Bootstrapping from the UK to Over $10 Million: Roger Hale, Co-Founder of Linguamatics (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to build a product that you could service the pharmaceutical industry with?

Roger Hale: The business was formed in 2001, but we started in 2002. We immediately started working on the product. We had some prototypes available within the year. We , in fact, sold our first prototype in 2003 to Astra Zeneca.

Sramana Mitra: What size contract was that?

Roger Hale: It was a five-figure contract.

Sramana Mitra: How many of you were in the group that was doing all this?

Roger Hale: There were four of us who founded Linguamatics. We all came from SRI. We hired our first person because the four of us who founded the company have technical backgrounds. We didn’t have any sales experience.

Sramana Mitra: You launched the prototype in 2003. You’ve got an anchor customer, Astra Zeneca. What happens next?

Roger Hale: Let’s step back a bit. When we started Linguamatics, we thought we needed funding. We were spending quite a bit of time going around angels and VCs trying to get some moeny. That didn’t go that well. It was a difficult time to be finding investment just after the dot-com bubble burst. Also, we were not very good at explaining the product and the market for the product. Frankly, we didn’t actually need investment.

Then when we sold to Astra Zeneca, we realized that selling to customers was easier than going to VCs and was a lot more rewarding. Not only did they not dilute our capital but they gave us excellent feedback on the product. We continued in that vein.

There was some luck involved at this stage because the European Bioinformatics Institute, which is based in Cambridge, happened to be running a series of industrial workshops on text mining for the pharmaceutical industry. That was a dream opportunity for us. We got invited to come along and present our product. There in the audience were some of our key potential customers. We got the opportunity to talk directly to them and let them play with our product.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers did you get out of that?

Roger Hale: All the customers that were there have since become customers. The other early customers were Johnson & Johnson and GSK. Others were there as well. They eventually became customers. That was one of our introductions to them.

Sramana Mitra: When did this happen?

Roger Hale: We’re talking about 2005.

Sramana Mitra: Do you remember what revenue level you got to in 2005?

Roger Hale: We got more customers in 2005. In 2005, we sold quite a number of deals. Roche was also in 2005.

Sramana Mitra: Do you remember what year you hit a million dollars in revenue?

Roger Hale: Between 2006 and 2007.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping from the UK to Over $10 Million: Roger Hale, Co-Founder of Linguamatics
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