How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 7)

SM: I often tell entrepreneurs to bootstrap the early stage, and if they do raise money it should result in a better valuation. They have a validated business. Did you find that to be the case during your valuation negotiations? CC: We are a great example of bootstrapping paying off. In Q3 2004 we raised

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 6)

SM: How did you find your initial customers? CC: We used things like cold calls, Silicon Valley networking, and friends of friends. When you’re starting from nothing, you do whatever it takes. I was talking to anyone who would listen. I networked heavily, got friends to send me ideas, and went to alumni databases.

How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 5)

SM: What does the financial structure of a business spun out of Stanford look like? Do they take an equity position? CC: I get that question a lot, and I can’t comment directly because each case is unique. The thing to remember about Stanford is that they license more than startups. They license a lot

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 4)

SM: Your previous work experience gave you an actual user’s point of view. You are solving a problem you faced earlier in your life. CC: Exactly. Even within the world of information visualization, there many different schools of thought, and I learned about many of those in my first job.

How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 3)

SM: Essentially, you are doing drag-and-drop query-building using graphics. Internally, that query is being translated into some sort of SQL which is processed and transferred back into graphics for the user. Is that a correct assessment? CC: Yes that’s right. The language from which we are retrieving data could be anything. You can expose any

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 2)

SM: How long did it take you to build and flip BeeLine, and what did you do after that? CC: It took about 18 months. Even to this day I’ll look over at a stoplight and see one of our maps, which is very satisfying. A month after we sold BeeLine we had a party

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How To Get a 20 Million Dollar Pre-Money Valuation for Series A: Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot (Part 1)

Christian Chabot is CEO and co-founder of Tableau Software. Prior to Tableau he was an associate partner at Softbank Venture Capital, where he specialized in enterprise applications. Before Softbank, Christian was CEO and co-founder of BeeLine Software, which was acquired by Vicinity Corporation. Christian started his career as a data analyst at Cornerstone Research, an

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