Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of companies were these seven companies that you invited? Were they logistics companies?

Victor Allis: One was in the Rotterdam harbor; they unloaded ships. They told us that it’s a unique process and there was no product that could handle that. Then there was another one. It was a copper factory. We said that our product is so flexible that, no matter how crazy your process is, it will fit in our software. That was true. That was the unique thing. We made very flexible software.

I remember we did a small demo. We asked anyone if they had a complex puzzle. The guy from the harbor stood up and said, “We have boats coming in. They need to be unloaded.” Within an hour, my four colleagues made the mockup in the demo. We showed it. They signed up the next day. That’s how we got into those companies. We had a combination of a special message and we were willing to show what we could do. We were very open about the fact that it was new but this is what it can do.

Sramana Mitra: The problem you were solving is planning within complex logistics processes.

Victor Allis: That’s exactly it.

Sramana Mitra: What does planning entail? As in forecasting?

Victor Allis: It was mostly the day-to-day-of-operations. If a ship comes in, is it going to be parked here or there? Are we using crane one or two? How many people do we need? In what sequence can we unload the boat? You cannot leave the details out.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic. You have two customers. We are not in 2000. What happens next?

Victor Allis: I realized that I’m not a sales guy. Teaching and sales have a relationship, but I’m not a sales guy by nature. I knew a sales guy, Aryan, from a previous company. He had gone on and became a Managing Director for a consultancy company. I invited him for dinner. I said, “We have built something amazing in the last two years. Instead of you leading a company of 80 people, you need to become the second-in-command of the company of five people. I’ll give you a lot of shares.”

He became our sixth founder. I figured out what our weakness was. We had great programmers, but we didn’t have a true visionary to head sales. I got one. He stayed with us for the next 16 years or so. That was the start of growth. We were ready to grow.

Sramana Mitra: What were the average deal sizes of these customers that you were selling to?

Victor Allis: The first two were about $100,000 in licenses each. Over the years, that grew to million-dollar license deals. Our average deal size over the first two years was $200,000 to $300,000 per deal. Those are pretty big deals.

Sramana Mitra: Now you don’t have much cash flow problem because you’re selling big deals.

Victor Allis: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Victor Allis: We started hiring people like crazy. At the end of the second year, we’re still five people. By the end of 2000, we had 10 people on the payroll. By the end of 2001, we had 20 people. By the end of 2002, we had 40 people. We were growing 100% not only in number of people but also in revenue.

The change was how we make sure that we really create a company. Five guys is just a bunch of friends. 40 people, now you need to process and manage things. That’s where the culture was born. That was where we made little decisions about who we wanted to be. Looking back, some things we did on purpose and some things we stumbled upon by accident.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis
1 2 3 4 5 6