Building a High Growth SaaS Company from Los Angeles: Nick Hedges, CEO of Velocify (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How did eteatrade go?

Nick Hedges: It went well. We ended up transacting about $2 million a month. The net margins were pretty small. Ultimately, we sold it into one of Nick’s businesses that ran his tea and coffee estates. I didn’t want to be a part of a bigger entity, so I left. I did VC for a short period of time doing small investments in southeast of England for a company called Southeast Growth Fund. That was really a tremendous experience for me. I had the entrepreneurial experience and had some success at doing that. I also got to see a large number of very early stage companies.

We were investing £250,000 to £1 million in businesses that were trying to get off the ground. We were investing quickly in a lot of companies. I got to see a very big pipeline. That was super interesting to me. While I was working for that company, I also applied to business school. I got a place at Harvard Business School and got a scholarship. I decided that I was going to do that for a couple of years, and that’s how I came over to the US.

Sramana Mitra: What year did you finish HBS?

Nick Hedges: 2005.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Nick Hedges: I joined Bain & Company, which I didn’t actually think I would enjoy as much as I did. The reason I did it at that time was because I needed sponsorship for my green card. It felt like a necessary evil but I ended up really enjoying it. At a point where they were talking to me about joining the management team after two and a half years, I said, “It’s not in my heart to do this.”

The thing that I enjoyed in my career was starting up a company. I spent my childhood with my brother creating businesses and I just feel like I needed to be in a company that was early stage and into creating something. I looked around at a lot of different things and came across a company called Leads360 that just had its Series A investment. That company today is Velocify.

Sramana Mitra: Where was that based?

Nick Hedges: In Los Angeles.

Sramana Mitra: Where were you based for Bain?

Nick Hedges: In Los Angeles as well.

Sramana Mitra: In what role did you join the company?

Nick Hedges: I joined as the SVP of Business Development.

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Nick Hedges: That was 2008.

Sramana Mitra: What was the company doing at that time?

Nick Hedges: The company was founded in 2005. For the first three years, the company was bootstrapped. They had bootstrapped the company and got to $4 million in revenue without any investment. That’s one of the reasons that I joined because I thought that they had validated their model so comprehensively before taking any outside capital, and they had raised outside capital which was double validation for me.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Building a High Growth SaaS Company from Los Angeles: Nick Hedges, CEO of Velocify
1 2 3 4 5 6 7