How To Defend Your Dream Against All Odds: Alex Bouzari, CEO of DataDirect Networks (Part 1)

Alex Bouzari is the co-founder and CEO of DataDirect Networks. Prior to co-founding DataDirect Networks, he served as CEO of Personal Writer, Inc., and co-founder of MegaDrive Systems, Inc. Bouzari has bachelor of science degrees in engineering and economics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and has done graduate work in engineering at the

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Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 7)

Sramana: The talent management space today is much more mature than it was in 2001. SuccessFactors and Taleo have both had very successful IPOs. Would you talk some about the evolution of the industry and how you evolved with the industry? Adam Miller: When we started, we were the small fish in a big pond.

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Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 5)

Sramana: Essentially, your angel financing allowed you to build your product and develop your pipeline? Adam Miller: Exactly. We were also raising incremental money throughout in very small chunks. I was perpetually raising money. I was doing that in parallel with everything else for years.

Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 4)

Sramana: When you decided you were going to sell to large enterprises and you were going to aggregate the online training providers, what did you learn in terms of demand? What were enterprises looking for? Adam Miller: Back then, there were already competitors in the space. We assumed that as a startup we would have

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Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 3)

Sramana: How long did you do that job? Adam Miller: I did that job for two years, through the summer of 1999. Sramana: By then the dot-com bubble was in full swing. Adam Miller: More important for me, I had developed a specific interest in education and technology.

Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 2)

Sramana: How long were you able to keep that crazy schedule? Adam Miller: I did that for almost three years. It was intense. When I look at the pictures from back then, I can tell that I did not sleep. I did have a very good time because I got my closest friends from high

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Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 1)

Adam Miller is the founder, president and CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, a leading SaaS company. Prior to founding Cornerstone, he was a lawyer and an investment banker. He worked in corporate finance with Schroders (now Citi Financial) and an affiliate of Montgomery Securities (now Bank of America), supporting clients with private equity and public financing,

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 7)

Sramana: Would you talk some about the CEO transition? When did you bring in Woody Hobbs? Lukas Biewald: We brought him in a couple of months ago. The business had grown and we were selling to bigger and bigger customers and were eyeing finance, healthcare, and other industries that I had no experience with. I

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