From Developer to Successful Entrepreneur with Exit: ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi (Part 1)

Mahendra transitioned from a developer to a successful entrepreneur with his first company, exited it, and then started ACCELQ. ACCELQ already has 200 customers and is a profitable, bootstrapped company growing fast. A wonderful and inspiring story!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to come up with a product?

Manish Jethani: This is very interesting. We signed an agreement with one customer that if we deliver that product, they will pay us $50,000.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of customer?

Manish Jethani: This was the largest food-tech delivery company in India. They were scaling hyper-fast. They didn’t have a team. After we got such strong validation, we started building the product. From my past learning, it was obvious that unless we have a very strong intent from the customer, we’re not going to build the product. The first version was out in four months. It didn’t have a lot of functionality. It wasn’t self-serve yet.

From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: When you launched this, how did you get it off the ground? The problem you’re describing is a very large problem and there are a lot of people working on this. Data, as you know, has become one of the biggest categories in which people are doing startups. The combination of data and machine learning has become very big.

A lot of people have observed that there are non-technical people trying to make data-driven decisions. They need tools and technologies to do this. This is not a virgin field. Timeline-wise, you were in the middle of a big wave. The solution to this for digital marketing than the solution for the supply chain. Where did you start? Talk about the process of getting this venture off the ground.

From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You were doing a hosted product until recently.

Francis Dinha: Yes. Even Bloomberg came to us. They said, “What about if we license your software? We pay you half a million dollars one time.” I said no. Our model is subscription. Google was our customer for three years. They used our self-hosted solution. Then they wanted to have so many features. I said, “You can take our open source and build on your own.” They did that.

Sramana Mitra: That’s a very good point – saying no to certain opportunities. It’s an important part of building a business. You have to stick to your vision.

From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do next?

Manish Jethani: It was a very comfortable role, but that comfort was making me uncomfortable. I was used to solving problems. I wanted to go back and do a startup again. Being well-positioned in a well-funded startup didn’t bring any additional challenge of sorts. I wanted to go back and do a startup again.

From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the current problem that you could solve in 2005?

Francis Dinha: One of my friends started a company in Dallas. They were trying to solve the problem of circumventing the firewall. They raised about $35 million. He said, “How are we going to solve this problem?” I got this technology that’s like tunneling. I said, “I can structure a deal with you, but I don’t want to come and work as a consultant. We’re going to build this, but we’re going to provide a service as part of a subscription.” That was my first customer.

From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Why do you think the VC was calling you? What did he know about what you were doing?

Manish Jethani: Some local newspaper caught the Facebook post in the group. They saw that we got 1,700 signups in four hours. She wrote a story around that. That got us a bit of media coverage and some kind of popularity. That’s how the fund discovered us.

Sramana Mitra: When you got this call, were you already in operation?

From Hard Core Techie to Successful Entrepreneur: Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do in your first venture?

Francis Dinha: I gave Ericsson three months’ notice. I was going to build something related to switching while doing everything in software. That was my first venture where I made my first million dollars.

Sramana Mitra: Who was the customer?