Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You basically were putting embedded code on the devices for filesystem management.

Mikko Valimaki: Yes. Looking back, I think we made the right choice. We were able to grow really fast in the selected Asian market. When we were in the open source stage, I would say that from the early revenue, it looked like North America was the biggest one. Then there was significant revenue from Central Europe, and Asia was minor. When we went into the licensing business and figured out that the device market is the best for us, then Asia was really the way to go. Starting in 2010, Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese started to handle the customer relations and develop the market further.

Sramana Mitra: What timeframe did you figure out that this was going to be your core strategy? Do you remember exactly when you came to that conclusion?

Mikko Valimaki: I think it happened when we changed the name and relaunched the company. When we launched with the Tuxera name, we came out with the Microsoft IP agreement. At that time, we also had discussions with Microsoft about how they saw the market. It was a result of a lot of discussions. Of course, I talked with a lot of other people having companies doing similar software. We were not sure at that point. We just figured out that it could be the one. In practice, it turned out that the device market was the right decision at that point.

Sramana Mitra: When was that?

Mikko Valimaki: 2009. I lived in the US in Silicon Valley from 2011 to 2012. I founded our local subsidiary there. Now we actually have a local guy there. The US market was at 10% of the revenue at that time.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to 2010. What are the major happenings of 2010?

Mikko Valimaki: We closed the first six-figure deal. That was the biggest deal at that time.

Sramana Mitra: Do you remember who the customer was?

Mikko Valimaki: I remember, but I’m not sure if I can disclose. It’s one of the Asian companies in the device manufacturing business. It was a licensing deal. Then we figured out that we actually found something could be pretty big. Team size was still less than 10 people. Of course, we wanted it to look like much more.

Sramana Mitra: Where are the next major inflection points? At what point did you reach $1 million a year in revenue? 2010 going forward, what are the big decisions or strategic moves?

Mikko Valimaki: We passed the $1 million mark in the 2010 to 2011 fiscal year. Our fiscal year ends in September.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Bootstrapping to $10 Million from Helsinki, Finland: Mikko Valimaki, CEO of Tuxera
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