Sramana Mitra: What do you want to do with the business going forward? What’s the thinking amongst the shareholders? Alexandre Wentzo: Our business has always been focused around process. We want to be more specific and trained to address more specific needs. We’re trying to focus now on business of IT. Business of IT is
Sramana Mitra: How long did Open Network go on? Kurt Long: Almost 10 years. Sramana Mitra: What happened then? Kurt Long: It was acquired by BMC. Sramana Mitra: What year was that acquisition? Kurt Long: I think it was 2004 or 2005. Sramana Mitra: You did not raise outside capital?
Sramana Mitra: How do you charge? What’s the business model? Alexandre Wentzo: It’s per user. Roughly, we sell at an average of $250,000. Sramana Mitra: So it’s large enterprise selling kind of business? Alexandre Wentzo: That’s correct. Things have changed because 10 years ago, we used to sell a few licenses. It would be 5 to 10
Sramana Mitra: On this topic, I’d like to probe a little bit more. Let me give you some context. We have a very significant research and curriculum material on a methodology that you followed, which we call Bootstrapping Using Services. One of our Entrepreneur Journeys Series books actually covers this as well. Let’s double-click on
Sramana Mitra: Also, your sales cycle was already in full swing. If there are 100 customers engaged in the developing of the product, that means that as soon as the product is ready, a good percentage of those are ready to buy. If you have product–market fit, a good percentage of those are ready to buy.
Sramana Mitra: When you arrived, was the product already in place? Were they already selling? Alexandre Wentzo: Yes. The product was only in English at that time. There was a need to put in place a sales team in Europe. We trained them on the product. We were a very small company. I had to translate
Sramana Mitra: Tell me about the conditions under which you started your first company. What was that company? What was going on around that led you to that and how did you get that going? Kurt Long: I was very naive about being an entrepreneur. I was a really good software developer and had a
Sramana Mitra: Venture capitalists and even seed investors do not fund concepts. We say this to our entrepreneurs in the program all the time. You have to get to a business. You have to get to some level of validation with your product before people are willing to write big checks. Andrew Rubin: I think