A Serial Bootstrapper’s Journey: Beyond Security CEO Aviram Jenik (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you do this company for? What kind of metrics did you reach during that period?

Aviram Jenik: We started in 1999 and we still do this today.

Sramana Mitra: This is Beyond Security?

Aviram Jenik: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Got it. Then let’s talk about the inflection points. From 1999 to after experimentation with 

pricing models, what year did you arrive at a pricing model and a business model that was more longer term?

Aviram Jenik: That’s a great question. I don’t know if I have the exact answer. In retrospect, I’m not sure I can actually draw an inflection point. There were probably a few. We started as two people in my apartment. I saw how advantageous it is to bootstrap. This was 1999 around the dotcom boom. Raising money was really easy. We decided to bootstrap. The first inflection point was when we figured out our pricing model correctly. Number one lesson was, charge by the size of your customers and don’t charge for usage. That was the first inflection point.

Sramana Mitra: Do you remember when you figured those two things out?

Aviram Jenik: I would guess around 2002.

Sramana Mitra: Do you remember what kind of revenue level you were at at that point?

Aviram Jenik: At that point, less than a million dollars.

Sramana Mitra: Once you figured that out, what happened to the business?

Aviram Jenik: It started taking off. At that point, we started hiring sales people. That’s when things started taking off.

Sramana Mitra: Is channel your primary go-to market strategy?

Aviram Jenik: No, it’s a mix of direct and indirect.

Sramana Mitra: How do you draw the demarcation of which goes after who?

Aviram Jenik: That part seems to be a lot clearer. In our case, it’s mainly geography and customer size. In the US with small and medium customers, you can work direct. You can give big customers in the US to the channel. In the Asian region, everybody goes through the channel. You never sell direct.

Sramana Mitra: 2002 was when you started your channel strategy?

Aviram Jenik: That was when we started, yes. It took us a few years. I would say 2004 to 2005 was when we started selling internationally.

Sramana Mitra: What did that do to the revenue growth? You said you were under a million in 2002. Around 2004 and 2005 is when your channel strategy takes off. What is happening revenue-wise?

Aviram Jenik: We crossed the million dollars and we started seeing growth. We also started seeing a lot of expenses because we had to invest a lot more in sales and marketing. That came together.

Sramana Mitra: What timeframe did you hit $5 million in revenue?

Aviram Jenik: Getting to about $100,000 was the first hard goal. One million was the next one and then $5 million was the next one that was really hard to get. It’s not like we hit a million dollars and we just continued to grow until we got to $5 million. It didn’t work that way. We worked really hard to get to $5 million. It took us quite a few years to get there.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me what’s happening now. Tell me a bit about what are the more recent developments in the company. What is different from the story we have so far discussed?

Aviram Jenik: We’re a much larger company today. What we’ve been doing in the last two years is moving from a bootstrapped, closely-managed company to scaling it up. We had to do some drastic changes everywhere and across everything. We’re halfway through to get to 100 employees. We’ve built a more scalable company structure.

Sramana Mitra: Where do you run this company from?

Aviram Jenik: In 2005, we basically started doing everything from the US. I physically moved to the US in 2008. From 2005, almost all our operations were in the US.

Sramana Mitra: Your operations is still largely in Israel?

Aviram Jenik: Yes. That is something I highly recommend to startups. Having R&D in your home country, especially if there’s a cost savings is wonderful, but the management has to be in the US though.

Sramana Mitra: It was true up to a point. Nowadays, it’s also becoming possible to build companies not in the US. You’re a serial bootstrapper and I love bootstrappers. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 6 in the series : A Serial Bootstrapper’s Journey: Beyond Security CEO Aviram Jenik
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