Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask (Part 3)

Sramana: At that time, there was a lot of activity in CRM. What functionality did existing vendors miss?

Clate Mask: Our customers were very small businesses, typically between two and ten employees.They needed e-mail marketing integrated with their customer relationship management. Our software program was as much an e-mail marketing program as it was a CRM program. They also needed a way to do e-commerce. Our software had a shopping cart that allowed our customers to sell products and services and even offered payment plans. It would offer recurring subscriptions for their products and services.

Sramana: Essentially, you had a customer database management system fused with an e-commerce solution?

Clate Mask: Exactly. I was the company’s first salesman, and back then the sales pitch was essentially, “If you are using a combination of AWeber and 1ShoppingCart, then we have an all-in-one solution that will blow you away,” and that is what brought customers on board.

Sramana: What was the price of your offering?

Clate Mask: It cost $300 per month for up to five users. We charged a service package to help customers get everything set up, and this was a one-time $5,000 charge.

Sramana: When did you release the product?

Clate Mask: We began building the product in 2002, but it was not until the beginning of 2003 until we decided that it would be CRM software for small businesses. At the end of 2003, we had released MortgagePro CRM. A year later we had ManagePro CRM, which has become our flagship program.

Sramana: During the development, did you continue to do custom software development work?

Clate Mask: We were doing custom software work until September 2003. At that time, we had a group of beta customers for the mortgage CRM product. We realized that in order to serve these customers and get the product out the door, we needed to stop doing the custom work. We stopped pure custom work and did only semi-custom work that further developed the work of our broad-based product. In 2003 and 2004, we were still doing some custom work, but we found that the work we needed to do was not matching the work our products needed. By the end of 2004, we had phased out all custom work.

Sramana: Did MortgagePro CRM sell well?

Clate Mask: It sold OK. We had a rough version of ManagePro CRM as well, and we found that more people were purchasing the partially completed ManagePro CRM than were purchasing the MortgagePro CRM. Our desire was to get the ManagePro CRM solution to market anyways.

Sramana: Where were your customers coming from?

Clate Mask: In 2002, all of our customer acquisition was through pay-per-click advertising. We used GoTo with a handful of small players who did pay-per-click advertising. We dedicated a certain amount of money every month to marketing. We spent $5,000 a month, and the founders were taking home only $2,000 a month. That was our sole means of finding customers for the first six months I was on board.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Bootstrapping From Arizona To 36 Million Dollar Series A Valuation And Silicon Valley Venture Capital: Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask
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