Sramana Mitra: Do you operate as a product or a services company?
Prashant Kumar: We are primarily an ISV but we have a consulting part as well. We deliver use cases for the customers.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the Telefonica use case. It sounds like that is what you broke into the market with. What is that use case that you started with?
>>>The global digital remittance market is expected to grow at 13% CAGR to reach $42.46 billion by 2028. Seattle-based Remitly (NASDAQ: RELY) is a leading player in the market that recently went public amid tumultuous market conditions.
>>>Sramana Mitra: When the teacher is assigning this reading through your product, is the student doing that reading at home?
Stuart Udell: Before COVID, about 46% of our reading was done after school hours. Since COVID, that number jumped to the high 80s and even touched 90%. The nice thing is, there are lots of flexible models that can really work here. The student can read individually at home. Then the discussion can happen in the classroom the next day. The classroom can mean physical or remote. Then there are lots of teachers who will tell kids to silently read for 15 to 20 minutes and discuss in the classroom. It’s a very flexible implementation model.
>>>This is a deeply technical discussion about a specific layer of the technology stack where Data Engineering and other data related disciplines are handled.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Cardinality.
>>>The low-code industry is estimated to grow from $13.2 billion to $187 billion by 2030. Reston, Virginia-based Appian (NASDAQ: APPN) recently announced its quarterly results as it continues to consolidate within the space.
>>>Sramana Mitra: I’m going to go in a bunch of different directions in the next part of the interview. One, let’s start with the product and the model of how students are using the product. What is the infrastructure? How are teachers engaging? How are parents engaging to come up with a good outcome?
Stuart Udell: Our flagship product is actually the name of the company – Achieve3000. It represents two-thirds of our revenue. What Achieve3000 Literacy does so exceptionally well is that it’s built to provide equity and access for kids. It does that by helping the teacher differentiate instruction in the classroom. That’s something that all teachers think about.
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Founder Jorn Lyseggen started Meltwater in Norway and, when we spoke in 2015, had scaled the company organically to $200 million. Fascinating journey!
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances?
Jorn Lyseggen: I was actually born in Korea. I came to Norway as a very small child. I was three years old. I actually grew up in a little farm in the middle of a deep, dark forest in Norway. You drive for hours into the deep, dark forest and then suddenly, there’s a small opening. Then, you come to a little village with 168 families. One of those families is mine.
Sramana Mitra: You operated in a zero-logistics mode with domestic manufacturers. Since 2018, how long did you operate in that mode before introducing the logistics operation?
Gil Bar-Lev: We started the logistics operation in the last quarter of 2020. We started with just one warehouse in California. Then we expanded and now have two. We’re working on a partnership with UPS. Through that, we’ll be able to launch multiple warehouses across the nation.
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