From Y Combinator to Customer Traction and $50 Million in Financing: MemSQL CEO Eric Frenkiel (Part 1)

Eric and his co-founder Nikita left Facebook to join YCombinator to develop their idea for MemSQL. The company has blossomed into a robust enterprise software business with a solid customer base.

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

Eric Frenkiel: I was born and raised in Southern California. I studied at Stanford when I actually decided to specialize in engineering. I looked at a lot of schools and I thought that Stanford was the best place for me to grow and learn. I graduated in 2008.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of engineering did you study at Stanford?

Eric Frenkiel: Operation Research. You would call it industrial engineering in another time. In Stanford, it’s called Management Science and Engineering. >>>

Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: When you win big deals with enterprise customers, what is it that allows you to win these deals?

Steven Boye: It is typically the quality of our products. Everybody that we compete with, they are currently Dropbox or Box users. Most of them are. For some reason, they like our solution better.

Sramana Mitra: Do you know why?

Steven Boye: Soonr wins business because we have the most powerful mobile file sync-and-share experience available: smart selective sync that allow users to take entire folders or subfolders on-the-go; full online or full offline mode; integrated document editing and annotation with built-in MDM/DLP security features such as remote wipe; and no additional software needed. >>>

Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How many telcos do you have as customers today?

Steven Boye: I think we have three today. AT&T is the biggest. What we’ve learned is that telcos are hard to work with. They are good once they engage, but it’s really a long sales cycle. In the years since, several things have happened.

In 2010 to 2012, we basically found out what it is that Soonr is. Soonr became less of a telco solution and more of a cloud collaboration solution. Then we also launched Soonr for enterprise. In 2011 and 2012, the focus of the company became clear. It has been such a shifting landscape and you basically had to try and pivot all the time to found out what makes sense at any time. We have gone through quite a few pivots as you can probably tell over the years. >>>

Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: That brings us to what?

Steven Boye: Now we come up to 2006. We actually got funding from a company called Clearstone Venture Partners in LA. During 2006 to 2008, we also got Intel Capital and Cisco as strategic investors. Now, we started getting real money to build the company.

Sramana Mitra: What was the basis of that investment?

Steven Boye: At that time, the product had synthesized more into a cloud-based service for online backup and collaboration. It then became much easier to raise capital. >>>

Don’t Pivot Too Soon: ADARA Co-Founder and CTO Charles Mi (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: They’re all doing this. They’re all part of your marketplace now.

Charles Mi: Yes. ADARA marketplace contains a lot of the travel technology companies, rental cars, and hotels. They have 100% control over how the data is being used. By putting transparency and control in place, the data suppliers have a lot of confidence that the data won’t be misused.

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. In terms of building the company, you switched in 2008 to this travel data mode. Now, it’s coming up to seven years of executing on this business plan. You said you raised three rounds of financing?

Charles Mi: Since 2008, yes. >>>

Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of customer validation did you do at that point?

Steven Boye: I would say we didn’t really do any customer validation that early on. But we had a lot of background in office applications and helping people with Word and Excel. It was basically office automation or mobile enablement of people with their regular office documents. We were pushing the boundaries for what was possible with the technology back then.

Sramana Mitra: I see. Essentially, the funding that you were able to raise was based on your domain knowledge in office applications. It was not based on any customer validation.

Steven Boye: It was not based on customer validation. It was basically based on the prototype and the ideas we had. We had a product that we could show where you could install an application on your home computer. You can use your browser in your Nokia phone. You can have an >>>

Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Even though it was registered in Delaware, you were running the company in Denmark?

Steven Boye: You can say that the company’s engineering department was running out of Denmark. It’s actually the same today with Soonr. All engineering operations are done here in Denmark. All the financial, PR, HR, and business development operations are done in Silicon Valley.

Sramana Mitra: Are you the CEO of the company?

Steven Boye: No, I am the CTO of the company. Martin was the original CEO when we started the company. Initially, it was just the three of us.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to that point when you were starting. You said you got funded right away. >>>

Competing with Box and Dropbox: Soonr Co-Founder and CTO Steven Boye (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I remember NetObjects.

Steven Boye: I moved back to Silicon Valley and lived there for a few years. NetObjects went public. My wife is a professor at a university in Denmark. She wanted to continue her career in Denmark, so we moved the family back to Denmark again.

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Steven Boye: This was in 1998. Since 1998, I’ve been living in Denmark.

Sramana Mitra: What did you decide to do when you moved back to Denmark? >>>