Still Innovating in Networking: A10 CEO Lee Chen (Part 7)

SM: With 100 customers what kind of revenue range are you looking at?

LC: It is still small, but it is double-digit for 2008. It is growing very fast. We have only been selling for just over a year. Another thing to remember is that our sales cycle is long.

SM: Are you doing direct sales?

LC: Our business model is to use channels. We need some direct in the beginning, but we are going to look for channel partners in the future. Our customer support is also better than any of our competitors. Most US-based companies tend to be very show-time oriented. They are runway driven. We took a different philosophy which is to focus purely on the customer.

SM: Where do you forecast you will go with this company?

LC: Right now the focus is on getting customers and getting to $100 million.

SM: Do you think you can get to $100 million based on your current product line?

LC: Absolutely.

SM: What do you think the timeframe will look like?

LC: I think it will take 18-24 months.

SM: Can you talk about how you built your team?

LC: Building engineering teams is one of my strengths. I have gained a lot of friends over the years. Our VP of Business Development came from Foundry. She had retired, and I talked her out of retirement. Another friend recommended Peter to me. Things are going so well that in Taiwan we will be number 1 by Q4 of this year.

SM: What about China?

LC: We just won a content delivery account in the south of China. Their first order is about $120,000, but the potential is huge.

SM: How does Akamai view you?

LC: We are not competing. In fact, we work together with them. We are centralized and they are distributed.

SM: What is interesting to me is that you were able to take some VC money, but it sounds like you did not want VCs. Is that correct?

LC: I did not want too much opinion from the VCs. I was looking for one who was going to be helpful.

SM: But you still needed big chunks of money, so you went to Mitsui?

LC: We did, and I took deals that were larger and longer term. That was what was important to me, the long-term relationship. A lot of companies take deals locally and they end up being pressured into shorter deals. A lot of them are pressured to sell the company. Mitsui will help us expand into Europe, but they have let me use my technical expertise. They are a great partner.

SM: Does Mitsui already have distribution channels in Europe?

LC: They are a large conglomerate with over $100 billion. They have a lot of distribution channels.

SM: So the money you took was strategic money.

LC: We also took some money from Taiwan because that is where we did our manufacturing. We have one of the lowest costs of manufacturing, which is why we can be so aggressive with the pricing of our product.

SM: Great. This has been an excellent story.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Still Innovating in Networking: A10 CEO Lee Chen
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