Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How much were they doing at that point?

Vince Steckler: In 2008, they did about $18 million in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: This was all self-financed?

Vince Steckler: Yes. The company had actually never taken any investment into its treasury. The company, by the way, is a Unicorn. We’re worth well over a billion dollars. They were doing $18 million in 2008 and this year, will do about $300 million. They did meet with some VCs. They found one VC who told them three things. One, don’t diversify your business. Two, you don’t need an investor, which is strange coming from a VC.

Sramana Mitra: Strange and true actually. I’m amazed to see that level of integrity. >>>

Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 2)

Vince Steckler: We transformed Asia from Symantec’s worst performing region to the best performing region. I drove that for three years. Then I got posted back to the States to be the number two in the consumer business. I ran the worldwide sales and all the e-commerce and online marketing for Norton. But I was still living in Singapore. My wife and I had a new baby. She didn’t really like living in the US – no family, no friends, and I was on the road all the time. I was actually commuting from Singapore to Cupertino twice a month. I don’t have any sympathy who complain about the one-hour commute. Mine was a 24-hour commute. It’s a long haul.

I calculated the number of days in the US. For two years running, it was 18%. Strangely enough, it was also 18% for Singapore. 18% of my time was in the home office. 18% of my time at home, and 64% of the time on the road. >>>

Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 1)

Vince has built a $300 million a year security software company out of Prague, with a global customer base. Fantastic story, a must read!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Vince Steckler: I’m originally from LA but I don’t remember much of it. We left when I was two. I grew up in Orange County in a place that we lovingly call Garbage Grove. Its official name was Garden Grove. I was always a geek. I studied Mathematics and Computer Science in school. I finished two Bachelor’s in four years.

Sramana Mitra: Where was that?

Vince Steckler: University of California – Irvine. This was back in the late 70s. I graduated in 1980. I kicked around as a programmer for many years. I worked on, strangely enough, nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons safety. I eventually moved back to the East Coast, working >>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Nutanix Gives VMWare Tough Competition

Today, most IT functions of organizations are moving away from siloed service providers to a consolidated services provider. This has led to the evolution of the hyperconverged infrastructure where compute and storage capabilities are integrated so that they can run adjacent to each other on the same physical hardware. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Nutanix is giving bigger vendors a tough fight in this space. >>>

Looking Forward to the Real Silicon Valley

I am one of those people who doesn’t like bubbles. Right now, we’re experiencing a bubble in Silicon Valley with funny money driving weird, unproductive behavior.

Some people want this party to go on.

I don’t.

Francisco Dao has written a poorly analyzed post on VentureBeat titled What will happen to Silicon Valley when demographics strangle the global economy:

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The Funny Money Unicorn Business

For those who follow my writings on Billion Dollar Unicorns, you know that I am not a fan of ‘Valuation Without Revenue‘ Unicorns. The mindless inflow of capital into companies with dubious monetization ability irritates me. This week, some important coverage has emerged on the games VCs are playing to achieve Unicorn status for their portfolio companies. The most important, must-read piece on the subject is from Heidi Roizen, Operating Partner at DFJ: How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Hortonworks Needs To Deliver Results

A Markets and Markets report on Hadoop estimates the total Hadoop market to grow 55% annually to be worth $13.95 billion by 2017. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Hortonworks is one successful player in this rapidly growing Hadoop market.

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The Commoditization of Venture Capital

The venture capital market is getting more and more irrational every day. VentureBeat just reported this week that VCs are ‘collecting logos’ of unicorn companies.

According to Pitchbook, more than 60 percent of all VC-invested capital went to rounds of more than $25 million in 2014, the highest percentage since the dotcom boom. There were 414 rounds of $25+ million last year, 50 percent more than the 276 rounds in 2013. VC capital invested jumped $20 billion from 2013 to 2014, while the number of financings fell by 16 percent.

Historically, private company valuations have largely been tied to valuations in the public market. But there is now growing concern that VC valuations have exceeded reasonable public valuations — a dangerous sign. Facebook’s $22 billion acquisition of WhatsApp has inflated valuation expectations. Meanwhile, potential tech buyers such as Google, Yahoo, Alibaba, Apple, and Microsoft have tens of billions of dollars in cash holdings. Series D+ valuations saw a 50 percent jump from 2013 to 2014. Valuations now exceed some of the closely watched historical exit parameters. We’ve also seen a significant increase in median Series B valuations. Capital invested in late-stage rounds was up to $11.5 billion in Q2 and $10.6 billion in Q4, representing the only two $10+ billion quarters since the dotcom boom. Seed rounds declined to 221 in Q4 versus 564 in Q1 2013.

I discussed the danger of overvalued private unicorns in Why Not All Private Unicorns Will Become Public Unicorns earlier.

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