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HOT TOPICS
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: The competitors who went away, were you winning their customers? Matthew Calkins: We were winning the deals that they attempted to compete in. Sramana Mitra: But people were not switching necessarily. Matthew Calkins: By and large, whoever has done that installation doesn’t want to do it again. They’re going to hang on to
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Interesting. So you closed the $10 million round before the financial crisis on a questionable business plan. What happens next? Matthew Calkins: It’s an odd journey. Now we have $10 million and we could be strategic. That felt very nice because there was so much we wanted to do. We’ve always been an
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: How many enterprise customers were you able to get in 2004? How were revenues scaling? Matthew Calkins: I think we were growing at about 20% to 30% in those years. Our customer gain was never what we wanted but still steady and lucrative. In fact, we didn’t have a growth problem until 2008
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking? Matthew Calkins: 2003. There was a long transition and it was difficult for us. BPM naturally needs an interface in which you can consume all of the information that goes with it. You might need broad awareness and a portal interface would be good for that. You may need
Successful Pivot to a High Growth Business: Ray Grainger, CEO of Mavenlink (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: The money that you had in the convertible note and your own money, that was financing 2010 then? Ray Grainger: It got us through 2010. It actually got us almost through 2011 as well. Sramana Mitra: In 2011, you generated revenue? Ray Grainger: Yes. We got up to a million dollars in 2011. Sramana
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: You’re talking 2001? Matthew Calkins: The Army project started in 2001. It got going in earnest in late 2001. We were still a portal company in the 2002 to 2003 timeframe. We had to get out of it. The portal market was, in the end, just as disastrous as the personalization market for
Successful Pivot to a High Growth Business: Ray Grainger, CEO of Mavenlink (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: What did you do in terms of going and trying to recruit the next set of projects? Did you then go out to find projects that are in line with those people’s expertise? Ray Grainger: We decided to take a different path. The thousand people told us, “We really like your concept. It’s
Multiple Pivots, Taking on Giants, to Over $100 Million in Revenue: Matthew Calkins, CEO of Appian (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Let’s pause for a moment. I want to ask a few questions about your survival. Were you bootstrapping this company or were you funded? How did you manage to survive this pivot financially? Matthew Calkins: Our cash flow was quite strong. We were running a services business. We were doing a little bit