From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: There is a tool that I use when we teach our entrepreneurs about building a sales funnel. We call it pain extraction questions. When you start discussions, you ask questions about a pain. What is your first pain extraction question?

Mahendra Alladi: How often do you get bit by a production bug? How many escalations do you take because of delayed release cycles? The answers are also very common. This is something that is a burning issue. I don’t really have to sell a lot. The problem is easily acknowledged.

Sramana Mitra: When you get the answers to those questions, what is your elevator pitch?

Mahendra Alladi: Our strategy has always been to prove our point. Every single deal, we go through it with POC.

Sramana Mitra: But to get POC, you have to say what you are going to prove.

Mahendra Alladi: They have test assets that they need to automate. They need to ensure that the automation is easy, sustainable, and something that their business analysts can use easily. It can support the breadth of the technology stack. A lot of enterprise customers have technology from mainframes to the latest web technologies. Our product cuts across them. A typical POC is involved, ensuring that we are able to automate the flow.

Sramana Mitra: You do paid POCs?

Mahendra Alladi: It depends. For large enterprises, we might get into a paid POC.

Sramana Mitra: How long is the sales cycle?

Mahendra Alladi: It’s been shrinking. For smaller companies, a couple of weeks to two months. For large enterprises, it might get into three to four months.

Sramana Mitra: You are at about $5 million right now?

Mahendra Alladi: A lot more than that.

Sramana Mitra: What else do you want to share?

Mahendra Alladi: I had a pulse on where this market was going five years ago. I couldn’t be more excited and whiteboarding with the team looking at the upcoming solutions. Next month, we are coming up with a revolutionary offering in the market. It’s ACCELQ Live.

Sramana Mitra: What is your game plan? You have about a hundred customers now?

Mahendra Alladi: Close to 200.

Sramana Mitra: You have so far bootstrapped. Will you continue to bootstrap?

Mahendra Alladi: We are going to be looking for strategic partnerships. Someone who can help us with our growth strategy but not for financial reasons.

Sramana Mitra: You have relationships with the system integrators?

Mahendra Alladi: We are starting to build relationships there.

Sramana Mitra: I’m not convinced that you need a financial partner to help with your growth strategy.

Mahendra Alladi: It’s for building those relationships.

Sramana Mitra: You can build those relationships as business development deals. You don’t need financing from them.

Mahendra Alladi: You think so?

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely.

Mahendra Alladi: I thought it will probably take a little longer to get there.

Sramana Mitra: I don’t think financing will accelerate anything.

Mahendra Alladi: If I were to take any investment, that would be for strategic reasons.

Sramana Mitra: I’m not convinced that strategic investment is going to give you acceleration. It’s product-market fit.

Mahendra Alladi: Which we continue to do now. Maybe we’ll get a little bit of an acceleration trying out some of those things.

Sramana Mitra: If you go to Oracle, you’re going to have to work with ERP to get to the customers and through their services operations. If you can crack the operational involvement, I don’t think strategic money can get you anything. You can get strategic money if you want to, but it’s not going to accelerate anything.

Mahendra Alladi: That’s interesting. Something for us to think about.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time and wish you all the best.

This segment is part 5 in the series : From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi
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