Sramana: You talked about sticking with your core market segment of companies with revenues between $75 million and $1 billion. How do you feel when large enterprises call you? How do you deal with those queries? Jon Kondo: We like those queries because they tend to be big opportunities. Large enterprises tend to spend a
Sramana: When you came into the market in 2008, what did you notice in the competitive landscape? Who were you seeing in deals? Jon Kondo: We saw the big guys in the space, although they did not take us seriously at first. We saw Oracle, SAP and IBM. Now, they take us a lot more
Sramana: What is the background and history of Host Analytics? Jon Kondo: Host Analytics was founded in 2000 by Jim Eberlin. He had the idea of rented software in corporate performance management. He bootstrapped the company for the first seven years. He waited for the marketplace to catch up to his vision. Once it did,
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Jon Kondo is the CEO of Host Analytics, a provider of cloud-based analytics and business intelligence tools. Prior to serving as the CEO at Host Analytics, Jon was North American Group Vice President at Oracle where he was responsible for 200+ people and all EPM revenue.
Sramana: If you are seriously thinking about heading out to get an executive MBA, then I will tell you to save yourself the money and trouble. Just do 1M/1M. We teach everything about entrepreneurship in a very efficient program for just $1,000 a year. Valerie Holstein: Maybe I should do that. I will definitely look
Sramana: What are the functions that you staff for today? Customer support and shipping are obviously key roles. Valerie Holstein: Right now it is mostly customer service associates and outside sales people. We have a reverse approach to business. We are technically 100% e-commerce, but we recognize that in order to leverage our exposure, we
Sramana: You had massive growth from $200,000 in revenue to $16 million in revenue. What did you do in terms of marketing? Valerie Holstein: Believe it or not, I was not doing any advertising at that time. It was all organic growth and traffic. I could not go fast enough to serve the customer base
Sramana: How much revenue did you generate from CableOrganizer.com during your first year? Valerie Holstein: I did a little bit under $200,000. Sramana: Wow! That is not bad for a garage, grass roots operation. Valerie Holstein: Every penny that we made was reinvested in purchasing more product for inventory. Whatever was not reinvested in additional