Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 6)

SM: I have known other companies that have acquired venture-owned companies, and they did it via an all-cash transaction. The CEO worked out a valuation with the acquisition company, then went back to his investors and presented the deal and raised the cash to make the acquisition happen. GS: Cash is easier, but those deals

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Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 5)

SM: How did you accomplish the financial engineering of the company ramp and product development? GS: Series A was $8 million, which the company had in place before I arrived. That was enough to build the security product.

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 4)

SM: When you were flying out to your 25 potential customers and converting three of them into very large customers, what was the competitive landscape? GS: There were a lot of existing vendors. CipherTrust was a player; it turned into Secure Computing and was then bought by McAfee.

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 3)

SM: Once you had a large enterprise willing to test the product for the first time, how did you handle the test? GS: I put our engineering team on-site because I knew that they would find bugs. You can’t deploy new technology and not find bugs.

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 2)

SM: How did Eric find you and convince you to join Proofpoint? GS: He had a search partner who helped him identify people, and they made the connection. It was a classic Valley network deal. We got to know each other and we liked each other. We thought we were a good fit.

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 1)

Gary Steele is the CEO of Proofpoint, a company which is a leader in e-mail security, data loss prevention, and e-mail archiving solutions. Prior to joining Proofpoint, Gary served as the CEO of Portera, an applications company delivering solutions for the professional services industry. Prior to Portera, Gary was the vice president and general manager

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Cleantech In Food: Purfresh CEO Dave Cope (Part 7)

SM: What are some of the other shifts in strategy you have had in the company, other than the move from water to food? DC: Providing solutions throughout the supply chain was very significant. Another was to add an informatics layer to everything we have. The jury is still out on whether I have made

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Cleantech In Food: Purfresh CEO Dave Cope (Part 6)

SM: How much of the market do you think you have penetrated? DC: We will do just north of $11 million this year. We are different in that we have 500 customers in 50 countries around the world. We are at Series D, which I would normally equate with a company with really high revenues.

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