This interview gives us an opportunity to speak with a seasoned enterprise software entrepreneur who has founded and scaled a number of companies, including Taleo that went public, and was eventually acquired by Oracle for $1.9 billion. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your personal story. Where are you from? Where were you
Harman Singh: I’m a fundamental believer that this is going to go a long way. No matter how much I have in the business, it’s the reputation that’s going to be there forever—not the exit. That was the gist of the whole thing. We are where we are and the investors are happy. Sramana Mitra:
Eugene Laney: We also have a hybrid model where we have customers working with e-commerce companies using those companies as their domestic mailboxes. You have an individual who might be in the UK and wants to purchase a number of e-commerce goods from a domestic-only retailer who sells through e-commerce. Their goods would then be consolidated in
Sramana Mitra: These two competitors that are heavily venture funded, what are their names? What is the situation right now? Are they comparable in revenue numbers? What metrics are you tracking for them? Steve Liu: Good question. I don’t know their revenue numbers. It’s an interesting time in this market right now. One of them
Sramana Mitra: How much were you charging? Harman Singh: On an average, $250 per educator per year. In those days, it was about $150. Sramana Mitra: It was a per educator pricing? Harman Singh: Yes. Sramana Mitra: When you worked the test prep academy, were they buying for multiple educators? What would a test prep
Sramana Mitra: It sounds like the business was starting to become more of an enterprise business from there on. Steve Liu: Very much so, yes. Sramana Mitra: How did it scale? 2008 was when you made the transition to the new CEO. Between 2008 and 2014, what are the milestones and scaling strategies that you
Sramana Mitra: I don’t know if you’ve read it, we’ve released a book called Bootstrapping Using Services where we deal with this topic extensively. We have companies that have gone up to $25 million in revenue using bootstrapping using services. This is a very viable strategy. However, you have to do it right. Harman Singh:
Sramana Mitra: Was the company based in Washington? Steve Liu: In Atlanta, actually. The hospital medicine job that I got was in Atlanta. Sramana Mitra: I see. You recruited a CEO who would run the company in Atlanta? Steve Liu: Exactly. Sramana Mitra: How did you find this person? What was the criteria and process