Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson (Part 4)

Sramana: Do you make any assumptions about customer support agents? Do you expect that they will use this product as well?

Aaron Fulkerson: Yes, and I will give you an example to illustrate this. A typical deployment by a software company will leverage our subscription payment system. It will typically start with one individual who will create a self-improving support cycle of MindTouch. This individual will seed the content on the knowledge center. Support will then plug that content into the CRM system so that every time support personnel answer a question, they can drag and drop knowledge articles into the case so that customers have additional resources.

As customer support representatives close new cases that did not have any documentation to support, they can make recommendations for a new article. MindTouch manages the draft approval process. It takes metadata from the external systems and automatically organizes the drafts in a smart way. We use machine learning to optimize our system processes. The same is true for chat and community managers. MindTouch is a new type of user manual. It is the product narrative which is continuously improved customer interaction. It is the byproduct of actively supporting your customers. If an article needs to be updated, customers can flag it. If a chat session had relevant information, then we may recognize context for a new knowledge base.

Sramana: How did you capitalize and build this company?

Aaron Fulkerson: We bootstrapped. We have taken all of our revenues and reinvested them in the company. We had a very specific problem to address when we started the company. For a while we tried to listen to other people who wanted to invest in the company even though we never bothered taking funding. Even though we overextended the problem area, we continued to grow the business. Now that we have gone back to our roots, we have decided to focus on what we are best in the world at.

Sramana: What has the revenue ramp of the company looked like?

Aaron Fulkerson: We have around 40 people working for the company and we have always postured ourselves to operate in a “just profitable” manner. We have doubled our revenue numbers every year since we have gone back to the basics. In 2010 we had a plateau where we tried to sell $5,000 licenses to IT guys who were avidly downloading our open source version. We now have a cloud-based company that sells to line businesspeople. This year we will do over $10 million in revenue.

Sramana: You narrowed down from the broad collaboration space into a specific niche. Within your current space, who do you encounter as competition?

Aaron Fulkerson: It is fascinating to note that there are no direct competitors. We have competitors but there is nothing that is Apple to Apple. Oracle acquired InQuira, which was the closest competitor. InQuira is an enterprise search tool that built in basic content authoring capabilities. They are a competitor because we share the same customer base and the same value proposition.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping to $12M+, Getting Ready to Raise Money: MindTouch CEO Aaron Fulkerson
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