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HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 2)
Sramana: How did you view the competition when you were starting Bunndle? Maxine Manafy: When I started Bunndle there were a couple of competitors in the market. They were not so much concerned about performance, activation and retention. They were really just trying to get as much money as they could from smaller guys. As
Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Maxine Manafy is the founder and CEO of Bunndle, an app distribution network. Prior to founding Bunndle she held various sales and executive positions with companies such as Viximo, Mochi Media, Yahoo, KLA-Tencor and Intel. She is a graduate of San Jose State University and Stanford.
Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 7)
Sramana: What kind of penetration do you think you have into your TAM, specifically to sales forces? Chris Cabrera: I think it is still a pretty nascent market and the number is still low. Sramana: Is the TAM basically your revenue and Callidus’ revenue? Chris Cabrera: Oracle has some products in this area, and they
Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 6)
Sramana: What are some of the key strategic points today? What needs to be done for you to scale to a $500 million company? Chris Cabrera: We need continued solid execution with growth rates exceeding 30%. We are the only pure-play SaaS comp player as well as the experts in comp. We have terabytes of
Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 5)
Sramana: The period over which you have built your company is also the same time as the emergence of SaaS. What was the hardest aspect of scaling on the customer side? Chris Cabrera: In the early years there was a lot of skepticism of SaaS. In the early days we were relegated to companies that
Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 4)
Sramana: Did you build the product around the five companies who indicated they would purchase your solution? Chris Cabrera: We took all of that into consideration. Of the five companies that we showed to the VCs we ultimately ended up closing four of those companies. It worked out very well and that is what allowed
Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 3)
Sramana: What was your observation of the market in 2005 that prompted you to found Xactly? Chris Cabrera: At Callidus we were very focused on the high end of the market. Our systems were very expensive. We had traditional enterprise software, and companies paid a lot of money to get installed. These deals could be
Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 2)
Sramana: Selling the first few instances of a new product is vastly different than building a sales organization that the market has validated and accepted. Could you talk about what is unique about the early sales process? You don’t have reference accounts, you are selling a new concept. What have you learned over the years?