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

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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

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Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to launch the SaaS version of this product? When did you start selling that product? J. Paul Haynes: A year. Sramana Mitra: We are talking 2011. J. Paul Haynes: Yes. Sramana Mitra: So in 2012, you were a SaaS  company?

Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where did you raise money? You said you worked with some investors that you had prior relationships with and who wanted to get in early. Are these Canadian investors? J. Paul Haynes: The first investor was Venture Link, which was Toronto-based. They came in fairly early. They have another affiliate firm. The government

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Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: For the Series A investors, what did you tell them you were going to do? What problem were you going to solve? J. Paul Haynes: I described to them the problem of solving cyber security in the mid-market. Everybody in the industry at that time appeared to be focused on the enterprise. We

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Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Before all this, it sounds like you started doing companies in ’76. I don’t think we have enough time to cover that long a story. It sounds like you have a background in enterprise security software. Could you give us a little bit of an idea about what you did before? J. Paul

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Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  There are opportunities of building cloud businesses focused on mid-market customers, and many entrepreneurs are leveraging those to build compelling businesses. eSentire’s strategy is one worth looking at closely. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were

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