Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 7)

SM: Your Series A investors are reaching the seven-year point and are probably looking for an exit. GS: They are long-term, patient investors. They are not looking for a short-term returns in order to raise their next fund. We are in a very different spot from what other folks could be.

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 6)

SM: I have known other companies that have acquired venture-owned companies, and they did it via an all-cash transaction. The CEO worked out a valuation with the acquisition company, then went back to his investors and presented the deal and raised the cash to make the acquisition happen. GS: Cash is easier, but those deals

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Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 5)

SM: How did you accomplish the financial engineering of the company ramp and product development? GS: Series A was $8 million, which the company had in place before I arrived. That was enough to build the security product.

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 4)

SM: When you were flying out to your 25 potential customers and converting three of them into very large customers, what was the competitive landscape? GS: There were a lot of existing vendors. CipherTrust was a player; it turned into Secure Computing and was then bought by McAfee.

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 3)

SM: Once you had a large enterprise willing to test the product for the first time, how did you handle the test? GS: I put our engineering team on-site because I knew that they would find bugs. You can’t deploy new technology and not find bugs.

Vision India 2020 Book Review: For All The Budding Entrepreneurs

Prith Banerjee is Senior Vice President of Research and Director of HP Labs, Hewlett Packard Company.  Here is his review of Vision India 2020 by Sramana Mitra: “I read Vision India 2020 last month.  The book is commendable on two fronts.  Each of the business case studies Sramana introduces in her book constitutes a real business case

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Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 2)

SM: How did Eric find you and convince you to join Proofpoint? GS: He had a search partner who helped him identify people, and they made the connection. It was a classic Valley network deal. We got to know each other and we liked each other. We thought we were a good fit.

Rolling Up E-mail Security SaaS: Gary Steele, CEO Of Proofpoint (Part 1)

Gary Steele is the CEO of Proofpoint, a company which is a leader in e-mail security, data loss prevention, and e-mail archiving solutions. Prior to joining Proofpoint, Gary served as the CEO of Portera, an applications company delivering solutions for the professional services industry. Prior to Portera, Gary was the vice president and general manager

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