Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You joined that other company, but you kept the software services that was going in parallel.

Sadek Ali: Correct. Then we ended the business when I went to New York. From there, I came home because I felt that I had enough experience to do my own raise with my own ideas. In this next company, I was doing crypto and all that stuff. I learned how to do a raise and had my biggest failure at that point. It was then that I finished my PhD.

Sramana Mitra: What didn’t work in crypto?

Sadek Ali: We were doing a digital signature product that would chain signatures together. When I had come back from New York. I had been working with game companies and with a Swift subsidiary. I became this polyglot for different applications and web technologies. I come back from New York and I feel like I’m coming home and I got this digital signature idea. It ends up getting real traction in pharma. We raised money and ended up crashing that company. It grew too fast.

Sramana Mitra: What year was this?

Sadek Ali: This would have been from 2002 to 2007.

Sramana Mitra: You specifically designed this for pharma? What was the use case?

Sadek Ali: At that time, they have a million pages of written materials. The provenance of it had to be proven before FDA approved the drug.

Sramana Mitra: How did you find that problem?

Sadek Ali: As I had mentioned, I had a background in content management and search. I knew quite a bit about that.

Sramana Mitra: The problem is specific to pharma and clinical trials. Where did you find that problem?

Sadek Ali: When we started to look up who still uses paper and who needed digital signatures, it became obvious that there were two areas – finance and pharma. A third one was government. With government, it wasn’t as pronounced a need. However, in pharma, it was special. Just going through the literature, you suddenly realize that it takes them so long to take a drug to market. You start calling people. We just called people who were running clinical trials and asked them what their challenges were. You realize that you’re connected to these people. Your investors are helping you.

Sramana Mitra: What did you have to get investors?

Sadek Ali: At that time, we had produced the initial technology in an early crude phase.

Sramana Mitra: Did you have any customers before you went to investors?

Sadek Ali: We did not. We had people who were interested.

Sramana Mitra: Were people validating the problem you are solving? Have you identified a pain point?

Sadek Ali: Certainly. It took us two years of bootstrapping that business in order to get to the investor. I built the technology before getting investors. I’m a researcher.

Sramana Mitra: All this was happening in New York?

Sadek Ali: Toronto.

Sramana Mitra: The financing is from Canadian investors?

Sadek Ali: The angels are from the States and the VC was from Canada.

Sramana Mitra: How much money did you raise for the first round?

Sadek Ali: We raised somewhere between $2 million and $3 million dollars.

Sramana Mitra: What was the deal size for these clinical trials?

Sadek Ali: They would range from $25,000 for a small CRO. One was around $200,000. We were still in alpha. They were doing a small run for us.

Sramana Mitra: What was the trajectory in the five years?

Sadek Ali: We came out of the blocks where we projected we would get a couple of hundred thousand dollars in our first year. Instead, we had $850,000 booked. We needed to deliver. We had problems with our investors at that point. They wanted to validate how we were beating our numbers by so much. This created a whole slew of issues that eventually destroyed the company. What came were changes in the leadership. That leadership became the leadership that the investors wanted to redefine.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping by Piggybacking: Evenica CEO Sadek Ali
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