Sramana Mitra: My question was, is your AI at a point where people can be replaced with software? Javed Muhammedali: I don’t believe so. I’ll explain it like this. If you have a car and it has the side mirror warning, front mirror warning, and backup cameras, is there a hypothetical scenario where you can
Javed Muhammedali: What has happened in the industry, in general, is that a lot of those insights are available, but it’s locked away behind a huge reporting application. The end-user has to leave what they’re doing, move to a different interface, and then run this report that you have to wait for. What we’re trying
Sramana Mitra: The IPO window will be fine even if the market corrects itself. Most of the problem with the market right now is with the late-stage venture capital as it pertains to private businesses. I don’t think there’s a lot of problem with the public market. Art Papas: I’d like to be a little
Sramana Mitra: In a nutshell, you basically pivoted to a vertical CRM strategy and then started building out more and more verticals and developing work flow in your product for those verticals. You went after mid-market companies in each of those verticals. Art Papas: We did. We have a lot of tiny customers and then
Sramana Mitra: I get the whole vertical workflow woven into your product. Can you provide some examples of what somebody who’s buying a Salesforce.com CRM system would not be able to do versus your system? Let’s say recruitment vertical. What’s an example of workflow that’s specifically designed in your product? Art Papas: A great example
Sramana Mitra: Before we go on to 2008, give me a bit more detail about the strategy of building the business. You started with this recruiter CRM system as you described it. How much business did you do in the recruiter vertical? It sounds like that’s you’re primary vertical in the beginning, right? Art Papas: It
Sramana Mitra: Was it a large recruiting firm? Art Papas: It was mid-sized. There was about 45 people. It wasn’t a huge business. For them, all of a sudden, they’re able to service national accounts. It was a big deal during the recession. He was really looking for ways to get his business going. He was now
Sramana Mitra: So you’ve been around doing this company for a while. Art Papas: Yes, we started in 1999. I stayed at Thomson for a year after college. Then, I went and joined another startup that I didn’t enjoy at all. Sramana Mitra: You really wanted to be on your own. Art Papas: I really did.