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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
Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: Any other strategic moves that you made in building the company that are worth going over? Stefania Mallett: We made the choice from the start to deliberately build a culture of insane helpfulness. I can’t say that we use that phrase. We didn’t articulate that into those two words. We focused on providing
Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: But then you got to get them to come. That’s the tricky part. It’s usually true about marketplaces that one side adopts faster. If I’m thinking about your business, these caterers wanted the marketing angle that you provide. That’s the draw why these caterers would come. Stefania Mallett: Very much so. The story
Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to take an MVP out and when did you bring that to market? Stefania Mallett: We started by leasing software from a consumer residential food ordering platform. We thought, “How different can corporate catering orders be from consumer residential orders?” We were quite naive about that because
Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: How did you get involved with EZCater? Stefania Mallett: In early 2000 when people were looking for someone with gravitas, the investors of a company called BuzzPad reached out to me and asked me if I would come in as someone with gravitas to help the younger entrepreneurs who had founded that company.
Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 7)
Sramana Mitra: When you looked at your business through that lens, what were some of the salient points? J. Paul Haynes: Our retention rate was 99%. When I shared that with our next investor, they had never seen anything that high. Our customer acquisition cost was too low. From our perspective, you got to get
Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What happened to that company? Stefania Mallett: That worked really well. We had multiple clients. Then we sold the company to SILKNET Software, who merged with Kana Systems in California. It was a merger of two public companies. I think Kana has since changed its name to Kana Software. Honestly, my product disappeared. It was
Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: What was the growth rate from there on? Once you got to building the SaaS business, you zeroed in on the mid-market financial services vertical. You’ve defined your target audience very precisely. You’ve got this whole community of influencers around you. What kind of growth rate were you hitting? J. Paul Haynes: This
Building a Fast-Growth Marketplace: Stefania Mallett, CEO of EZCater (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What year does that bring us up to? Stefania Mallett: That was 1989. Sramana Mitra: That’s still pre-Internet. Stefania Mallett: It was still pre-Internet. I worked there until 1993. Then in 1993, I decided that it was time to try consulting. I had always worked for companies. I had never done any consulting. I