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Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 7)
Sramana: That is the beauty of having a really solid set of customer relationships over a long period of time. They trust you and your expertise and are able to participate in the product definition process. That is a huge asset. Hemant Shah: It is a tremendous benefit. I have only worked in this startup.
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 6)
Sramana: What do you need to build these models in terms of data sets? How do you derive them? Hemant Shah: The thing that we really stayed true to was recognizing what our core competency was and was not. When we made the shift from earthquake risk to natural hazard risk, we knew that we
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 5)
Sramana: Most CEO changes fail miserably. Most VCs will tell you that they want an entrepreneur who will scale up to a certain point. They do not want a CEO change right out of the gate. Most of the relationships don’t work out, but you obviously were successful. What did he do that made it
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 4)
Sramana: Did you ever pursue venture funding? Hemant Shah: We were able to get venture funding in 1992. That was our first proper round of funding which allowed us to build out the business. Sramana: How many customers did you have before you were able to get venture funding? Hemant Shah: We initially had five
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 3)
Sramana: So you had the idea that you could approach your customers and ask them if they felt the problem was significant? Hemant Shah: Yes. Rather than shying away from the risk, they could have an alternative that was better than burying their heads in the sand. Some of them were so worried, they would
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 2)
Sramana: It sounds like you were targeting insurance companies. Hemant Shah: Exactly. From 1989 our initial business plan called out the insurance vertical world-wide as a core market. We served hundreds of insurers, re-insurers, and specialist hedge funds that take on financial risk directly or indirectly from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, global disease and pandemics.
Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Hemant Shah is the co-founder, president and CEO of RMS, a leader in catastrophic risk modeling. He co-founded RMS in 1989 based on his research work at Stanford University. Twenty years later, RMS is a global leader in developing models for things such as hurricanes, terrorist
Building a Global Software Company from France: BonitaSoft CEO Miguel Valdés-Faura (Part 7)
Sramana: How many people do you have in San Francisco versus France? Miguel Valdés-Faura: In France we have our headquarters and engineering based in one location, and our sales and marketing based in Paris. We have 70 people in our headquarters and 30 people in Paris. We have 25 people in the US, most of