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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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appian
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: The competitors who went away, were you winning their customers? Matthew Calkins: We were winning the deals that they attempted to compete in. Sramana Mitra: But people were not switching necessarily. Matthew Calkins: By and large, whoever has done that installation doesn’t want to do it again. They’re going to hang on to
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Interesting. So you closed the $10 million round before the financial crisis on a questionable business plan. What happens next? Matthew Calkins: It’s an odd journey. Now we have $10 million and we could be strategic. That felt very nice because there was so much we wanted to do. We’ve always been an
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: How many enterprise customers were you able to get in 2004? How were revenues scaling? Matthew Calkins: I think we were growing at about 20% to 30% in those years. Our customer gain was never what we wanted but still steady and lucrative. In fact, we didn’t have a growth problem until 2008
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking? Matthew Calkins: 2003. There was a long transition and it was difficult for us. BPM naturally needs an interface in which you can consume all of the information that goes with it. You might need broad awareness and a portal interface would be good for that. You may need
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: You’re talking 2001? Matthew Calkins: The Army project started in 2001. It got going in earnest in late 2001. We were still a portal company in the 2002 to 2003 timeframe. We had to get out of it. The portal market was, in the end, just as disastrous as the personalization market for
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Let’s pause for a moment. I want to ask a few questions about your survival. Were you bootstrapping this company or were you funded? How did you manage to survive this pivot financially? Matthew Calkins: Our cash flow was quite strong. We were running a services business. We were doing a little bit
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Matt’s first couple of bets didn’t pan out. The story is interesting on many levels, the pivots being two critical ones. Also interesting is how the company managed to compete with much better funded competitors and win. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of
