Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 3)

Sramana: How long did you do that job? Adam Miller: I did that job for two years, through the summer of 1999. Sramana: By then the dot-com bubble was in full swing. Adam Miller: More important for me, I had developed a specific interest in education and technology.

Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 2)

Sramana: How long were you able to keep that crazy schedule? Adam Miller: I did that for almost three years. It was intense. When I look at the pictures from back then, I can tell that I did not sleep. I did have a very good time because I got my closest friends from high

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Letting Customers Design The Product: Cornerstone OnDemand CEO Adam Miller (Part 1)

Adam Miller is the founder, president and CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, a leading SaaS company. Prior to founding Cornerstone, he was a lawyer and an investment banker. He worked in corporate finance with Schroders (now Citi Financial) and an affiliate of Montgomery Securities (now Bank of America), supporting clients with private equity and public financing,

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 7)

Sramana: Would you talk some about the CEO transition? When did you bring in Woody Hobbs? Lukas Biewald: We brought him in a couple of months ago. The business had grown and we were selling to bigger and bigger customers and were eyeing finance, healthcare, and other industries that I had no experience with. I

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 6)

Sramana: In 2009, what was your average contract size for an enterprise deal? Lukas Biewald: In 2009, we were targeting five-digit contracts. In 2010, we realized we could get away with six-digit contracts. Inside sales is one of our major penetration points when it comes to enterprises. We don’t do the inside sales, we just

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 5)

Sramana: After you gained your first few small startup customers, how did you go about building the company? What were the big milestones? Lukas Biewald: There really was not a single moment where I suddenly realized that we would make it. There were a couple of things that added up for us. We had a

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 4)

Sramana: You mentioned that eBay is one of your customers. What do you do for eBay? Lukas Biewald: We do a lot of different things for them. The most mature application for them is classifying products. They get a lot of products in from their users, and they want to make sure they are going

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CrowdSourcing Repetitive Tasks: CrowdFlower Founder Lukas Biewald (Part 3)

Sramana: What is your business model? Lukas Biewald: Our business model is pretty simple. We quote customers the price for completed tasks, and upon completing those tasks recieve payment regardless of the cost we incur competing those tasks. We assume the price risk. Let’s suppose a company has a large directory of other businesses and

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