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- The Accelerator Conundrum
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Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: When you first started getting into the Shopify ecosystem, was Shopify’s marketplace effective in getting you in there? Were you able to put in an app in the Shopify app store to get into that market? Kristjan Vilosius: We did put up an app in the Shopify App Store. That is how we
Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: The entrenched competitors are heavy duty. So that’s my next question. What did you do positioning-wise and go-to-market strategy-wise? So that’s where we’re going to spend most of our time now, on what you are doing, on how did you break in and what was the positioning? How did you navigate the market?
Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Talk about thewe. You said you were three co-founders. Tell me how you guys came together, how you met, how you decided to get together? And secondly, what was the idea around which you came together originally? What happened then? What was the state of the union? What was the state of the
Building a Global ERP Company from Estonia: Katana CEO Kristjan Vilosius (Part 1)
ERP is an entrenched category full of incumbents. Katana is a wonderful story of excellent positioning and strategy work to find market foothold. Sramana Mitra: All right, Kristjan, let’s start with your personal background. Where are you from, where were you born, raised, what kind of circumstances? Kristjan Vilosius: Firstly, thank you for having me
Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Now, what did you decide this time around in enterprise versus SME? Where did you position? And did you start with a good, solid positioning and commitment? RJ Talyor: We’re going right after the mid-market. We’re looking at businesses or retailers, specifically with 100-1,000 employees. We’re looking for people who send two to three emails
Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: Can you double-click down and talk about your validation process in this company, given what you experienced in the previous RJ Talyor: One thing that I’ve done is structure contracts. I found that everybody loves to be cheerleaders for startups, but ultimately, startups are measured by revenue. We have structured all of our engagements with
Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: Very good. So, what is the genesis of the new company? RJ Talyor: Well, when we were purchased, I was playing around with the early versions of the generative text content. With my history in email marketing combined with my background as an English major [it’s really unique in the tech space], I went back
Bringing a Generative AI Product to Market: RJ Talyor, Founder CEO, Backstroke and Pattern89 (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: So how did you finance all this in the early stages? RJ Talyor: At Pattern89, we raised money from a few different sources, mostly from Friends and Family/Angels. Then we were backed by High Alpha, which is a venture studio as well as a venture capital firm. They invested in Pattern89, which allowed us