A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What were the implications on your team? What did you need to do to scale from a team point of view?

Todd Dunlop: One of the things that we always did was try to figure out how to get the best professional services. Very early on, when we went from four people to 80, we brought on an amazing HR person who helped us find those people. We lived in a university college town. That’s where a lot of our recruitment went, and we were hiring on the attitudes and ability. Especially in this town, there was nobody who had any experience.

Sramana Mitra: How big did your team grow to?

Todd Dunlop: It grew to just over 80 while I still owned it. It’s well over 100 now.

Sramana Mitra: What did you need to do in terms of the breakdown in the team? What functions did you need to staff to scale?

Todd Dunlop: That was a frontline marketing company. It needed a lot of people on the front end to help the partners that we were working with.

Sramana Mitra: Account management.

Todd Dunlop: Yes, account management. Back in that day, a lot of the technology had to be built by ourselves. This wasn’t something that we could get off the shelf. We had a fairly large development team as well that was building out the actual technology. Nowadays, it’s a simple SaaS product.

Sramana Mitra: What was the split between engineering and account management in terms of head count?

Todd Dunlop: I believe, back in the day, engineering was about 20. Then, we had 40 to 50 account managers.

Sramana Mitra: How did the organizational structure evolve as the industry matured and as the SaaS offerings became more pervasive?

Todd Dunlop: I sold the company in 2007. At that point, that was the structure. Since then, they’ve evolved to not needing much development, and moved more to having more sales people.

Sramana Mitra: What was the business model? You were charging a percentage of the budget? How were you charging your customer?

Todd Dunlop: That was based on per lead. The core of that business and a lot of the business that I’ve started since is the performance model. Take the risk with the customer.

Sramana Mitra: Was it all self-financed?

Todd Dunlop: That one was all self-financed.

Sramana Mitra: You said you sold the company in 2008?

Todd Dunlop: Yes, I sold it to a public company.

Sramana Mitra: Which company was that?

Todd Dunlop: Virtrue, out of Connecticut.

Sramana Mitra: They were also a marketing company?

Todd Dunlop: Yes, they were a marketing company. There were consolidating a number of companies. They were looking at us as the hub for that.

Sramana Mitra: What scale had you reached at that point when you sold the company?

Todd Dunlop: The company was somewhere over $50 million.

This segment is part 3 in the series : A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner
1 2 3 4 5