From Hardcore Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Cybellum CEO Slava Bronfman (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You’re giving a lot of automotive examples. Is that one of the areas where you entered the market?

Slava Bronfman: Yes, we wanted to start with one segment that we can really understand well. We started with automotive. Today, we are in other segments like medical devices and industrial IoT. When we started, we were laser-focused on the automotive segment.

Sramana Mitra: When you were designing the product, did you have a design partner?

Slava Bronfman: There weren’t official design partners, but we did have friendly people as our first customer. We were very transparent with them.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to get the first version?

Slava Bronfman: It took us less time because we were able to leverage some of the technology from our previous iteration. We didn’t need to change a lot of the technology. Maybe three to four months.

Sramana Mitra: The first customer that was helping you came on board as a paying customer at that point?

Slava Bronfman: They were our beta customers and used the software for free. But later on, yes. Before they came in as a customer, we had plenty of others that served as references.

Sramana Mitra: That’s very valuable. I’m assuming you did this with the first $2.5 million financing.

Slava Bronfman: Yes, we were very lean. Then we raised our next round only in early 2019.

Sramana Mitra: By that time, you had several automotive customers under your belt?

Slava Bronfman: Yes, we had several customers and started to generate revenues. The trajectory was very positive.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise in the A round?

Slava Bronfman: $12 million.

Sramana Mitra: Was it a traditional SaaS?

Slava Bronfman: Yes, we have an annual subscription to our product.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of revenue levels by 2018 end before raising that Series A?

Slava Bronfman: It was more than a few hundred thousand dollars. I don’t think we think we reached a million dollars.

Sramana Mitra: What are the major milestones of 2019 after the Series A financing?

Slava Bronfman: It was signing a few blue-chip customers. It was a very positive signal to the market. One of the things that you always get from huge customers is they find it hard to buy from very small startups. They always have concerns if you can deliver and support their needs. After we had one or two big public companies, it helped us. This was one of our biggest milestones in 2019. Again, the revenue target. I think it was a few million dollars.

Sramana Mitra: 2020 is the beginning of the pandemic. How did that play out for you?

Slava Bronfman: That was crazy. It hit all the supply chains, especially the automotive industry. It was a lot of uncertainty. We needed to get back to our investors and our Board. We changed our predictions. We understood that there might be a slowdown. Frankly speaking, after a few months, companies understood that they still needed to produce vehicles.

Sramana Mitra: Nothing has changed in the investment thesis.

This segment is part 4 in the series : From Hardcore Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Cybellum CEO Slava Bronfman
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