Mitch Russo: The dot-com bust then hit. It was April of 2000. The stock market started to do what it’s doing right now. It was just crazy. I realized what was happening. Our customers were going out of business. When the dust settled a year later, we had lost 30% of the furniture retailers. Another
Sramana Mitra: Can you name some of the locations that you specifically went after in this mode where there was enough technical talent that you were looking for but were also low cost? Cedric Saverese: There wasn’t a particular location that I was aiming for. I was aiming for US, mostly from a timezone perspective.
Sramana Mitra: When did you leave Sage? Mitch Russo: 1998. Sramana Mitra: Then you came back to Boston. What happens next?
Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch to team. You started as a solo entrepreneur? Cedric Saverese: Yes. Sramana Mitra: How long did you carry on as a solo entrepreneur? Cedric Saverese: Two to three years, while it was a side project. When I did it full-time, I hired the first person within the next few months. Sramana
Mitch Russo: As I said, tech support was starting to run very long waits. A woman called and announced that she is the head of the legal technology division for the Los Angeles Bar Association. She was having terrible problems. She said our software crashed her computer and that we better get somebody out there right
During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Gary Little, Co-founder at Canvas Ventures. We discussed the various types of venture capital and the evolution of the industry into a rather segmented current eco-system. For an entrepreneur trying to raise money, all this is extremely complicated, but essential to understand, or else, you would
Sramana Mitra: When you started, which competitors did you see most in deals? Cedric Saverese: When I started, there was not a lot of competitive deals. We didn’t have a sales team. It was more like, “Here’s a product. If you want it, buy it.” We didn’t have a lot of visibility into our customers’
Today’s 388th FREE online 1Mby1M roundtable for entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, March 1, at 8:00 a.m. PST/11:00 a.m. EST/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All are welcome!