Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Belgium: Felix Van de Maele, CEO of Collibra (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When you raised the seed round, you already had some revenues and customers?

Felix Van de Maele: No. We raised the round in August 2008. We just incorporated the company. We had no customers and just had a letter of intent.

Sramana Mitra: Who were the people who funded you in this round?

Felix Van de Maele: It was the investment VC friend from the university that invested in university spinoffs, and the Brussels Capital Region.

Sramana Mitra: When you raised Series A,  what were the metrics you went into raising the round with and how much did you raise?

Felix Van de Maele: We raised €1 million. It was a hard process because, as you probably know, there are not that many VCs in Belgium. It was important to have five or six customers. That was the metric that was important—to see that initial product–market fit.

Sramana Mitra: When you raised your Series B, what were your metrics?

Felix Van de Maele: When we raised Series B, we were profitable. We were growing at over 200%. It was a great time last year. We had a lot of interest from VCs to help us raise a round. It was interesting as I visited the investors on the West Coast. They were surprised to see a company triple every year in a profitable way. At that time, we thought, and still do, that there is a great market opportunity. To scale to the next level, it was a good idea to raise another venture round. We raised €20 million.

Sramana Mitra: Was that an investor out of Europe?

Felix Van de Maele: It was Index Ventures and Dawn Capital. They’re out of Europe but they do have a presence on the West Coast as well.

Sramana Mitra: What is the customer mix that you’e operating with right now? How much of your business is in Europe versus anywhere else?

Felix Van de Maele: What we saw is that a couple of European software companies were, what we call, kings in their own home markets. As soon as there was a big US competitor, they always fail. So we focused on the US. Most of our customers are US customers. I’d say about 75% of our customers are from the US.

Sramana Mitra: Has the competition changed or evolved in the time that you’ve been in business?

Felix Van de Maele: A little bit. It’s still predominantly IBM and Informatica. It’s interesting. Some of the analysts have asked me that, “Why is it that there is so little competition?” We focus on the business users but still solve a complex problem. I think it’s an interesting, albeit seemingly boring, problem. I think that’s why it doesn’t attract a lot of startups.

It has changed a little bit because now, it’s clearer that there’s a big market opportunity. Another big factor in the growth is that a certain point after the financial crisis, the regulators forced every bank to do data governance. That was a huge driver for us. About 50% of our business right now is Financial Services. That also drove some smaller companies that know that space to start offering data governance solutions.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Belgium: Felix Van de Maele, CEO of Collibra
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