Managing Risk: MetricStream Chairman Gunjan Sinha (Part 5)

Sramana: What was your rationale behind launching ComplianceOnline.com?

Gunjan Sinha: We viewed it as a way to bring the community together. It is a way to distribute best practices for compliance, risk, and governance under one umbrella. We have experts who share what works across different regulations, risk areas, countries, and regions. I wanted to build something where we had the content and the community in one place.

Sramana: Did you use the ComplianceOnline.com community to help shape the direction of the product?

Gunjan Sinha: During those first three or four years, we really focused on developing the platform. We went out and got a dozen or so customers, and we made those customers happy. We fine-tuned the product.

Sramana: Who were your early customers?

Gunjan Sinha: During the first three or four years, we had gotten customers who would be willing to help us shape the direction of the product. British Petroleum, Pfizer, and companies like that were our early adopters. My advice to entrepreneurs is to pick the right set of customers to work with early on. If you pick the wrong customers to work with, you might get the wrong feedback.

Sramana: What is your definition of the right set of customers?

Gunjan Sinha: I looked at the market we wanted to focus on. I wanted to find companies that felt those problems the most because they would be more willing to make the investment with you. They would be actively critical in helping shape the direction of the product. NASDAQ was an early partner. We learned a lot through that relationship because they have one of the most mission-critical markets in the world. They have huge risk, compliance, and governance requirements.

Our early adopters educated us, and we delivered value to them through our software and technology. At that time we did not tell this story to the analysts. There were a number of companies that were already in the marketplace, but they were working in silos. We were undeterred and did not change our strategy. We wanted to solve risk, compliance, and governance across the entire enterprise, not within a single silo. That was our vision and we stuck to it. Our customer shaped our products along that vision.

Sramana: What was the impact of the Lehman Brothers collapse?

Gunjan Sinha: Right before that time, we had gotten the analysts to understand what our vision was. Gartner and Forrester put us as the leader in the space right out of the gate. When the collapse happened, we started ramping up our sales and marketing initiative because we felt it was the right time to tell the world what we were doing. We got various customers with serious interest because they did not want to fall prey to similar challenges. They did not know how to deal with risk at that level. We have been very aggressive in our marketing ever since.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Managing Risk: MetricStream Chairman Gunjan Sinha
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