Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Rob Bonavito, CEO of Jaggaer (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are the nuances of that? How do you accomplish that objective?

Rob Bonavito: It’s a special algorithm that looks at multi-stage optimization. It you think in terms of someone that’s making a cake, you could potentially buy a cake pre-made. You could have several options in terms of ingredient providers and also service providers that would play into the whole supply chain. To be able to determine which route or supplier would provide the most cost effective solution, it takes a series of analysis that goes through an optimization algorithm. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Rob Bonavito, CEO of Jaggaer (Part 2)

Rob Bonavito: We just completed a census about a month ago. We sent it out to about a thousand customers. We had over 500 responses. Overwhelmingly, they indicated that they were looking at more of focus around procurement and the ability to interface with the rest of the organization and pull that supply chain in even closer. What people don’t realize is when you look at the cost of product that a company >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Rob Bonavito, CEO of Jaggaer (Part 1)

Supply Chains are becoming deeply integrated, cloud-based phenomena. We introduced you to some exciting trends in the Inspyrus story earlier. This discussion further explores this topic, as well as the opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Jaggaer and also some background about yourself.

Rob Bonavito: I’m the CEO of Jaggaer. Jaggaer is a 22-year-old company. It provides a comprehensive and complete spend solution suite across the commercial, higher ed, and life sciences industry. I recently joined the company six months ago. Let me >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Datablink CEO Alexandre Cagnoni (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: From a revenue point of view, where are you? What kind of revenue and growth rate are you trying to raise money on?

Alexandre Cagnoni: Our revenue in 2016 was $7.5 million. We’re seeing a growth of approximately 30% year per year. I think if we get investment, we can accelerate this over 60% and reach some markets that today we’re not reaching. For example, we’re not doing anything in Europe. We have some conversations with potential partners but we don’t have activities in Europe. We don’t have too many activities now in the US. We believe that once we have everything set up here in the US, we’re going to be able to raise funding and then go to the other markets and even invest more in the US, >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Datablink CEO Alexandre Cagnoni (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Is that the reason why you’re in the US? If you’re selling in Brazil and Asia, being in the US doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Alexandre Cagnoni: There are a few reasons we came to the US. First of all, Brazil is quite complicated in terms of taxes and how they handle international businesses. We believe that the US is a better place to concentrate international sales. Another reason is we are planning, in the near future, to get an investment to accelerate the growth. As I told you, we’re a bootstrapped company. The biggest deals are still in Brazil. Those deals are providing the investment we need for Asia and the US. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Datablink CEO Alexandre Cagnoni (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Lastly, what about the e-commerce sector where you said you just started offering services?

Alexandre Cagnoni: It happens to everybody all the time. I was recently on a trip to Indonesia. My card was refused when checking into the hotel and it was locked. It was identified by the system as a potential fraud. It was me using it. At the same time, I went to Best Buy. After 15 minutes, I was out of the store. I received a call from the credit card company saying, “We’re calling just to make sure that you’re the one doing the transaction.” I confirmed but if it was somebody else, the products would have been stolen already. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Datablink CEO Alexandre Cagnoni (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Are your customers large enterprises or mid market? Where is the sweet spot of your audience?

Alexandre Cagnoni: I would say that it would be medium and large enterprises. In the financial sector, we have both medium and large banks that have millions of devices. We have customers with 10 to 20 users using our solution, and we also have customers with millions of tokens deployed.

Sramana Mitra: I would like to do three different sector-based discussions next. Let’s talk about banking. What is the competitive landscape around fraud prevention and authentication solutions in the banking industry that you play in and how do you compete? >>>

Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You were finding people online who were looking for loans and connecting them to financial institutions.

Sergio Furio: At that point, it was even broader. We were looking for people looking for financial services in general. We were offering insurance, credit cards, and credit. We were capturing some basic information and doing some pre-qualification, and then sending those customers to financial institutions. The beauty of it is it was relatively inexpensive. It was about creating good content and having a good user interface. From an investment perspective, I didn’t need a ton of money.

The bad news happened a year after that. I realized that the model didn’t make sense. The reason was that the unit economics of lead generation in Latin America >>>