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
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
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
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
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
Sramana Mitra: Who were these thousand participants and how did you get them on the platform? Ray Grainger: We started with our own network of people we knew. We come from a service provider industry so we have a lot of people in our network who are service providers in one capacity or another. Between the
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Matt’s first couple of bets didn’t pan out. The story is interesting on many levels, the pivots being two critical ones. Also interesting is how the company managed to compete with much better funded competitors and win. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the step-by-step journey of how you put all the pieces together to make this happen. When you quit InQuira, what was the first thing that you did? Who left with you? Who were the co-founders? Ray Grainger: The co-founders were colleagues who I had met at InQuira. One is named