Bootstrapping to Inc. 500: Tallie CEO Chris Farrell (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How do you price?

Chris Farrell: We price based on activity. For an active user or somebody who uses our expense report system actively in a given month, we charge $9 per month.

Sramana Mitra: How big are your deal sizes given the segment that you’re going after is the top end of the QuickBooks customer base? What is an average monthly deal size? >>>

Building a Cloud-Based Property Management Platform, Ric Leutwyler, President of SkyTouch (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What is an average deal size for you?

Ric Leutwyler: For independent hotels, which average 80 rooms per hotel, the deal size is $5,000 a year or more. If you’re talking about a Choice hotel as a group, it is around $25 million. It depends on whether we’re selling to independent hotels, small group, or giant companies.

Sramana Mitra: So there’s no bias in there. It’s all over the place.

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Bootstrapping to Inc. 500: Tallie CEO Chris Farrell (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do? then Did you put together some sort of a customer advisory board of people who were prominent leaders in the accounting space?

Chris Farrell: You’re right. It wasn’t anything as formal as a product counsel. It was actually a series of relationships. I began cold-calling a number of people in the industry introducing myself and the company and essentially engaging them in a dialogue. It was, at first, very informal. We just talked to the experts about how they saw the industry and how software companies could help.

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Building a Cloud-Based Property Management Platform, Ric Leutwyler, President of SkyTouch (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In a 30-second elevator pitch, what would be the target audience where you really shine?

Ric Leutwyler: Our target audience is the hotels that are in the limited to full-service range. They are looking for an economical approach, which they get from cloud solutions. They’re looking for the functionality that they need today but are also looking for the commitment that the functionality will evolve and keep up with the industry. That’s our sweet spot. If somebody is looking for an old and basic solution, then we’re not a good fit, because we’re very focused  on evolving that platform. >>>

Bootstrapping to Inc. 500: Tallie CEO Chris Farrell (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In 2008, Concur was already public and quite a successful company. What did you think of the opportunity? Let’s get a bit granular because we do cover Concur very extensively. Recently, we did a story on Expensify as well. The expense reporting space has shown up on our blog from many different angles. So we have an audience that’s familiar with what you’re doing. Could you help us understand, specifically, what you would identify as the opportunity to build a new company in that space? Positioning, by the way, is a discipline that we teach and explore very extensively and very diligently. It would be interesting for us to learn how you position your products.

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Building a Cloud-Based Property Management Platform, Ric Leutwyler, President of SkyTouch (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Your number one competitor is Oracle, based on what I just heard, because Oracle is moving all their stuff to the cloud. It’s reasonable to expect that you’re going to have Oracle as a major competitor because Oracle has a big emphasis over on-cloud technology.

Ric Leutwyler: Of course. There are a number of others as well that are playing in this area in trying to achieve what we’ve already achieved. I think it’s been very interesting to watch the space because you’ve people making inroads in very different ways. >>>

Bootstrapping to Inc. 500: Tallie CEO Chris Farrell (Part 1)

Chris and his co-founder bootstrapped Tallie to a high growth Inc. 500 company in four years. After that, the product had to be re-architected, and slowed down for a couple of years, before picking up again. Read how they have competed in a crowded marketplace and built a robust position.

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

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Building a Cloud-Based Property Management Platform, Ric Leutwyler, President of SkyTouch (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Does the team at SkyTouch have ownership? Are there options?

Ric Leutwyler: The compensation is a mixed bag. There is some level of ownership but there isn’t anything to own yet of SkyTouch because there isn’t a separate entity to have valuation in. Our plans to create that kind of equity opportunity for team members is still not something we focus on.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get into the business. What is the business of SkyTouch? What do you do?

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