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HOT TOPICS
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Woman Entrepreneur Building a Successful, VC Funded Business: Olivia Skuza, CEO of NuORDER (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Olivia has built a powerful B2B e-commerce business that connects wholesalers and retailers in categories like fashion and home furnishings. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
Bootstrapping a Global E-Commerce Company: SmartBuyGlasses CEO David Menning (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. David has bootstrapped a global e-commerce venture from Hong Kong. Splendid execution! Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? David Menning: I grew up in Sydney. I’ve
Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Can you explain the competitive landscape? Gero Decker: We offer a business transformation suite. In its entirety, it’s a new category. If you break it down into individual components, then you have small product categories. The component that has the largest footprint is called Process Manager and Collaboration Hub. The main competitors are
Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: How did the business grow as you brought that North American sales channel together? How did North America contribute to your revenue? Gero Decker: By now, they’re at roughly 25%. The lion’s share is still from Europe. We also have operations in Asia Pacific. It’s roughly 25% North America and 10% Asia Pacific.
Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: The next thing I would ask you is what was the process of fundraising? Were you fundraising in Germany? Where did you go out to raise money and what was the thinking? Gero Decker: We started getting inbound requests from investors pretty early on. We also got acquisition requests pretty early on, but
Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: This first customer went through. You got paid. What happens next? Gero Decker: Then we started building a real organization. We hired our first sales guy. We went from a company that was four people with interns to 15 people over the course of 12 months. The interesting that we had for me
Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: By the time you got to May 2009, how many of these 20,000 people who looked at this became customers? Gero Decker: Not many. The 20,000 people were not really interested in the notion of business process per se. They were rather interested in the notion of having a graphical design environment on
Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: How did the 20,000 people find out about it? Gero Decker: We didn’t know how they had access to the system. We searched the web for our project. We found out that a major news outlet had blogged about us and wrote an article saying something like “This is the future of applications.”