How to Manage A Successful Pivot: Bullhorn CEO Art Papas (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Before we go on to 2008, give me a bit more detail about the strategy of building the business. You started with this recruiter CRM system as you described it. How much business did you do in the recruiter vertical? It sounds like that’s you’re primary vertical in the beginning, right? Art Papas: It

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How to Manage A Successful Pivot: Bullhorn CEO Art Papas (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was it a large recruiting firm? Art Papas: It was mid-sized. There was about 45 people. It wasn’t a huge business. For them, all of a sudden, they’re able to service national accounts. It was a big deal during the recession. He was really looking for ways to get his business going. He was now

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Building a Technology Product Company From India: Varun Singh, Founder and CTO of ScaleArc (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Very good. It’s wonderful to see that you pulled a hardcore technology product company out of India. Varun Singh: You asked me earlier where the engineers were from. They’re from Veritas and IBM. Sramana Mitra: It’s a good place to hire from. That’s a good thing about India right now. There are actually

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Building a Technology Product Company From India: Varun Singh, Founder and CTO of ScaleArc (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You have good defensible IP. Varun Singh: Very good defensible IP. That started a few conversation with other VCs. I started a conversation with BV Jagdish from NetScaler. I was one of BV’s largest customers in India. I knew him through Net Magic because he was on the Board. He introduced me to Justin

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Building a Technology Product Company From India: Varun Singh, Founder and CTO of ScaleArc (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You guys have already done six months prototype building with seven engineers? Varun Singh: Yes. Sramana Mitra: Nexus gave you money before that process started? Varun Singh: Nexus gave us our seed round. Sramana Mitra: How much? Varun Singh: $750,000. Sramana Mitra: How long did that take you?

Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: When you win big deals with enterprise customers, what is it that allows you to win these deals? Steven Boye: It is typically the quality of our products. Everybody that we compete with, they are currently Dropbox or Box users. Most of them are. For some reason, they like our solution better. Sramana Mitra:

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Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How many telcos do you have as customers today? Steven Boye: I think we have three today. AT&T is the biggest. What we’ve learned is that telcos are hard to work with. They are good once they engage, but it’s really a long sales cycle. In the years since, several things have happened.

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Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: That brings us to what? Steven Boye: Now we come up to 2006. We actually got funding from a company called Clearstone Venture Partners in LA. During 2006 to 2008, we also got Intel Capital and Cisco as strategic investors. Now, we started getting real money to build the company. Sramana Mitra: What was

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