Bootstrapping a Global E-Commerce Company: SmartBuyGlasses CEO David Menning (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Why optical? Where did that idea come from? What was your background or any of your co-founders’ background that drew you to that particular idea?

David Menning: We weren’t really optical-specific in terms of our expertise. We were rather entrepreneurs and savvy young business people. We were looking at identifying niches or business ideas with a lot of opportunity for the future. As mentioned, we saw that books were being sold online. You may recall that back in the day cameras were much more expensive in America and Australia than in Japan.

If you travel to Japan 15 years ago, you can buy those sorts of cameras much cheaper than in other parts of the world. It was >>>

Woman Entrepreneur Building a Successful, VC Funded Business: Olivia Skuza, CEO of NuORDER (Part 1)

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

Olivia has built a powerful B2B e-commerce business that connects wholesalers and retailers in categories like fashion and home furnishings.

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?

Olivia Skuza: I was born in Adelaide, Australia. It’s a little town that has only about a million people. My parents were Polish immigrants who moved to Australia in their early 20’s. They moved to Australia with absolutely nothing. My father worked any job that he could get including places like Pizza Hut to try and support the family while my mother took care of me and my sister. >>>

Bootstrapping a Global E-Commerce Company: SmartBuyGlasses CEO David Menning (Part 1)

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

David has bootstrapped a global e-commerce venture from Hong Kong. Splendid execution!

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?

David Menning: I grew up in Sydney. I’ve been educated in Australia. In my later years, I studied at universities overseas both in Canada and Japan for a little while. It was this time when I was abroad spending time in different countries that I was exposed to different business models, cultures, and people. >>>

Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Can you explain the competitive landscape?

Gero Decker: We offer a business transformation suite. In its entirety, it’s a new category. If you break it down into individual components, then you have small product categories. The component that has the largest footprint is called Process Manager and Collaboration Hub. The main competitors are IBM and Software AG.

Sramana Mitra: Do you win deals when you go against them? How do you win deals? What positioning point helps you win those deals?

Gero Decker: We have very high win rates. The challenge is to get into those deals. If you look at the competitors, they have a >>>

Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How did the business grow as you brought that North American sales channel together? How did North America contribute to your revenue?

Gero Decker: By now, they’re at roughly 25%. The lion’s share is still from Europe. We also have operations in Asia Pacific. It’s roughly 25% North America and 10% Asia Pacific. The rest is in Europe.

Sramana Mitra: What did you end 2017 with?

Gero Decker: We ended up north of $21 million ARR. >>>

Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The next thing I would ask you is what was the process of fundraising? Were you fundraising in Germany? Where did you go out to raise money and what was the thinking?

Gero Decker: We started getting inbound requests from investors pretty early on. We also got acquisition requests pretty early on, but we didn’t really entertain that. It became overwhelming in 2015. We had a feeling that everybody was reaching out to us. We didn’t need funding because we were profitable the whole time.

Sramana Mitra: You had a lot of revenue.

Gero Decker: We didn’t need funding to fuel the growth, but we realized two things in early 2015. One was, one of our co- >>>

Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: This first customer went through. You got paid. What happens next?

Gero Decker: Then we started building a real organization. We hired our first sales guy. We went from a company that was four people with interns to 15 people over the course of 12 months. The interesting that we had for me as an entrepreneur is we had a lot of interest in what we were doing. Bloggers wrote a lot about us. Industry analysts wrote about us.

We had a lot of inbound interest, but nobody was buying. We thought that it was a strange situation to be in. You have all of these conversations but nobody signs. We later discovered that we were seeing the impact of the financial crisis. >>>

Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Europe: Gero Decker, CEO of Signavio (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: By the time you got to May 2009, how many of these 20,000 people who looked at this became customers?

Gero Decker: Not many. The 20,000 people were not really interested in the notion of business process per se. They were rather interested in the notion of having a graphical design environment on the web. A small fraction of them actually stayed happy users. From this initial set of customers, we might have converted maybe 20 or 30 over time. They were just tech enthusiasts who just wanted to check out the technology.

Sramana Mitra: Did anybody convert into a customer? >>>