Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Thycotic CEO James Legg and Founder Jonathan Cogley (Part 1)

Password management is a nightmare. See how the industry is evolving.

Sramana Mitra: Can one of you give us a background of the company and also please introduce yoruselves?

James Legg: I’m the CEO. Just to give you a background, Jonathan built and founded Thycotic and then decided he wanted some assistance in taking the company from roughly $25 million to $100 million. We’re fairly sizeable. He and I teamed up a year ago. Now we’re growing at a tremendous pace. I brought in several members of my team. This company today is growing at roughly 100% and we’re EBITDA and cash flow positive. We’re extremely profitable.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you located? >>>

Microsoft Acquires LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion: My Analysis

In a singularly brilliant move, Microsoft just announced the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. Two questions are swirling in people’s minds: why, and why did LinkedIn sell?

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Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: The competitors who went away, were you winning their customers?

Matthew Calkins: We were winning the deals that they attempted to compete in.

Sramana Mitra: But people were not switching necessarily.

Matthew Calkins: By and large, whoever has done that installation doesn’t want to do it again. They’re going to hang on to whatever they’ve got until it dies on its feet. We weren’t able to go back to lost deals and win them the second time around, at least not in the near term. We were stronger proportionally in the new deals. They had this turmoil going on.

Sramana Mitra: We are talking 2012? >>>

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Matt Oppenheimer, CEO of Remitly (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Is there a demographic categorization where you’re winning more? Is there an income bracket or are you seeing it more in an age group? What I’m trying to get at is which part of the population is adopting this kind of mobile money transfer?

Matt Oppenheimer: There isn’t just one segment of age or income level. If you think about folks who live in the US, almost everyone has smartphones now. I would have initially thought it would just be the younger demographic using the service, but it’s a wide range of ages. It’s not just one segment that’s shifting to digital. Everyone is using those smartphones and trusting them.

Sramana Mitra: What are the trends that you see in your work that are worth discussing?

Matt Oppenheimer: People often forget that the iPhone was invented in 2007. Right when the iPhone and Android were invented, our customers were not always the first adopter. What’s happening now is customers not only have smartphones on the send side but they’re increasingly trusting those smartphones for >>>

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Matt Oppenheimer, CEO of Remitly (Part 1)

International money transfer is on its way to becoming a contactless workflow. It’s still early in terms of adoption, but the handwriting is on the wall.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s have you introduce yourself as well as Remitly to our audience.

Matt Oppenheimer: I’m the Founder and CEO of Remitly.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Remitly.

Matt Oppenheimer: Remitly is a mobile phone alternative to the offline cash-based system of sending money internationally. We started about five years ago. We send over a billion in annual transactions which makes us the largest independent digital money transmitter in the US. We’re growing very rapidly. We grew about 400% year on year last year.

Sramana Mitra: The old player in the space is Western Union except they’re not mobile. Is that how you categorize the space? Can you give us a overview of the space? >>>

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 and >>>

Bootstrapping, Fund Raising and Exit: Mads Jensen’s Journey with Sefaira (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It was 2012 when you launched the product. How did you do that year? How many customers were you able to bring on in 2012 after the first year of the launch?

Mads Jensen: We grew at an accelerating clip from 2012 and until the exit this year. I couldn’t say exactly how many users we brought on in the first year. It was more work initially because it was a commercial offering and we were very keen to monetize. We didn’t have a freemium strategy. It was more of an enterprise strategy.

We went out to firms and we wanted them to pay us a subscription fee. The first 10 firms was incredibly hard. They liked what they saw but architects are not big spenders. We had to convince them of the merits of investing with us.

Sramana Mitra: How much were you charging? >>>

Bootstrapping, Fund Raising and Exit: Mads Jensen’s Journey with Sefaira (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the concept that you were working with while you were pursuing your one-year MBA at INSEAD in the 2008 timeframe?

Mads Jensen: Peter Krebs and I had a a lot of experience in software and technology and we both have worked in the construction industry. Peter is a Civil Engineer and my family had been in that business. We knew that there was a big opportunity within sustainability in the sense that buildings are responsible for more than a third of the carbon emissions.

They are a big part of the problem of climate change, but they’re also a big part of the opportunity. We can build much better buildings and that will really address that, but far too many buildings are not sustainable. We thought that it was a good opportunity. What if we could make buildings more sustainable. That was a couple of years after Facebook took off. Web applications were all the rage. >>>