Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 4)

Sramana: How did you actually accomplish a roll-up in mystery shopping to start a company? What was your next step? Karl Maier: The first step was to conduct research to answer the basic questions such as market size, value proposition, and market competition. Paul Berberian, Rushton McGarr, and I then spent three months bootstrapping the

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Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 3)

Sramana: What is the story behind Market Force? Karl Maier: There is a serial entrepreneur in the Boulder area whom I have known for years. I had just sold Vector, and he had just left the board of Raindance Communications. We were talking, and I said that I felt I was a bit too young

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Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 2)

Sramana: What year did you move back to the States? Karl Maier: I came back in 1996. I graduated from college in 1989. I had a long-distance relationship with a girlfriend whom I worked with at the Bank of Boston.

Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 1)

Karl Maier is the founder and CEO of Market Force Information. Prior to founding Market Force Information, he was the executive chairman of the board of Vector ESP, a provider of professional information technology services. Before Vector, Mr. Maier was the chief executive officer of VIA NET.WORKS, a public international Internet service provider. Prior to

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Can You Do It All? Amy Pressman, President of Medallia (Part 7)

Sramana: Your customers seem to be your best form of marketing. Amy Pressman: We think about things like client services as a form of marketing. If you really wow your customers, they will take care of you.

Can You Do It All? Amy Pressman, President of Medallia (Part 6)

Sramana: As an entrepreneur, how do you balance the equity stake of founders and early employees with the inevitable exit? Amy Pressman: Silicon Valley is very much about technology and innovation. There is also a lot of innovation in how companies are started, run, and dealt with. If you look at more traditional liquidity events

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Can You Do It All? Amy Pressman, President of Medallia (Part 5)

Sramana: You mentioned earlier that you were not a very technical person. Did you lead the technology development efforts? Amy Pressman: No, we had a CTO for the first five years. He was a very strong, early startup type of CTO.

Can You Do It All? Amy Pressman, President of Medallia (Part 4)

Sramana: How do you enable companies to have dialogues with their customers? What is your method, and what technologies enables that method? Amy Pressman: If you are a customer of one of our clients, then soon after purchasing that product or staying at that hotel you would receive a survey from us.