Andres Rodriguez: I’ll tell you the short answer. For young entrepreneurs today, they can do it but they have to have technical people in the team that have lots of equity in the company. The one thing that an investor wants to see is the proof point that you have a concept. This is for the
Sramana: Did you expand Auctionata to include other auction house functions once you had verified market interest through valuation services? Alexander Zacke: From there, everything progressed very quickly. We did 400,000 valuations in our first year. Sramana: How did people find out about the site? How did they know you existed and that you offered
Sramana Mitra: What about the acting part? Christian Gheorghe: They have to write back. They have to say, “Now that I understand what’s going on in my business, what can I do about it? Let me just model this particular profitability curve and change my forecast by 10% down.” You need to promote that change
Sramana Mitra: In modernizing the enterprise storage using cloud principles, was there any other competitor or were you the first to come into that space? Andres Rodriguez: When we came out, we thought we were the first but there are always competitors in the space. We have competitors today. Sramana Mitra: Big opportunities tend to
Sramana: What did you learn from watching eBay’s struggle with art auctions? Alexander Zacke: In the mid-2000’s, it became clear that the peer-to-peer marketplace model, although extremely powerful and scalable, did not work beyond a certain price point. The fine art world will begin at $1,000 which was 20 times the price point of eBay.
Christian Gheorghe: Revolutions do not just happen within an institution. They are always due to outside influence because people demand better experiences with involvement, empowerment, and engagement. The same thing is seen in the enterprise space right now. In the past, you’d always go to IT for a better report, a different report or cube,
The IT industry is one of the most dynamic industries where companies are under constant pressure to keep up with the rapid pace of technological advances and trends. However, information databases on IT companies aren’t always up-to-date. Therefore, navigating the IT channel to find potential channel partners to take a product to market is often
Sramana Mitra: What happened next in your history? Andres Rodriguez: After we sold Archivas, we had all the top venture capitalist wanting to fund the next project. Sramana Mitra: I’m sure. What’s good with being an entrepreneur is, capital follows you. Andres Rodriguez: Success breeds capital. Sramana Mitra: However, let’s talk about the investment pieces