Rolling Up Professional Networks: Dan Serfaty, CEO of Viadeo (Part 3)

Sramana: What did you do after you sold the tourist business in 1991? Dan Serfaty: During the second year of that company, I started another company from scratch with a friend of mine. The frontier in Europe opened in 1993. Up to that time it was difficult to import goods from one country to another.

Rolling Up Professional Networks: Dan Serfaty, CEO of Viadeo (Part 2)

Sramana: What did you do once you graduated from HEC? Dan Serfaty: I graduated in 1987. I worked for two years in Italy, which is where I met my wife. I worked in marketing. In France, military service was mandatory at the time, and a way to avoid doing it was for the best students

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Rolling Up Professional Networks: Dan Serfaty, CEO of Viadeo (Part 1)

Dan Serfaty is the founder and CEO of Viadeo, a company he launched with Thierry Lunati in September 2004. Today it is one of the leading worldwide professional social networks. Viadeo was initially conceived as a club to build bridges between private equity groups and entrepreneurs. Prior to launching Viadeo, he founded a tourism company,

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Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 7)

Sramana: How have you managed to bring together operations from each acquisition and roll them up into a single entity? Karl Maier: We have been very happy with the results we have achieved over the past two years by running our business in accordance with our strategy map. We have it on one sheet of

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Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 6)

Sramana: What do you want to do with the company? Are you going to continue down the roll-up path? Karl Maier: That is part of the strategy. From day one we have had a two-pronged strategy, and the first prong is to consolidate. We will continue down that path. We do not need equity to

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Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 5)

Sramana: Is the workforce widely distributed? Karl Maier: We have built a shared service center that has allowed us to centralize back-office operations here in Colorado. We have 45 people here and we handle legal, HR, new product development, and IT.

Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 4)

Sramana: How did you actually accomplish a roll-up in mystery shopping to start a company? What was your next step? Karl Maier: The first step was to conduct research to answer the basic questions such as market size, value proposition, and market competition. Paul Berberian, Rushton McGarr, and I then spent three months bootstrapping the

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Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 3)

Sramana: What is the story behind Market Force? Karl Maier: There is a serial entrepreneur in the Boulder area whom I have known for years. I had just sold Vector, and he had just left the board of Raindance Communications. We were talking, and I said that I felt I was a bit too young

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