Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of functionality trends, what’s changing? Don Mal: As artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have become more available to software companies, you can have AI and machine learning integrated into analytics-type functionality to get to important data faster. Sramana Mitra: Do you have this in deployment?

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 1)

Don Mal discusses the trends in budgeting and forecasting software. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by giving our audience a little bit of context. We have talked to you before, so we’ll just link to the previous interview. People can catch-up from there.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: By the time you raised Series A, you already had $20 million in revenue? Don Mal: Yes. Sramana Mitra: Can you discuss what kind of equity cap table did you raise that money on? We have a very big philosophy in our program where if you operate tightly with small amounts of capital,

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Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Excel has huge training out there. People know how to use Excel. From a user adoption point of view, Excel-based interface would have a much bigger adoption. Don Mal: My favorite line is that only Facebook has as many users. Sramana Mitra: How much money did you raise? Don Mal: We raised $1.3

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Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Why was he calling you? How did you know this guy? Don Mal: We were together at Clarity. This is Rishi Grover, one of the Co-Founders. He’s 20 years younger than me. This is where it connects to the golf business. He said, “I need someone to help raise the money. We need

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Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next? Don Mal: Then I went to another software company but only for a very brief time. When I went to the services company, even though it was successful, I decided that I missed selling products. I did a couple of things. While I was in the consulting business, I did

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Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay with the company? Don Mal: I was there for four to five years. I was 24 years old when I started there. I grew from inside sales to outside sales, and I eventually led sales at SoftKey when I was 27 years old. I had about 18 sales

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Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You grew up watching that way of life or owning your own business. That’s very common actually. I’m also an entrepreneur’s daughter. It makes that very big difference. Don Mal: I used to help my father in different roles. When I turned 16, I actually got a job selling insurance to fishermen. There

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