From Australia to Silicon Valley: Anthony Smith’s Journey with Insightly (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: At this point, were you charging for the product?

Anthony Smith: We were not. Anybody could install Insightly and start using it. I was still at Perth in Western Australia. A lot of Google’s customers were based in the US which is a 12-hour time difference. A lot of stuff was happening in the middle of the night for me. My email system was blowing up. There were a lot of people inquiring about it, submitting bugs, and needing technical support and help. I was doing a lot of work from 9PM through to 6AM.

Sramana Mitra: How many downloads did you get and how many of these were active users?

Anthony Smith: We had about 35,000 businesses using the product in the first three months. They were all pretty active users. They liked the product. They liked the feature set and the fact that it was easy for them to set it up and use it without needing too many technical capabilities. Because of the fact that it was free, it really resonated with customers. We got a lot of great reviews. Marketplace was based on popularity, so we were featured on the marketplace.

Sramana Mitra: How did you start monetizing your business?

Anthony Smith: It was quite a bit after that. When we initially launched Insightly, it was only available in English. Then we had customers all over the world starting to input some of their information in foreign languages. Insightly didn’t support that. We had some early teething problems.

There were a few venture capitalists in the Valley and Boston who were looking at this marketplace that Google had opened. They thought that Insightly was ranked in the number one position for the first few months of opening. They got in contact with Google and got my details. I started taking some calls from venture capitalists about my plans. I flew over to the United States to meet with them a few times. I really liked the team at Emergence Capital Partners.

Sramana Mitra: I know them very well.

Anthony Smith: Yes, they knew an incredible amount about CRM. We came to an agreement. They said they wanted to invest in Insightly even though it was just a company of just myself. Their only stipulation is that since Google is one of our biggest partners and they didn’t want to go to Australia, they said I should probably think about moving to the Valley.

In January of 2012, I jumped off a plane and went to the office of Emergence and signed all the papers with my US lawyer. I didn’t even have a bank account in the Untied States at that point in time. I ran to Silicon Valley Bank and opened a bank account and immediately got $3 million transferred. Then we hired our first employee about six days after that meeting in the venture capital office at San Mateo.

Sramana Mitra: What year was this?

Anthony Smith: This was in January of 2012.

This segment is part 4 in the series : From Australia to Silicon Valley: Anthony Smith’s Journey with Insightly
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