Solo Student Entrepreneur to $5M: David Liu, CEO of Deltapath (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In 2007 when you put together the appliance, how many customers did you get? How much were they paying on average?

David Liu: By 2007, we’d won Nokia. Nokia started deploying us globally. We also got Juniper Networks.

Sramana Mitra: This is still just you?

David Liu: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic!

David Liu: I was still looking for the nerdiest guy in town that I can find to be my business partner, but I didn’t have the luxury. It’s something that I wished I had brought on. I’m not nerdy enough.

Sramana Mitra: My hat’s off to you that you managed to do all this by yourself. That’s one of the myths in the industry – that solo entrepreneurs can’t be successful. Solo entrepreneurs do become successful. Just because you start solo doesn’t mean you’re going to stay solo forever. I love your story as a reinforcement to that point.

David Liu: Yes, but it’s very difficult. I have to convince my product engineer when he says that it’s too difficult or impossible.

Sramana Mitra: You had a product engineering person working with you?

David Liu: Yes, I hired various programmers to create this product. I set the requirement. I set the architecture. I’m like a C++ programmer myself. I wouldn’t say I’m a hardcore programmer. I know good enough to help me in starting this company.

Sramana Mitra: At what point did you hire the product engineer and the programmers?

David Liu: Early in the game. By 2004, we already had a couple of employees – around five or six.

Sramana Mitra: In 2007 when you switched to the appliance, you’re still about five to six people?

David Liu: Around that. We were doing about a million dollars in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: The Nokia deal has kicked in at this point?

David Liu: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What happens in 2008?

David Liu: We started an official partnership with Polycom. Polycom, being the video conference manufacturer, inspired a lot of our products, taking it from a phone system to unified communication which consists of video, phone, and chat. Polycom become our customer as well. They became our strategic partner. We work closely with their product management team. If you look back at some of the press releases of Polycom, they released their first video phone in 2008. We were named in the press release.

They started deploying us globally as well. We quickly transformed our product from a phone system into a video-enabled phone system. We had video voicemails. You can walk into a conference room, type in a room number, and be able to speak freely inside a meeting. You don’t have to enter an IP address and a bunch of other stuff. Back then, video conferencing was a luxury.

Sramana Mitra: Very cumbersome.

David Liu: You had to do a pre-test. You needed IT support. We really try to make video as easy as possible. This is back in 2008.

Sramana Mitra: This is a bootstrapped business following an OEM strategy almost, which is great. For bootstrapped businesses, getting that kind of distribution partnership with larger players is fabulous. How did that impact your revenues?

David Liu: It has a huge impact. That is when we started doing joint selling with Polycom. That brought in a lot of new customers. It doubled our revenue. I think we were double in three years. We managed to hit $2 million around 2011.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Solo Student Entrepreneur to $5M: David Liu, CEO of Deltapath
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