Patrick has built an interesting company from Chicago that had to go through a significant pivot. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of circumstances? Patrick Kerpan: I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My father was a policeman.
Sramana Mitra: In 2014, all the money that you raised was from Credit Suisse Next? Aki Eldar: Only from Credit Suisse Next, which was also a vote of trust coming from a customer. Sramana Mitra: What’s the next milestone? Aki Eldar: The next milestone is we’re expanding worldwide. We have an office in the US.
Sramana Mitra: Is this the company that you’re running now? Fred Hsu: No, that company was actually called Oversee. It had started around 2000. It was completely bootstrapped. Our first investor was my mom. She helped us buy our first server. That company grew from zero to eventually $230 million in annual revenues from 2000 to
Sramana Mitra: What year did you get that customer? Aki Eldar: 2010. Sramana Mitra: The financial crisis has settled a little bit. I was raising my eyebrows that you got a financial institution. A little bit of time had passed from the calamity. Aki Eldar: They had a huge problem. We were the only one
If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page. Fred has bootstrapped two companies with huge amounts of revenue. The first, he sold to a private equity firm. The second, he is still running. Amazing story! Sramana Mitra: Let’s get started at the beginning of your personal story. Where
Sramana Mitra: I’m going to switch the line of questioning a little bit to the story of your entrepreneurial story. Let’s go back to eight years ago when you and your brother left your respective jobs to start this company. You both had deep experience in the security domain. You went and talked to Shlomo
Sramana Mitra: Very good. It’s wonderful to see that you pulled a hardcore technology product company out of India. Varun Singh: You asked me earlier where the engineers were from. They’re from Veritas and IBM. Sramana Mitra: It’s a good place to hire from. That’s a good thing about India right now. There are actually
Sramana Mitra: What are the types of data and the sources of data that you’re securing? You talked about email earlier. Aki Eldar: We’re talking about any unstructured data. Unstructured data could be emails, files, or documents. Regarding your question about the source, it could be any source. It could be any application. It could be