Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Himanshu Palsule, CTO of Epicor Software (Part 1)

We’ve been covering the Vertical Cloud trend extensively. Epicor software is an ERP company focusing on vertical cloud in a big way. Very interesting reading.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Epicor.

Himanshu Palsule: I’m the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Epicor. As many people know, Epicor Software is a leading provider of ERP software globally. We have about 40 years of experience doing this. We serve tens of thousands of customers across 150 countries. We have roughly around $900 million in annual revenue and are headquartered in Austin. We have offices all across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. >>>

Bootstrapping from Ukraine: BPMOnline CEO Katherine Kostereva (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

This is a fascinating story of a Ukrainian entrepreneur bootstrapping her CRM Software company to global scale. We’re thrilled to bring you Katherine Kostereva’s inspiring and super intelligent entrepreneurial journey.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get going. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? Let’s go to the very beginning of your personal journey.

Katherine Kostereva: I was born in Ukraine. Since childhood, I’ve been traveling a lot and visited many countries worldwide. I graduated in 1999 with a Bachelors in Computer Science. Shortly after that, I got my MBA. Even from high school, I was obsessed with technology. I was thinking of the ways to transform business through technology. Technology has always attracted me. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about the metrics that you are willing to share.

Sridhar Vembu: We have 4,000 employees now and more than 20 million users on Zoho. We have one million new users per month. We still don’t disclose revenues. The company continues to be profitable. We have never taken any outside capital and we don’t intend to. We are bigger than most of the companies who have gone public in the last couple of years.

Sramana Mitra: Last time we spoke, you said you were just over $300 million. You also said that, by 2018, you’re going to hit $1 billion in revenue.

Sridhar Vembu: We are definitely marching towards there. We will get there in due course. We are focused on the long term. We have no exit plans. One of the things that we keep in mind is you want to keep the culture of the company. All that is important to us. Customers appreciate it. Maybe five or seven years >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How are you going to inform the market that such an option exists?

Sridhar Vembu: There are two things to it. One, of course, is a good deal of traffic. Zoho is almost at the rate of a million new users per month. It’s at an increasing pace. Our horizontal line of applications are growing very rapidly in terms of user base. That is what we are planning to use to funnel into. Some applications don’t change depending on what your vertical is. Email and a lot of those things don’t change. Something like CRM is very specific.

Sramana Mitra: You’re expecting to be able to identify in the Zoho customer base.

Sridhar Vembu: That is how we bring leads to partners. On the other side, we have partners who are experts in their local markets. We could get very specific. It could be somebody who specializes in East Bay car dealerships. You really know the East Bay dealership. You know what their needs are. You know >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: However, there is also another type of cloud business that has come together that follows more your mode. You’ve bootstrapped your company to scale at this point. You’ve taken your time. You haven’t done it at a VC pace necessarily. I think there are lots of niches from a cloud computing point of view. There are thousands of niches where you can build $2 million, $3 million, and $5 million companies that will not grow at an exponential pace. It doesn’t fit the characteristic of billion-dollar TAM. These are going to be fine. They’re just going to operate for a long time.

Sridhar Vembu: That’s right. We are looking at how we are structuring our own strategy. We are looking at a lot of missed markets to emerge. Part of this operating system strategy is to enable a lot of these companies. The operating system is a horizontal play that applies across every business. Then there are vertical, highly-specialized, domain-specific, or geographic-specific operating systems. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho (Part 1)

Zoho has been a tremendous success story in the cloud. In this interview, Sridhar Vembu discusses his strategy for the next phase of growth, and his general observations about the dysfunctions in the cloud ecosystem. Compelling conversation, must read.

Sramana Mitra: It’s been a while that we haven’t talked. We first did your story back in 2007, was it?

Sridhar Vembu: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Right when you were getting going. Over the years, we’ve talked many times. Where I want to start today is how do you see the evolution of cloud computing and how are you steering the hole in that context? >>>

Bootstrap First to Exit, Bootstrap Again, Then Raise VC Money ALL from St. Louis: Stephanie Leffler, CEO of OneSpace (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: As I’m listening to you, I’m thinking that last year, you did over $10 million with 50 customers. I can see that business model going to $40 million to $50 million in the next three years. You’ve told me that you’re switching business models, and your focus is going to be on the SaaS business.

Deal sizes are not going to be of scale. You’re selling software, so your average sales price is going to be a lot lower. The number of customers that you have to acquire is way larger, and people are not searching for freelance workforce management software. You have to find these customers somehow. How do you reconcile that?

Stephanie Leffler: The first thing is, from a price standpoint, I definitely recognize that a lot of SaaS platforms are relatively inexpensive. We have a slightly higher price point for our software because of the value that it does deliver. A customer who subscribes will be paying, at least, $100,000 for our entry-level >>>

Bootstrap First to Exit, Bootstrap Again, Then Raise VC Money ALL from St. Louis: Stephanie Leffler, CEO of OneSpace (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: It’s, effectively, becoming a competitor to Mechanical Turk and UpWork.

Stephanie Leffler: Absolutely. UpWork also happens to be our partner. We’re fully integrated with UpWork and have an API integration. If you’re hiring freelancers there and you want to scale your project, people will often use OneSpace. UpWork provides people but they don’t provide a software that lets you manage them at scale.

Sramana Mitra: In this mode, what are the metrics of the business? How did the services business ramp up? How many customers and what kind of revenue? Once you switched a few months ago, what are the early metrics of the new format of the business?

Stephanie Leffler: We are so early with the new format that I don’t even have metrics that I can provide you. Our software went into beta two months ago. Our >>>