Celebrating MIT’s 150th Anniversary: Alumni Ian Clemens, Founder Of IDV Solutions (Part 5)

Sramana: Did you feel secure with the amount of debt you took on when you compared it to your service contract revenues?

Ian Clemens: Yes we did. We had to hire a development staff early on and started making those hires in February. We have always charged a fair rate for our work and hired the most talented people that we could. It has been a good formula that lets us deliver quality work.

Sramana: How big is the company now?

Ian Clemens: We have 50 people now.

Sramana: Are you still based out of Lansing?

Ian Clemens: Yes. We have a remote sales force spread throughout the US. Our development staff remains in Lansing.

Sramana: Where did you hire the development staff from? Were you able to get them from the local area?

Ian Clemens: Our development team has been based on talent from nearby universities. Michigan State is 5 minutes away and the University of Michigan is under an hour away. We have recruited students as interns and others we have hired as recent graduates.

Sramana: What academic backgrounds do they have?

Ian Clemens: I would say that 99% of them are computer science students. We have hired a few from geography because of their mapping background. Computer science graduates are quick to pick up geospatial mapping and programming. That has been an easy transition for them to make.

Sramana: What is your sales model?

Ian Clemens: Our current product lineup has two stars. One is Visual Fusion which is really a later version of our earlier visualizations. Visual fusion is sold as a per-server license along with an annual maintenance fee. We typically add some services on to that as customers want us to build out on an SDK or based on our API. We will do that for them. We have also built out a partner network who build out products based on our architectures as well.

Sramana: What does one server license cost?

Ian Clemens: It is typically in the range of 20 thousand to 50 thousand dollars.

Sramana: Essentially licensing plus server and maintenance?

Ian Clemens: Services are an option as well.

Sramana: What do your remote sales folks do? Are they conducting direct sales against enterprise accounts?

Ian Clemens: They do direct sales. We work hand in hand with Microsoft so we make a lot of use of their technologies as well. We also have connections to SalesForce.com so we make use of their user groups. We also have pretty good marketing campaigns for the size of company we are. We do blogging and writing as well as a lot of search engine optimization work. We have a Twitter campaign as well. All of that has resulted in a good inbound lead flow. It is always great to have someone calling you and asking what they need to do to purchase your product. We do some trade shows although they do not seem to be as effective as I would like them to be.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Celebrating MIT's 150th Anniversary: Alumni Ian Clemens, Founder Of IDV Solutions
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