Stardoll for Little Girls: Mattias Miksche (Part 1)

I covered Stardoll in the Deal Radar series. Here’s the story from CEO Mattias Miksche. SM: Please describe your personal background : Family, upbringing, early career, etc. leading up to this venture. MM: I have a multicultural background. Austrian dad, German mom – they came to Sweden during/following World War II. I was born &

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Indian IT Industry: The Next 8 Years

Forbes has some scary statistics on the salary hike rate in India. The 2007 rate is 15.1%, up from 14.4% the previous year. 2008 forecast: 15.2%. This is the fifth consecutive year of salary growth above 10%. Good lord! Is Death of Indian Outsourcing all that far out?

Building an Ambitious SaaS Company: Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire (Part 10)

SM: What is your channel strategy? Direct in the enterprise, Telesales for SME? MG: Very close. At the enterprise it is a direct sales force, distributed globally. In SME, it is telesales, our own telesales team. We have a lot of partners we do business with where we get a fee for transacting through our

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The China Factor: Bain-3Com Deal Withdrawn

I reported on Bain’s proposed acquisition of 3Com when it was announced in late September. The deal has been withdrawn due to objections from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). 3Com’s Tipping Point business unit supplies sensitive monitoring equipment to the US Government’s Defense Department.

Deal Radar 2008: Groople, Interesting Use of Context

Groople is an online group travel site, which helps with searching, planning and booking group travel. (Read my Interview with Groople CEO Mike Stacy) Groople is different from Expedia and Kayak in that it serves only group travelers, no individuals, and is thus a great focus on a specific “Context“.

Building an Ambitious SaaS Company: Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire (Part 9)

SM: What is your business model? What is the pricing model? MG: The pricing model in the enterprise space, for companies with more than 3,000 employees, is that we charge by the number of employees in the company. It is not a transactional pricing system. We use multi-year contracts; most of them are three years

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Forbes Column 08: The Next VMWare

Here’s my Forbes piece, The Next VMWare. Related readings:

Building an Ambitious SaaS Company: Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire (Part 8)

SM: In the way the product is marketed, are you also competing against job boards such as Monster? MG: No, they are more partners of ours. We have direct linked feeds to most of the job boards. If a company decides to approve a requisition, they can hit a button in our system and it

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