A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey into FinTech: Felix Rodriguez, Founder and CEO of finally (Part 1)

Felix has done nine ventures and sold several of them. He is currently building a venture-funded,
AI-enabled FinTech venture. Really intelligent, scrappy maneuvering in various alleys of online entrepreneurship.

Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Do the accounting firms identify themselves as being focused on manufacturing companies, retail companies, or physical oriented companies?

Kristjan Vilosius: No.

Sramana Mitra: Okay. So, how did you find them in building your channel partnership? Did you have to qualify everybody then?

Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: That gap was obvious when you decided to position into the Shopify ecosystem. You’d already found that gap, right?

Kristjan Vilosius: Yes. Well, we’d found that when we founded the company. By the time we had finished our basic prototype, we realized that the opportunity is there.

Sramana Mitra: How much was the Series A?

Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Okay. Now, during these two years, tell me about the pricing model and the revenue. What was happening? What was the market accepting as your pricing model? What were you able to sell at and how was that adding up to your ARR, MRR?

Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you first started getting into the Shopify ecosystem, was Shopify’s marketplace effective in getting you in there? Were you able to put in an app in the Shopify app store to get into that market?

Kristjan Vilosius: We did put up an app in the Shopify App Store. That is how we launched back in 2018. Back then we were nothing more but just an inventory and manufacturing app for Shopify merchants who have in-house manufacturing, which is just a subsegment of all the Shopify customers.

Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The entrenched competitors are heavy duty. So that’s my next question. What did you do positioning-wise and go-to-market strategy-wise? So that’s where we’re going to spend most of our time now, on what you are doing, on how did you break in and what was the positioning? How did you navigate the market?

Kristjan Vilosius: I think how we started and how we got into the market was a very important part of our journey. So I’m happy to expand on that.

Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about thewe. You said you were three co-founders. Tell me how you guys came together, how you met, how you decided to get together? And secondly, what was the idea around which you came together originally? What happened then? What was the state of the union? What was the state of the market? And what did you see as the opportunity to latch on to at that time?

Kristjan Vilosius: Great question. I’ll first start with the co-founding team. Both of my co-founders, Priit, our CTO, and Hannes have been leading our customer facing teams for many years. I’d known both Priit and Hannes for 15-20 years as friends, although Priit and Hannes didn’t know each other very well. I kind of kept them separate.

Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 1)

ERP is an entrenched category full of incumbents. Katana is a wonderful story of excellent positioning and strategy work to find market foothold.

Sramana Mitra: All right, Kristjan, let’s start with your personal background. Where are you from, where were you born, raised, what kind of circumstances?

Kristjan Vilosius: Firstly, thank you for having me here today. I’m the CEO and one of the three co-founders at Katana. And my personal story starts in the early eighties when I was born in Estonia, which was part of the Soviet Union back then. I don’t remember much of it since I was very young, but I spent part of my childhood in the Soviet Union.