Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How many customers do you have in all?

Mikko Honkanen: A little bit more than 1,200 customers.

Sramana Mitra: What has been your experience with the US? Three markets are Scandinavian markets where the policy is open data. Is the Dutch market open data as well?

Mikko Honkanen: There’s actually a site called Global Open Data Index. You can compare different countries. All these >>>

Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What about the product that had to be localized?

Mikko Honkanen: Yes. We had to localize the product. All the Nordic countries are pretty good with open data. We were able to buy and open the basic data. We had to add lots of local data sources and translate the UI and make sure that we customize the workflow for Swedish users.

Also in 2015, we decided to have a customer success department. We found a fantastic person who is now our Customer Success Director. She took over most of the existing customers to make sure that every single one of them is happy and they want to renew the contract. It was also in September when we brought in a person for content marketing. Starting in Q3, we started building those >>>

Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You had a bunch of paying customers before building the product. How much were they paying for the annual upfront payment? How did you find these companies?

Mikko Honkanen: We used our own product. To find the first unaffiliated customer, you need to do sales and marketing. So, we focused on all the companies that bring in lots of sales people. If a company has a lot of job openings in the field of sales, that was a sign for us that they invest in sales. Typically sales people needed to do prospecting, so we went after those companies.

We also started content marketing early on. We were writing on a blog once a week and asked our network to share that. We got >>>

Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I would like to zero in on exactly that. I’ll give you some context. My second company was a lead generation and web research company, exactly solving the same problem, except that it was very early and the web didn’t have anywhere near the level of data that it has today. I’m talking end of 1997 through 1999. The web was much shallower.

I know a lot about your space. There were other companies that tried to do that. InsideView was one of the significant ones. We had done artificial intelligence-driven architecture, but because of the lack of data, it didn’t quite have the level of capabilities. When you say you did one or two things that you did really well, what were those things that you zeroed in on that allowed you to get advance payment?

>>>

Bootstrapping from Finland: Vainu CEO Mikko Honkanen (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Mikko has steadily built an excellent SaaS company from Finland and is now expanding into the US as well. Read on for more.

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

Mikko Honkanen: I was born in a small town in Finland 20 miles up north from Helsinki. I studied at Helsinki School of Economics. I also studied at Oxford. Then I spent the last 10 years in the SaaS business. I spent almost seven years at a Norwegian company called Meltwater. >>>

Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: When you looked at your business through that lens, what were some of the salient points?

J. Paul Haynes: Our retention rate was 99%. When I shared that with our next investor, they had never seen anything that high. Our customer acquisition cost was too low. From our perspective, you got to get out in the market. You’re missing opportunities because you’re not spending enough on marketing.

I didn’t really have an appreciation for how well we were performing compared to our peers. Those retention rates were off the charts. I quickly learned that that was a differential thing when you’re raising financing. When I was reviewing these with a much more >>>

Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What was the growth rate from there on? Once you got to building the SaaS business, you zeroed in on the mid-market financial services vertical. You’ve defined your target audience very precisely. You’ve got this whole community of influencers around you. What kind of growth rate were you hitting?

J. Paul Haynes: This is going back a few years. We were probably in the 75% y-o-y range. It was higher in the earlier days. We’re at about 65% right now.

Sramana Mitra: What are some of the other strategic moves that you’ve made in building the business that are >>>

Building a Mid-Market Security SaaS Company from Canada: J. Paul Haynes, CEO of eSentire (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How long did it take you to launch the SaaS version of this product? When did you start selling that product?

J. Paul Haynes: A year.

Sramana Mitra: We are talking 2011.

J. Paul Haynes: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: So in 2012, you were a SaaS  company? >>>