Bootstrapping, Fund Raising and Exit: Mads Jensen’s Journey with Sefaira (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What else is interesting and strategic from decision making or navigating this venture?

Mads Jensen: Our partnerships were very important. We work in an ecosystem where there are some big design firms and technologies that people already use. You may know Autodesk, which is a big software company. That’s one of our partners and that was extremely important for us. SketchUp is another partner. It’s owned by Trimble who ultimately bought Sefaira. Those partnerships are really important and without them, we would not have been able to grow in the way we did.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of business generation, how much business does Autodesk generate for you? What is the structure of the Autodesk deal? Is it an OEM deal?

Mads Jensen: As technology and marketing partners, they don’t sell our product but our partners have helped us in many situations. They help co-market andgive us access to the technologies because they have platform technologies. It’s important that we can build on top of their APIs. They have helped us from a technology and brand perspective.

Sramana Mitra: Were there any partnerships you did that helped you sell?

Mads Jensen: Our partners have always helped us sell because they help increase our profile and create leads, but we have always done the actual selling ourselves.

Sramana Mitra: So those were technology and co-marketing partnerships but the sales and customer development was your own.

Mads Jensen: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Did I hear you say that you’ve exited the business?

Mads Jensen: Yes, the business was bought by Trimble at the start of this year.

Sramana Mitra: What prompted that? Trimble Navigation isn’t in this business.

Mads Jensen: I think about half of their business is in construction and construction technology. They made about a hundred acquisitions within lots and lots of different parts of the construction vertical. They have a lot of specialist software for anything from onsite construction to engineering design and electrical design. Now, we are the sustainability part of that whole portfolio.

Sramana Mitra: What are the specifics? What revenue level did you reach before this acquisition happened and what kind of exit price did you get?

Mads Jensen: We can’t disclose that, unfortunately.

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you differently. In 2013, you reached a million dollars in revenue. How were you growing?

Mads Jensen: We’ve always been growing well.

Sramana Mitra: The last piece of information I have based on which we qualified whether or not to do this story is that this business is over $5 million in revenue. We will go with that because otherwise, we wouldn’t take the story.

Mads Jensen: I understand.

Sramana Mitra: Did you raise any money in the process or was this a completely organically built company?

Mads Jensen: We raised Series A in 2012 which was the year we launched?

Sramana Mitra: Where did you raise that money? In the US or Enlgand?

Mads Jensen: It was a combination. We had American and European investors.

Sramana Mitra: How much money did you put in to build the company?

Mads Jensen: Our Series A was about $10 million and we subsequently raised additional financing totalling more than $20 million.

Sramana Mitra: What else do you want to share?

Mads Jensen: We’ve talked about customers and where we do business. We’ve talked about building the technology. We haven’t talked much about the projects we’re involved with. We have customers in more than 40 countries today that are designing buildings all over the world including the Middle East. There’s a very wide application of the technology.

Sramana Mitra: Do you and your co-founder have to stay at Trimble for a while?

Mads Jensen: Yes, we are involved right now and are working to integrate the business and make sure that it comes off to a good start. It’s an interesting transition from being a founder to being an employee and not being an owner anymore.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you based?

Mads Jensen: I’m still in London. Our immediate leadership team in the unit that we report to is in Boulder in Colorado. Trimble itself is in California.

Sramana Mitra: I’m glad you’ve had a successful first venture. I’m sure you’ll do it again in due course. Congratulations!

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping, Fund Raising and Exit: Mads Jensen’s Journey with Sefaira
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