Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Your customer base is enterprise customers?

David Steinberg: Yes, our customers are enterprise.

Sramana Mitra: You were just talking about specifically how you’ve differentiated and brought the pieces together using, to some extent, a roll-up strategy. Is that part of the strategy now?

David Steinberg: No, we’re not a roll-up strategy. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: These companies that you brought together to get the base level offering going, how did you identify them?

David Steinberg: That’s a great question. I took a core team from my last company who focused on M&A and corporate strategy. That team started looking around and calling everybody on earth. For example, we started the company in October of 2007, but we didn’t do our first deal until April of 2008.

Sramana Mitra: They were looking for companies within a certain domain. What constraints did you give them?

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Building A Unicorn Company By Resurrecting The Dead

We’ve looked at a number of Unicorn companies so far: Tableau, FireEye, RightNow, Palo Alto Networks and Kayak. Today, we look at SuccessFactors.

If you’ve been around long enough, you’ve heard this narrative before: The market is grinding to a halt, the IPO window shut, and only a few brave souls dare venture out into the turbulent seas. The mergers and acquisitions market is adrift as well; public companies are under stock price pressure; further down the value chain, the startups – especially the venture-funded ones – are stuck in an exit-starved no man’s land.

You can sit around, depressed, or as some technology startup veterans will tell you, you can pick up great technologies at rock-bottom prices and build businesses out of them. Big businesses.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: If we keep on this model where everything is going to be free, then the whole economic structure of capitalism is going to get destroyed. Then, when people who are supposed to provide these services disappear or go out of business, we’re going to be left with an economy full of holes.

Vineet Jain: With the current valuation and liquidity, do you think the Valley will continue on the same path or do you think we will have some deflation?

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Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: That IPO was 2004?

David Steinberg: That’s correct

Sramana Mitra: You stayed with the public company till?

David Steinberg: 2007.

Sramana Mitra: Is that the timeframe in which you started the current company?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: It’s a piece that I wrote a long time ago. From my recollection, it must’ve been February 2007 or something like that. I define my view of what Web 3.0 should look like. It was basically today’s web. The reason I bring this up is in response to what you just pointed out. The user experience remains fragmented.  The definition I provided for Web 3.0 is a little equation, which is 4C + P + VS. The four Cs are content, community, commerce, and context with personalization and vertical search. That integrated user experience continues, after seven years, to elude us and I’m baffled.

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Serial Entrepreneur David Steinberg’s Four-Startup Journey (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I agree with you. Those are character traits that make great entrepreneurs. Without that, you’re not going to sustain because it takes a lot of work and energy. I’m trying to provide a framework that people can apply to ideas.

David Steinberg: What I was going to say is the things that made me a great entrepreneur were those things. But the thing that drove me to start my first company was I thought mobile phones were cool. It was something that I really liked. I do think that entrepreneurs picking something that they’re into is going to make it a much easier process. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Money is flowing freely now. There is no shortage of money especially for late stage deals. People are raising money like crazy.

Vineet Jain: It’s a sign of times. My Series D came in nine days.

SramanaMitra: It’s good and bad. Some of it is good, because the good companies have plenty of opportunities.

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