Bootstrapping in Minnesota: Praful Saklani, CEO of Pramata (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What are the significant developments in 2008 and 2009? How is the company growing now?

Praful Saklani: This is where it gets interesting and fun. 2008 was a phenomenal year for us. We started to see traction with the use cases around understanding the risk inherent in your relationships and how you comply around those risks. I’ve been really talking to a lot of legal departments and finance groups who really need to get their arms around that. If you recall the mid-2000s, it was the post Sarbanes-Oxley era when everybody was concerned with those topics. That was very much in line the zeitgeist of the time.

Then in 2009, the whole world changed. The risk of today was a lot greater than any potential risk 10 years from now. The whole notion of what was important to a customer from an enterprise perspective started to evolve very rapidly. That was a challenge to us. We were seeing some good traction and growth and added some key customers during that time. Suddenly, we realized that the budgets around those use cases were going to be locked up for who knew how long. In early 2009, we didn’t know if that was going to be changed forever or if it was going to be a two-year pause. That was an interesting time.

Our company never shrunk. In fact, we never lost a customer during the heart of the recession. We kept adding some customers throughout the period but it definitely slowed down the acceleration that we were seeing. It was also a clear signal to us that the buying environment was going to be very different once the smoke started to clear from the recession. So 2009 to 2010 was a lot of working with our customers through a lot of the re-organization that took place. Our key focus areas were sticking with our customers through that process and also testing out different use cases that leverage our capability that aren’t just focused around risk and compliance.

Sramana Mitra: What was happening in terms of revenues?

Praful Saklani: We kept growing year on year.

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to hit the one million dollar year mark?

Praful Saklani: I think we hit that within 12 to 18 months of starting the company. It would either be the end of 2007 or early 2008.

Sramana Mitra: At this point, we’re talking 2009. You’re still bootstrapped?

Praful Saklani: We started taking in angel money starting in early 2007 based on the success with our beta customers. We made a conscious decision not to go after institutional money. Through our own networks, we found a lot of people who had relevant experience in what we’re doing who wanted to participate as angels. That’s the route we decided to go. We took angel financing in 2007 and we did it again at the end of 2008.

Sramana Mitra: Angel financing was in Minnesota or from Silicon Valley?

Praful Saklani: It’s from different places. We have investors based in Minnesota. Many of them are also from the East Coast, particularly around the Philadelphia area. The criteria was, “Is this a person who understands our target audience or industry?” Those were the people that we were really targeting.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Bootstrapping in Minnesota: Praful Saklani, CEO of Pramata
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