Sramana Mitra: It was the height of the bubble. The market was really crazy. It’s no longer possible, thankfully. But at that time, it was possible and a lot of crazy things were going on at that time. Did you blow through all those dollars and not make it? David Stubenvoll: Pretty much. We had actually
Sramana Mitra: What you described is a very interesting organizing principle for organizational behaviour. Philippe d’Offay: It was fascinating. I’m one of those people who can’t just stop thinking about identifying the solution to the problems. Sramana Mitra: When you figured this out, you were able to put back the right dynamics in place? Philippe
Sramana Mitra: What year did you start selling products as opposed to just services? Chris Taylor: We started that shift in 2010. The journey was a much longer one that I expected. We were running at our typical parent consulting margins of 20% to 40% depending on the project and the year. We decided that year
Sramana Mitra: Who were the target audience for this product? David Stubenvoll: We wanted the interest and attention of consumers in order to sell advertising to various financial players. One of our biggest advertisers were mutual fund companies and brokers. Sramana Mitra: How did it ramp? How did you get the consumer base to attract
Sramana Mitra: After you moved to the Bay Area, what were the next major strategic moves? Philippe d’Offay: After moving to the Bay Area, we had a product that physicians were very happy with. We were cash flow positive for four straight years. I talked about almost being bankrupt when we were in Atlanta. The
Sramana Mitra: What year was this when you were the only employee? Chris Taylor: 2006. That’s how it started. For the first couple of years, I did a lot of different projects around the auto industry and also for a lot of startups out in the West Coast. Sramana Mitra: You were consulting at that
Sramana Mitra: What did Gulp do? David Stubenvoll: We were your very typical startup in that we wandered a little bit. We started out providing mutual fund information on the Internet. It blossomed into creating websites for mutual funds. We actually created a trading platform, and became one of the larger personal finance sites on
Sramana Mitra: What was the journey like in 2001 to 2007? It was slow as you are pointing out, but were you still getting customers? What was the sustaining strategy during that period? Philippe d’Offay: At that time in healthcare, the consolidation hadn’t quite begun. There was this very strong entrepreneurial spirit in healthcare. We were