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From Australia to Silicon Valley: Leigh Jasper’s Amazing Journey with Aconex (Part 2)
Sramana: Let’s talk about the beginning of the company. You said you went out to raise venture capital in 2000. Was your proposal based on a prototype or just an idea? Leigh Jasper: Back then it was very hard to build a prototype. Today there are a lot of tools you can mash together to
From Australia to Silicon Valley: Leigh Jasper’s Amazing Journey with Aconex (Part 1)
Leigh Jasper is the co-founder and CEO of Aconex, on online collaboration platform for construction, infrastructure, energy and resources projects. He has led the company through a decade of rapid growth, during which it became the world’s largest provider of project collaboration solutions for the construction, energy and resources sectors. Prior to founding Aconex, he
Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 7)
Sramana: I take it that your VCs are not antsy about an exit at the moment. John Berkowitz: They are very content. In any scenario we were a good decision for them. Valuation is increasing and business is going good. We are not getting any pressure to do anything that we are not already doing.
Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 6)
Sramana: Do you have any other serious competitors who target small, locally owned businesses? Ben Rubenstein: The former Yellow Pages would be. In terms of PPC and bid optimization on the local market, the only company that could compete with us is ReachLocal. They are at a higher price point than us and they are
Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 5)
Sramana: Let’s talk some about the technology at Yodle. What are the key technology components behind your offering? John Berkowitz: We realized that it was not intuitive for small businesses to go online and set up a paid search campaign. Most of them do not have the time or expertise to manage the nuances of
Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 4)
Sramana: The company had hit $3.5 million in revenue, you brought in venture capital and a new CEO. What strategic decisions were made to put the company on a faster growth curve? Ben Rubenstein: This was the time when we were starting to scale. There were a lot of things we were doing in the
Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 3)
Sramana: There are a lot of angel investors who are also great business mentors. I think turning to VCs was the right move because typically angel investors do not invest in companies that already have over a million dollars in revenue. John Berkowitz: That is true. We did not have to raise a large amount
Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 2)
Sramana: When you were selling local advertising, where was it placed online? Ben Rubenstein: The first thing we did was create a website for our clients because most of them did not have one. We then took that website and distributed it to the major search engines as well as 75 other online search directories.