Sramana Mitra: Your use case is quite broad-based. You’re focused on the telecom vertical, but the use cases are broad. It’s not productized. You’re providing professional services style of use cases on top of a common data handling platform.
Prashant Kumar: Yes. We are like SAP for telcos. The platform is agnostic to any vertical. The approach we have taken is very SAP-oriented. I’ll give you an example. If United Airlines buys Amtrak SAP’s procurement system, the underneath tech doesn’t change.
>>>Sramana Mitra: We’re hearing a lot about going into accounts through the teacher network. It seems to be working really well. You’re reinforcing the point by getting products in the hands of teachers through some sort of a freemium model and getting people to start looking at the product. There’s a virality to this. It seems like you’re seeing a lot of that. Could you speak more to that trend?
Stuart Udell: That is a trend. Teachers do like to talk to each other. It’s not just because they’re chatty. When they try a product, they’ll usually talk to other teachers first in the same grade. Then the other teachers will try it too. Then they go to their principal saying, “We’re all trying this individually. We’d like to unlock more tools.”
>>>I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Red Barn, Vermont, Fall
Red Barn, Vermont, Fall | Sramana Mitra, 2020 | Watercolor | 9 x 12, On Paper
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Alexandre Wentzo is the former CEO of Casewise, an enterprise software company that started in London and scaled in the US. The company was self-financed and did $24 Million in revenue when we spoke in 2015. Our discussion focuses on some of the nuances of starting an enterprise software company in Europe and scaling it in the US. Casewise was sold to Erwin in 2016. You can also listen to our podcast interview here and watch the roundtable interview here:
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.
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