Billion Dollar Unicorn: Does Gaurav Dhillon Have Another Winner With SnapLogic?

According to an IDC report, the global cloud market is expected to grow to $118 billion by 2015 and will be worth $200 billion by 2018. The growth will be driven by an increased adoption of the hybrid cloud as organizations are still trying out the cloud and would like to use ways that help bridge the gaps between the comparatively low-security public clouds and the high-security private clouds. Something similar was envisioned by entrepreneur Gaurav Dhillon back in 2006 when he started his second Billion Dollar Unicorn company SnapLogic. >>>

Building an SMB SaaS Business: Stitch Labs CEO Brandon Levey (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You decided to work hard in grad school?

Brandon Levey: Yes. I finished my grad school with an exchange program. The University of Michigan, University of Friedberg in Germany, and University of Tokyo had an exchange. We were the first batch to actually do the physical exchange. I went to Germany for four months to do research there. I did a lot of research both in MEMS and circuits.

Sramana Mitra: What year does that bring us up to?

Brandon Levey: That brings us up to 2006.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next? >>>

Bootstrapping From Germany: Cleverbridge CEO Christian Blume (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Now that we’ve gone through the background analysis, position the product for me. Which customers are you going after? Specifically, what was the value proposition that you were going to deliver?

Christian Blume: We didn’t want to deliver a me-too product because there had been so many go’s at this already over the years. All of the companies that started out in this area, what they offered was a website that was password-secured. When you entered the password, you’d get into an administration site. You have the opportunity to update basic information. You can change the color, upload the logo, and create products. Some of those services offered limited promotion capabilities.

When we went in to the market in 2005, we figured that it was really time to change the approach of how we would like to tackle this market from a variety of different angles. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services From Atlanta: PMG Founders Joe LeCompte and Robert Castles (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did things progress from there? What’s the next major milestone after this?

Joe LeCompte: We turned from website development into custom development jobs—not so much of web applications, but more of dealing with local companies and helping them solve business problems. We worked with Delta Airlines and Kimberly-Clarke.

Robert Castles: We found that the bigger the problems were, the better we were at delivering. We realized that was our opportunity to grow the company, differentiate ourselves, and have sustainability in a future market.

Sramana Mitra: But you were still working in this services mode?

Robert Castles: That’s correct. >>>

Self-Financing an Artificial Intelligence Software Company: John Rauscher, CEO of Yseop (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What do you want to do with this company? You have built a profitable company growing at 80%. What do you want to do with it?

John Rauscher: We want to become public. We want to keep on building and growing. As we have been positive, becoming public may come sooner than we think. When we think that it will be time to accelerate and raise money through IPO, then it will be the time to go public. Being profitable year after year is critical.

Sramana Mitra: From an IPO scale point of view, you’re still too small. >>>

Self-Financing an Artificial Intelligence Software Company: John Rauscher, CEO of Yseop (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about sales. How did sales ramp at that point?

John Rauscher: Of course, it was not easy. I cannot remember that it was a big start. We had to convince a lot. We had to be passionate. We had to be very good at delivery. My philosophy is we cannot lie. You have to tell him what is going to happen and that sometimes you don’t know, because each case is unique. You have to build trust with customers. In the end, they’ll tell you that they trust you. We have been very successful because we never tried to do quick sales. We were focusing on delivering high quality service.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of average deal size were you encountering in the market?

John Raushcer: Generally, it was in steps. People were asking for pilot applications. Probably between $200,000 and $300,000 and $1,000 to $3,000 for pilot applications. People were buying licenses later. It was probably half a million dollar deal as an average. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Luke Schneider, CEO of Silvercar (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think it’s not as close in terms of consumer deployment of autonomous vehicles. It’s still away. I don’t think it’s ready to hit the roads quite soon.

Luke Schneider: I read a Morgan Stanley or a JP Morgan report, not long ago, talking about how exciting self-driving cars are and how it’s going to be the next best thing since sliced bread. >>>

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: Luke Schneider, CEO of Silvercar (Part 4)

Luke Schneider: Transportation, as a whole, is segregating into three big buckets. There’s owned transportation, which is the traditional or conventional way. It’s what my parents did and sort of what I do where you own a car, drive a car, sell the car, and buy another one. If you own an Aston Martin, it’s a bigger trophy than if you own a Toyota. That’s not going to go away. Automakers are going to manufacture cars despite urbanization. The long-term prognosis for that though is that they won’t sell as many. >>>