Successful Pivots on Product, Market, Business Model: Gigya Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Eyal Magen (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What are other highlights in the journey of building Gigya that are major strategic points where you went to the next level? Of course, one of the big strategic moves was figuring out what problem you were going to solve and achieving that product-market fit. It sounds like you achieved that in the 2006 to 2007 time frame.

Eyal Magen: Originally, we provided the product for free. We were thinking that sites would integrate their systems and we would find advertising opportunities around the data. Switching from a free model to a SaaS pricing model was a big decision. There’s something to be said about that because once you find out the right model for your company, a lot of things in the organization become clear because you know the metrics that you need to watch. Everybody knows that for SaaS companies what’s important is new bookings and your renewal rate. It’s the same for every SaaS company. If you’re an advertising company, you have a different set of metrics. >>>

Serial Entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh: Ron Bianchini’s Amazing Journey (Part 6)

Ron Bianchini: Because of the incredible offload ratio, we’re able to build a clustering flash-based product that gives you some incredible performance levels. You can put that in front of a disk-based product, ideally a clustering disk-based product, and build out a system that gets the performance of flash with the cost point of disk.

Sramana Mitra: Is that what you decided to do with Avere?

Ron Bianchini: The VCs always said, “We would rather invest in a strong team than invest in a strong technology because it’s the team that has to bring the technology to market.” We started out with exactly that plan. Let’s leverage flash. Let’s separate performance and capacity. >>>

Raising $20 Million from Angel Investors: Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele Contorer (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In 2005, you quit your job. How did you get started? What was your next step?

Lori Steele Contorer: I started looking around the world for the best technology. I’ve seen many companies throw money at technologies in the early 2000s and I feel if you don’t understand the process you’re trying to fix or improve, then you’re going to fail.

I discovered a technology in Australia and acquired that company. It was a small company at that time but they have been doing online voting since 1996. They had done government elections in 2002 and 2003. >>>

Successful Pivots on Product, Market, Business Model: Gigya Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Eyal Magen (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How do you price this?

Eyal Magen: It’s a SaaS-based model, so you have to pay every year. We usually sign multi-year deals. We price it based on a combination of elements of the product that you purchase and obviously, the number of users that you anticipate.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a volume-based pricing model?

Eyal Magen: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: To summarize what you do in terms of the value proposition, if a user is shopping online on the GAP site and wants to log into the GAP site with Facebook or Twitter, they’re essentially going through your system to get authenticated and logged in. >>>

Serial Entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh: Ron Bianchini’s Amazing Journey (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So in 2004, you sold to NetApp. Did you work for NetApp?

Ron Bianchini: I did.

Sramana Mitra: For how long?

Ron Bianchini: As part of the acquisition, we all had two-year golden handcuffs, but I stayed for four years.

Sramana Mitra: To work for NetApp, did you have to move to Silicon Valley? What were the terms of that acquisition? >>>

Successful Pivots on Product, Market, Business Model: Gigya Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Eyal Magen (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I think there are clear winners. At the time that you were describing, Facebook wasn’t the clear winner by any stretch of the imagination. Once you have clear winners with massive market cloud, then those are the options that are being offered by other sites.

Eyal Magen: Right. What also happened is that obviously the user is now moving quickly between different screens – mobile, home computer, and work computer. Any service that wants to provide them with a unified experience across screens will have to ask the users to identify. These are the reasons why identity is becoming so central. We eventually became an enabler for sites to connect with a user using their identity to save the identity and user data, and most importantly, to connect to third-party systems that can leverage the user third-party data for marketing or personalization. >>>

Serial Entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh: Ron Bianchini’s Amazing Journey (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: That’s good. John Jarve is also an MIT grad by the way.

Ron Bianchini: I know. Have you met him?

Sramana Mitra: Yes, several times.

Ron Bianchini: He’s on my Board in my third company now.

Sramana Mitra: You raised a lot of money for Spinnaker. How long did it take you to bring the product to market and what kind of customers did you find traction in?

Ron Bianchini: We ran Spinnaker for four years from 2000 to 2004. In 2004, we sold it to Network Appliance for $300 million. >>>

From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay at Facebook?

Eric Frenkiel: Not very long, it was for 10 months in total. It was an amazing opportunity. We ultimately left Facebook because we had a bigger opportunity that we wanted to build. That was MemSQL. We joined in 2010 and left in early 2011. That was a big decision because an extra two months would have meant a quarter of the shares, but it happened to coincide with YCombinator, which have fixed start dates. If you don’t start on the fixed date, you’d miss the class. In many ways, it was an easier decision because you just walk away. You look forward to the next venture.

Sramana Mitra: You took your idea and applied to YCombinator?

Eric Frenkiel: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: You had co-founders? >>>