Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you do this transaction?

David Ciccarelli: That was 2007 as well. You can see these key moments in time. We figured out the two-sided marketplace. We’ve got revenue coming in from two sides. We took a leap of faith to be able to rebrand and relaunch the company. That was a huge step forward. Looking back, I agree that was the definitive moment. It did change the trajectory of the company.

If it was a reporter journalist doing research on the industry, they’re googling around. They look at three websites to see who sounds the authoritative source. Voices.com sounds like we’ve always been there. We’ve had a number of inbound inquiries because of that. That has been a huge win for that reason alone.

Sramana Mitra: Beyond 2008, there’s another eight years of storyline. Do you recall other pivotal moments like that where you did something specific that created an inflection point?

David Ciccarelli: It’s as much about me or any entrepreneur recognizing trends and patterns as they’re unfolding before your eyes, and you physically doing something.

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely, absolutely. Key insights are very much part of that process.

David Ciccarelli: Exactly. Another one was we actually had two emails from Fortune 500 companies that ended up in our spam. Somebody in finance forwarded them to me. They said, “You might want to look at this.” They both said, more or less, the same thing, “We found somebody on your website. We’d like to hire them. Due to corporate policy, we are unable to create an account on your website.”

Another person said, “We’d like to work with you, but we can’t until we get you on our vendor’s list.” Going through that, we ended up winning those two pieces of business and subsequently a government contract. That was the second ‘aha’ moment. Rather than trying to market to these Fortune 500’s and stick a round peg to square hole of our website, why don’t we adopt their buying process.

Their buying process required us to get on the vendor’s list, extend some credit terms, and have a dedicated account manager to work on these much larger projects. Our website was very good at handling the one-minute explainer videos – that short-form content. Where the website struggled was on large complex deals. For instance, corporate training videos that are 10 modules of a hundred PowerPoint slides each in 10 different languages.

All of a sudden, you have hundred hours of content that needs to be produced. Our solution to all of that is what we call professional services. It’s the we-do-it-for-you solution. If you think of the marketplace as do-it-yourself, this is the we-do-it-for-you approach.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your business comes through that route now?

David Ciccarelli: It’s about 50% of our business.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli
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