Sramana: So you built WorkMarket to help freelancers? Jeff Leventhal: WorkMarket is a solution that allows people to manage freelance at scale. If your company is spending money on a thousand freelancers a day because your company has committed millions to that strategy, WorkMarket is a solution that will allow you to find people and
Sramana Mitra: So roughly speaking, it is end of 2007. How much venture capital did you raise at that point and how long did it take you to get the first product out of the door? Eric Burns: We had an extreme advantage here, which is that we have the opportunity to research that market
Sramana: In 2005, you raised money for OnForce. What did you use that money for? Jeff Leventhal: I invested in the team. I believe value creation for a business depends on the idea, team, product, first date of sale, cash flow break even, and exit. Those are the most important moments for an entrepreneur in
Sramana Mitra: Are you assuming that there are three parallel streams being picked up? Where is the mixing happening? If you say there’s no post-production, is the technology determining how to do the mixing or which stream to use in the edited version or are you showing all three screens in different windows? Eric Burns: It’s
Sramana: How did you handle the feedback once you realized the services groups were the ones who had a need for your product? Jeff Leventhal: We did a product iteration to configure the product more in line with client needs. That company became a $100 million dollar company within a few years. Sramana: Was that
Sramana Mitra: They basically asked you to become the CEO of this entity that was already funded? Eric Burns: I actually became the Chief Technology Officer because my competencies at that time were that of an engineer. I’m now the Chief Product Officer and I’ve done a lot of the CEO duties. We have this
Sramana: Did you build it beyond the $12 million that you hit in year two or did you sell the business? Jeff Leventhal: In 1998, we had the opportunity to sell the business to a public communications company and they are still running the business today. Sramana: How much did you sell that business for?
Eric Burns: I got to work on some interesting things like building a search engine from scratch, designing a large-scale storage system, and building a UI—basically, building an entire system from the ground-up. One of the other projects that I got involved in, even as early as 1998, was capturing lectures in a classroom. CMU