

Sramana Mitra: Terrific. Thank you very much for you time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Bootstrap the First Venture, Raise Money for the Second: cVidya CEO Alon Aginsky
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