Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How is the customer base distributed? Are we talking Asian customers? How have you built the sales channel?

Dave Peters: We’ve got 13 telco customers across Australia, Asia, Middle East, and Africa. All of them are paying for recurring software fees and also for our managed marketing operations team. We have teams on the ground plus some centralized remote teams to provide the software and the services for them to run all of their customer value management.

Sramana Mitra: Do you sell direct or through channel partners? >>>

Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Was this the first funding?

Dave Peters: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: What happened after you got that first funding? What were the next major milestones or accomplishments?

Dave Peters: Based on that, we built up the team and started to develop the product further. We started to push the sales and marketing team. We managed to then win a deal with a telecommunications company in Singapore and a deal with Hong Kong Telecom in Hong Kong. Over the next 18 months, we won two more deals. They were license deals with maintenance and support. The one in Hong Kong was a multi-million dollar deal. We started to see good returns for the business.

Sramana Mitra: How did the revenue ramp from 2000 to 2005?
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Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: 1998 was when you started. How long from then did the sale happen?

Dave Peters: I think it’s about 2000.

Sramana Mitra: A couple of years later.

Dave Peters: Yes. I was consulting the first year or so. Then, we started selling it.

Sramana Mitra: How much were you charging for the product?

Dave Peters: We did a deal where it was an open book cost plus a percentage on the people to do the work. Then, there was an ongoing maintenance fee, but it was quite small. We were just covering the cost of our IT team in doing that first sale. It wasn’t a premium price at that point. >>>

Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Did you spec out the software that you were going to build?

Dave Peters: The way it worked was when I was in Paris, we built a custom-built software. I had actually licensed that software on an exclusive 15-year deal with that telco when I left. Because I didn’t have any capital, I said to the IT guys, “I’ll pay you guys a certain percentage every time I sell it.” We did that. I literally had a box of software and returned to Australia with that. After a few years, I put some money into getting it developed.

When I recruited a couple of guys to do that using my own funds, they told me, “This software is probably useful for that particular function but you might as well start again.” I wouldn’t have started if I didn’t have it. When the guys who knew about the software started looking at it, they said, “We’re better off starting from scratch.” They closed that box up and we started building the software from scratch, which I then led in terms of the design. >>>

Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to? What year were you thinking of starting a company of your own?

Dave Peters: I started in 1998.

Sramana Mitra: You were based in Paris at this point?

Dave Peters: Yes, I was in Paris. Everyone’s got email and computing is starting, but we’re a long way off the iPhone. Nokia is dominating the mobile phone world. I came back from Paris to Australia to relocate. My wife and I had our first child. That year, I changed countries. I started my own company, had my first child, and bought my first house. That was a pretty big year. I would not recommend doing that at all in one year, but that was what I did.

Sramana Mitra: When you decided to start the company, what was in your head? What kind of company did you want to start? What would that company do?
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Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What is the geographical center of gravity of the company? Is it still Norwegian?

Jorn Lyseggen: The center of gravity of the company is San Francisco. We moved to the US in 2005. I personally moved to the US in 2005. My management team is distributed all over the world. The organization is distributed in 50 offices on six continents. We are in all major economic centers of the world. In Asia, we are in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and New Delhi. We are also in the Middle East and South Africa. We are all over Europe, of course. In North America, we have 17 offices spread across Canada and US. We also have a handful of offices in Latin America.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you now in terms of revenue level? >>>

Bootstrapping from Australia: Emagine CEO Dave Peters (Part 1)

Dave Peters has managed to bootstrap a significant software company from Australia. The focus is on TELCO churn management, and the customer base is primarily Australian, Asian, and African. Read this interview to learn more of the nuances.

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?

Dave Peters: I’m Australian. I grew up in a little town of 8,000 people, about five hours west of Sydney. It was a farming community and my father was an Anglican minister. That’s a pretty unlikely starting point for an entrepreneur.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you do your schooling?
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Bootstrapping to $200 Million: Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: The sales model was inside sales, I presume, because of the price point that you quoted, yes?

Jorn Lyseggen: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: Obviously, you’ve grown at a very nice rate. You’ve self-financed this business. What else have you done from a strategic point of view that has helped you achieve this kind of success?

Jorn Lyseggen: At the core of what we have been doing at Meltwater is a very strong focus on culture. Culture is very important part of what we do. Back in business school when the professor came and talked about the importance of culture, I remember how oblivious I was of that. It just seemed very fluffy. Over the years, the more I worked with teams, it became clear to me that culture is really critical. >>>