Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 7)

SM: Travel is a “context” that has great relevance for your business. JH: We think about that opportunity a lot. What is nice about our business is our customers engage with us frequently throughout the year. We drive our business in a couple of ways. First, you have your typical holidays.

Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 3)

SM: Before we move on with your Shutterfly story, can you shift gears for a second and tell us the history of Shutterfly? JH: Shutterfly was founded in 1999 by two employees of Silicon Graphics – Eva Manolis and Dan Baum. Eva was a product person and Dan was a technology person. They teamed up

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 2)

SM: What timeframe was this work with Raging Bull going on? JH: This was in the 1998 – 1999 timeframe. We then raised a $20M round with CNET, CMGI put in money and we started doing some television on CNet TV. We had a financial hour and hired some on-air talent. It was a really

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 1)

SM: Jeff, let’s start with your personal background. JH: I grew up in Brooklyn NY, lived in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Washington D.C. and now out here in San Francisco. SM: Why so many locations? JH: Mostly in New York and New Jersey as a child. I was a strategy consultant and my

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Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 14)

SM: Were they willing to fill out the spreadsheet you sent over? LD: Most people are like, “this is insane … what are you, a root canal?”

Lars Dalgaard and his Success Factors (Part 13)

SM: What does it cost to buy a SuccessFactors solution? LD: It ranges. We have multi-million dollar deals. We just told Wall Street (because we want to ensure they know we have a good future so we did something we normally would not do) that in the first 5 weeks of 2008 we did a

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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.”