Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 12)

SM: Very early on in this conversation, you mentioned you are really into metrics. Talk about metrics you track, metrics you manage your company by. LD: We can start out with late-stage pipeline coverage. That is how I know our business is healthy. Late –stage pipeline coverage of each area and each sector is probably

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Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 11)

SM: You don’t face as much competition in small business either. LD: No, you don’t. There is no competition. That was Eric Dunn’s decision point on the Board. “That alone,” he said, “is an argument for me. We struggled so much in Intuit when we went up market to make the product scale.”

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 10)

SM: How did you go from 2001 with $1M in financing to the scale you are today? Didn’t you have to finance the company further? LD: I basically did not have a life for six years. SM: Didn’t you need more financial resources? LD: When you are cash flow positive, you don’t need any more

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Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 9)

SM: How do you view your competitive landscape right now? The HR, human capital landscape is moving online and becoming very big as we are penetrating more of the mid-market and small businesses. How do you view the rest of the players in your ecosystem and how do you position? LD: Let’s just look at

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Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 8)

SM: The “mush” factor in corporations is amazing. LD: That is a beautiful word for it. Now we have products through which you know what people you need in different roles. Now you need to recruit people to fit into those slots, so we built a recruiting product to get them into the right places

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Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 7)

SM: Who finally funded your dream? LD: David Strohm from Greylock. SM: How did you get to David? LD: He was involved in one of the companies, and he was the most skeptical, and that is why I liked him. I don’t like people you can win over easily. He just sat there and looked

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Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 5)

SM: When working with smart people, it always pays to explain why. LD: Exactly, and they will ask 15 questions to get there if they need to. To this day I adore them. They cannot do anything until they know why. I love that. That was the biggest learning for me was how to manage

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Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 4)

SM: Your technology background is nominal by Silicon Valley standards, it seems. LD: Absolutely. At that time I was a little more humble. I thought technology was intimidating even though I had used it in my different jobs.