Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Salil and Kiran Pande, Co-Founders of VMock (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What is happening in the algorithm? You are processing tons of resumes and training your model to determine what are good ways of representing information. You have a database of skillsets. Your model understands what’s a good way of representing that skillset. When you process resumes, you can figure that out. Is that roughly the algorithm?

Kiran Pande: It’s a lot about writing. It’s helping them communicate better.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve expanded beyond schools. That’s where the broadening of the scope is coming in. You’re also broadening the feature set in these elevator pitches. Subsequently, you’ll go into interview coaching. That’s the game plan.

Salil Pande: There is more. We have launched a second platform besides the career acceleration platform called smart CMC, a smart career management center. This is allowing companies to recruit on campus. This targets professional schools and business schools.

Sramana Mitra: This is still selling to the career development office?

Salil Pande: It’s through career services.

Sramana Mitra: You’re not charging buyers.

Salil Pande: Just going deeper with the buyer. Now we’re offering them a solution that they wanted. In less than 90 days or so, we have close to 500 employers on the platform.

Sramana Mitra: Excellent. What is an average deal size when you work with a career development office that is fully-deployed in all that you offer?

Salil Pande: It depends on the kind of contract.

Sramana Mitra: My question is, are you an enterprise business company or a small business kind of company?

Salil Pande: We have a SaaS. We make sure that every service is modular. As you subscribe to any module, you’re going to pay more. I was telling you about our second platform. That allows us to serve a better or bigger need that these professional schools have. How do I make sure that our students are prepared, but that they are also getting recruited?

Sramana Mitra: Would you like to disclose how many customers you have?

Salil Pande: 250 plus.

Sramana Mitra: Beyond the Series A in 2015, have you raised more money?

Salil Pande: We decided not to. We wanted to grow at a pace that is comfortable. We are a cash-flow positive company. We will raise money when we need it and when we find a good partner. We have a very unique way of solving the candidate problem. 

Sramana Mitra: Your seed and Series A are both friends and family funding. It sounds like you didn’t raise venture.

Salil Pande: No, there’s family office. 

Sramana Mitra: Family office is different from venture. Venture is institutional, while family is private. It sounds like you have more patient capital.

Salil Pande: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of capital efficiency, how much have you raised? How have you managed the financial trajectory?

Salil Pande: Between Kiran and I, I had full trust that she’s one of the most awesome product and technical minds I had known. We have multiple patents. She had good trust in me that I can sell. We’re very excited. If you look at Financial Times top 100 business schools, I don’t know which one is not our client. 

Sramana Mitra: That’s great. 

Salil Pande: The business model has kept evolving. If your payer is talking to you and you are not listening, shame on you.

Sramana Mitra: The whole 1Mby1M philosophy is entrepreneurship equals customers, revenues, and profits. Financing is optional. Exit is optional. Customers is where you should be focusing. The rest is incidental. I don’t judge a company on the basis of funding. If anything, if a company has raised too much funding and has not produced enough revenue, I don’t judge that very positively.

Salil Pande: We have a healthy company. Kiran has asked me when to raise money. Now I think I’m getting comfortable. We’re sitting at a point where I don’t have to set up a meeting, do a demo, follow up multiple times before getting a client. Now we need to expand. We have so much to offer to employers to solve their problems. This is a good time.

Sramana Mitra: If you look at our work, you will see this theme constantly come up called Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later. We consider capital-efficient, small-scale financing within bootstrapping. You have not raised crazy amounts of capital, but you’re now at a point where you understand your business and customers. I’m very often quoted on this, “Don’t go to VC’s as beggars; go as kings.”

Salil Pande: I don’t think anybody should chase each other. I think it should be an efficient market. There are so many amazing VCs out there who are looking for great opportunities. We’ve done our good deeds now.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. I wish you all the best. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Salil and Kiran Pande, Co-Founders of VMock
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