Sramana Mitra: You seem to be enjoying the process of starting something, figuring a niche, and getting it to a certain amount of revenue. The first one you scaled to $50 million in revenue, which was a substantial amount of revenue. It sounds like you like to figure it out and then sell the company. Is
Sramana Mitra: What is it about the hedge fund space in terms of work flows or virtualization? What specifically is different in that space versus other verticals? Chris Grandi: There are really two things that make the hedge fund space different. One is the level of service. Because of what hedge fund managers do and
Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to? Andrew Rubin: It was in 1998 that I graduated from university. Sramana Mitra: How long did you work in the first job? Andrew Rubin: I stayed in my first job for under five years. Sramana Mitra: This brings us to about 2003 then? Andrew Rubin:
Sramana Mitra: How much did you sell it for? Todd Dunlop: Unfortunately, I can’t disclose that. Sramana Mitra: You’ve made a substantial amount of money in that exit so that whatever you then chose to do next, you had capital available? Todd Dunlop: That’s correct. Sramana Mitra: What was the next venture? Todd Dunlop: From
Sramana Mitra: What was going to be the new company? What did you find that warrants doing another company? Chris Grandi: This is one thing that I always tell the entrepreneurs I speak to. You always hear about entrepreneurs who start a company when they’re super young and don’t have a lot of experience, and
Concept financings are extremely rare in the industry these days, but here is a story of an entrepreneur who did raise $8 million on a concept from Andreessen Horowitz. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
Sramana Mitra: What were the implications on your team? What did you need to do to scale from a team point of view? Todd Dunlop: One of the things that we always did was try to figure out how to get the best professional services. Very early on, when we went from four people to
Sramana Mitra: Let’s take that story chronologically. You started that in 2004? Todd Dunlop: Yes. We always talked about how we got started. It was sort of bootstrapping. Sramana Mitra: You said AdWords was just coming on. You essentially helped companies understand AdWords and market through AdWords. That’s what you were doing? Todd Dunlop: We