Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from the Czech Republic: Runecast CEO Stan Markov (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the VMWare Marketplace. How many VMWare admins are on the marketplace?

Stan Markov: It’s not the biggest source of leads. If I compare it to the AWS Marketplace or the Azure marketplace, VMWare Marketplace is not as popular. It’s one of the ways to get to either VMWare or third-party products.

Sramana Mitra: That is not your largest source of leads.

Stan Markov: The largest is these events that we are exhibiting at.

Sramana Mitra: Those are VMWare events?

Stan Markov: Some of them. We started with VMWare. We used the same concept and expanded over to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, Windows, and Linux. Runecast is a single product that connects out to your cloud and on-premise. You see all the risks in one place.

A few weeks ago, we were at San Francisco for the RSA conference which is a security-focused event. We still do a lot of VMWare events. Next week, I’m going to Brussels for a VMWare user group.

Sramana Mitra: Is VMWare still a big source of leads?

Stan Markov: Absolutely. We also organize our own events. Next month, we are organizing two events. One is local for Kubernetes and security. The other is an online SecOps event. We are bringing a lot of external speakers. This is a good source of leads for us.

Sramana Mitra: When you go back to 2016, you’ve got your seed round. You have about 20 paying customers. What happens next in 2017?

Stan Markov: We had to learn how to spend the money. We’ve got €1.6 million. We were running lean over the last two years. After the first two board meetings, the investors were telling us that we had to spend more.

Sramana Mitra: These were local investors?

Stan Markov: Yes, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They’re the most experienced in the region. One of our investors is Credo Ventures, one of the early investors in UIPath. We had to overcome our fear of spending the money. We were afraid that we’ll waste money.

Then came the hiring. In the first stage, it’s the founders that build the product. Once you get bigger investments, you have to hire the right people and manage them. That was the next challenge. That was probably even more challenging.

Sramana Mitra: Where is your team?

Stan Markov: Half of it is in Brno and the other half is scattered around the world. We have people in the US, UK, and even in Australia.

Sramana Mitra: How big is the team?

Stan Markov: We are around 70 people.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from the Czech Republic: Runecast CEO Stan Markov
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