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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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billion dollar unicorn
A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: What about funding? Peter Gassner: We had funding from angel investors. We started off with $3 million. Then we said, “This is good, but we need some funding from outside. We were looking for validation and professional funding, and the things that a VC could bring.” We raised $4 million. We thought we
A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 6)
Peter Gassner: The thing that most people thought why it wouldn’t be good was that they’d say, “Hey, there are no big companies doing pharmaceutical CRM. Therefore, it’s not possible to build a big company doing it. What do you mean you will build your product on somebody else’s platform? Nobody had done that before.
A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Where did you find traction? In building the product for the pharmaceutical industry, how did you scope the product? Did you have some anchor customers? Peter Gassner: This wasn’t that complex really. This was pharmaceutical CRM. We just decided to go there. It’s a known area and these companies had systems for it.
A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: When you came back, how did you re-engage with the working life? Peter Gassner: It was just a matter of deciding. That was the first decision. I also wanted to do something I was good at. I didn’t want to open a coffee shop and compete with a 23-year-old who knew as much
A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: How did IBM figure out, given that you have a strange background from their perspective, that you would be good at this stuff? Peter Gassner: My first internship was at IBM. Sramana Mitra: They noted you then. Peter Gassner: Yes, “That’s a kid that can work hard. He gets work done. He’s got
Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Also, what you have going in your favour is that the market is starting to understand that on the Internet, content is the brand. I think that understanding is going to drive further and further into the industry in general. Yaron Galai: I don’t view Facebook as being in the business of social networks
Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: The publishers are paying a lot more than $10 a month. Yaron Galai: We kept it, initially, at $10 a month but it couldn’t sustain them that way. The publishers said, “If you let us pay on a per-click basis, then we know exactly how many audience we get.” We pivoted on the
A Late Bloomer on Building a Legitimate Unicorn: Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Computer Science is not ambiguous. It’s clear and logical. Part of the thing that I’ve observed at this point in my life, having seen a little bit of life, is that there is a lot of ambiguity and a lot of lack in logic in how human beings operate. I’m a very rational,
