An Emerging Success Story from Indiana: Fathom Voice CEO Cameron Weeks (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: But your target customer strategy was local. That’s how you were getting these customers, right?

Cameron Weeks: That’s how we started. It was local. Once we had established the client base in the local market, we found a very well-established channel partner. They go by the term telecom partners. We found that were these partners in the world that helped broker, negotiate, and recommend telecom solutions for companies. It would range from one-person firms to very large multinational companies. We quickly tied ourselves to that world and became a part of those partnerships that were out in the conferences and events. For the next several years, that was our sales strategy. We ended up with hundreds of them that would, every day, sell our products for us. That allowed us to grow very quickly without having to dramatically increase the office.

Sramana Mitra: Did you raise further financing after the initial money from Frank?

Cameron Weeks: We have. Fathom took on an investment in 2010. Then we took on additional investment in 2013. Then in 2014, we took another one. So we’ve done three rounds at this point in time. We picked up some other VC firms along the way.

Sramana Mitra: What kinds of investors do you work with? Are these investors in your local geography? What has been the strategy? Obviously, Indianapolis is not the place where lots of investors are hanging out. What’s been your strategy?

Cameron Weeks: Indianapolis is a growing market. I think it’s getting better every day. Apart from Frank, one of the largest shareholders we have today is, oddly enough, Indiana University. We spent a lot of time up at Purdue building the product. After we left Purdue, Bracken went to IU to study accounting. Indiana University found out and they first invested in 2014 during our Series B. We also picked up, from being well-connected in Indianapolis, a lot of the ExactTarget executive staff to engage in what we were trying to achieve at Fathom. We were able to recruit a lot of the ExactTarget executive team to either join the company or make significant investments into the company. At the same point, ExactTarget had just gone public and would be later acquired by Salesforce.

Sramana Mitra: Is ExactTarget the biggest success story in terms of startups out in Indiana right now?

Cameron Weeks: In the last 10 years, most definitely. In the marketing world, they were the largest acquisition ever. It was an unprecedented amount of money that Salesforce acquired ExactTarget for.

Sramana Mitra: There were basically these executives and founders of ExactTarget who had made a lot of money in the Salesforce acquisition. Some of them became angel investors in your company?

Cameron Weeks: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: That was your Series A investment?

Cameron Weeks: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: So there was not any VC firm that led the Series A?

Cameron Weeks: I think IU owns a VC firm.

Sramana Mitra: They do actually.

Cameron Weeks: They led that round.

Sramana Mitra: IU priced the round. You had a bunch of angel investors on board. That was your Series A. What were the big milestones out of Series A?

Cameron Weeks: That was actually Series B. I misunderstood you. Frank’s first investment was actually classified as Series A. It should have been probably classified as the seed round, but for whatever reason, our law firm decided to call that Series A.

Sramana Mitra: Frank led Series A. Then Indiana University plus these angels did the Series B. What were the milestones on Series B?

Cameron Weeks: If there’s anything to learn in the last five years of this company, it would definitely be at this time. Prior to Series B, we had been strongly encouraged to seek out some Senior Management. The average age in this company was 23 years old. Before we pulled in the next round of money, we were strongly encouraged to bring in some gray hair if you will. I hate that term because my hair has turned completely gray at this point in time. We go out and find someone who has actually been in our space and had previously sold a company. That was actually one of our competitors. We recruited him into Fathom, which turned out to be the worst decision we would make in our lives.

This segment is part 5 in the series : An Emerging Success Story from Indiana: Fathom Voice CEO Cameron Weeks
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