If you can build a business with inbound marketing primarily, without having to invest heavily in outbound marketing and sales, it is generally much more capital efficient. Ofer shares his experience in building Pepperi from Israel in that revenue run rate. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from?
Sramana Mitra: Where are you in terms of revenues? Frank Sheppard: Last year, we did $21 million. Over the last two years, we’ve grown 20% and we’re projected to grow 20% this year. Sramana Mitra: Current business is growing at about 20%. How profitable is your business? Do you put a lot of profit into
Frank Sheppard: The other part of it is the reorganization of pharmacies. Traditionally, pharmacies are focused on filling prescriptions and are very reactive to patients coming in for that purpose. We’re doing things to make a lot of pharmacies more proactive, so instead of waiting for patients to engage them, we’re trying to find ways to enable
Sramana Mitra: I want to probe that a bit before we go beyond 2010 to the new mode. Let me just get the benchmarks on the 2005 to 2010 when you started focusing on patient reminders. What did that do to your business in terms of growth? Where were you in 2010 for instance? Frank
Sramana Mitra: How fast were you able to course correct on that? I imagine that when you saw that things were not working out, you fired the CEO. When did that happen? Frank Sheppard: Late 2003, I believe. We were probably short of bankruptcy, but like all good entrepreneurs, we were too stupid to do
Frank Sheppard: At that time, my spouse was still with IBM, working in the retail division. She just saw some opportunity there. We agreed to bring her on board in late 1995 to see if she can develop a lot of what we were doing for the telecom industry. We were able to do that very
Sramana Mitra: Given the numbers you’ve quoted in terms of houses sold, it seems to me that you should be ready to go public at this point. Is that part of the thinking? Why or why not? What’s going on from an exit point of view? Jake Seid: Our goal is to build a big company.
Sramana Mitra: Let me see if I got this. You basically had a project within IBM that IBM didn’t want to pursue. You wanted to pursue it and, with IBM’s blessing, you spun it out as a separate company? Frank Sheppard: Correct. IBM had no part in the founding of that company except to say