Bootstrapping a Virtual Company to Scale: Taso Du Val, CEO of Toptal (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What is the business model? Is it a commission-based business model? How do you charge?

Taso Du Val: We take a percent of every single contract.

Sramana Mitra: Are you still based in Budapest?

Taso Du Val: No, I’m mostly based in New York and Moscow at the moment. That’s where I’m spending the majority of my time.

Sramana Mitra: Where is the company based?

Taso Du Val: It’s a Delaware LLC.

Sramana Mitra: Where are the people?

Taso Du Val: We have hundreds of employees and contractors all over the world. We are the largest virtual company, to my knowledge, in the world that doesn’t have an office at all. If you look at MySQL, they at least have offices even if they’re just façade offices. We don’t have any office. We run the company completely virtually.

Sramana Mitra: So do I. My company is entirely virtual. We have people all over the world.

Taso Du Val: It works very well. In our opinion and our observation, we have much more efficiency and we’re much more optimized relative to other companies. I actually think that’s part of our strategic advantage. You wake up and you’re straight at work. If you’re really dedicated to the company and you have a hundred plus people doing that, it almost doubles your head count in a sense because of the efficiency. It’s a really powerful thing in my opinion. I wonder why people don’t do it.

Sramana Mitra: What are some of the metrics that evolved as you started to find your stride in building this company?

Taso Du Val: We look at everything that a typical business looks at. We measure our dollar churn. We measure our user churn. We look at all sorts of different metrics that, I believe, every Internet company is looking at.

Sramana Mitra: You were pitched to me as a $5 million plus company.

Taso Du Val: That’s for sure. Last year, we were certainly significantly larger than $5 million. We’re not public with our numbers but we have issued a press release that we’re on an $80 million run rate for 2015.

Sramana Mitra: That must be total contract value. That’s not your revenue, right?

Taso Du Val: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of that do you take as your fees?

Taso Du Val: That’s a variable rate and we don’t make that public.

Sramana Mitra: There must be an average number. Is it that much different from the other exchanges?

Taso Du Val: It’s certainly higher than the others, and there’s a great reason for that. We’re adding significantly more value and the time to get talent is significantly less.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping a Virtual Company to Scale: Taso Du Val, CEO of Toptal
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