Scaling a Fast Growth, Venture-Funded Company: Rafael Sweary, Co-Founder and President of WalkMe (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What are you seeing now? Where to from here? You have raised almost $100 million worth of financing. You have very good metrics. You’re scaling nicely. Do you see an IPO soon?

Rafael Sweary: Not soon. I think an IPO is a very likely scenario, but the timing of an IPO is something that you need to carefully look at from what you disclose about your company, the cost of maintaining a public company, and timing in the market. It’s a very likely scenario. Right now, everything seems to indicate that a public exit for this company is going to be possible.

Sramana Mitra: I have one last question. In recent years, and especially during the time frame where you have >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Any other businesses that you want to talk about?

Bhavin Turakhia: After that, I started two more — Flock and Zeta. Flock is in the enterprise and team messaging space, and Zeta is in the payment space. I started Zeta with a co-founder in India, and the business is currently largely managed by him. My main attention is on Flock.

Sramana Mitra: What is the thesis of Flock?

Bhavin Turakhia: At a macro level, if you look at communication and collaboration between teams within organizations or teams who manage projects, a large chunk of that has only been email. Email as a tool for communication was invented 30 years ago and hasn’t changed much. Our communication needs, however, >>>

Scaling a Fast Growth, Venture-Funded Company: Rafael Sweary, Co-Founder and President of WalkMe (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of average deal sizes are you selling right now?

Rafael Sweary: I can’t disclose details, but it’s more than hundred dollars per month.

Sramana Mitra: That doesn’t say anything. What else do you want to say that is interesting?

Rafael Sweary: We’re trying to build a world where software will understand users and websites will understand users, instead of users trying to understand software and users trying to understand websites. The second word of wisdom to people who want to be entrepreneurs is, entrepreneurship is a roller coaster. That is the best description for how an entrepreneur’s life works. >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What scale did you get to with that business before you exited?

Bhavin Turakhia: In the public domain, we exited that business at a valuation of $900 million to this consortium of investors in a public company in China. This happened in August of 2016. It was the third largest ad tech deal ever and one of the largest bootstrapped cash exits globally.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, it’s huge. What revenue level had you reached to get that $900 million valuation.

Bhavin Turakhia: The revenue numbers are still not public, so I can’t give you specifics but the deal size is public. The revenue numbers will probably become public. In China, these transactions go through a two-phase process. Once the whole process is completed and the public company announces it, the revenue numbers will be public at that point. >>>

Scaling a Fast Growth, Venture-Funded Company: Rafael Sweary, Co-Founder and President of WalkMe (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What I’m hearing is that you came to the conclusion that you wanted to cater to large enterprises. Based on what you were describing, that was my first instinct to hear that this needs to be an enterprise sale. I was actually surprised that you were going the route of selling online. It sounds like you got to the conclusion anyway.

Rafael Sweary: Initially, we didn’t have the offering for an enterprise. When we were selling online, enterprise customers came to us. They said, “We love your product, but we can’t use it. It’s not secure.” When we fixed that they came to us, “Your product is secure, but you don’t have a delegated admin.” We built that as well.

Then they said, “You product is great but we have different environments. We have our staging environment. We have our QA >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In parallel, you started other businesses. At what point did you start the next line of business besides web presence? What was the thinking behind that? What were the circumstances?

Bhavin Turakhia: In 2007, we started dabbling in the online advertising business using a brand called Scenzo. My brother started operating that business. We grew that to a certain size.

Sramana Mitra: What was the thesis of that business?

Bhavin Turakhia: This business targeted publishers who own domains or websites. if they wanted to put up ads on their sites, we had a technology that would figure out the best ads >>>

Scaling a Fast Growth, Venture-Funded Company: Rafael Sweary, Co-Founder and President of WalkMe (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you were selling to a customer, what kind of average deal size were you seeing?

Rafael Sweary: In the hundreds of dollars per year at that time. Once we got into the pricing, we started selling over the Internet. We got our first customers through dialing. After we got some four or five customers, we put it on our website. We started doing marketing. We started generating media attention. We started driving traffic onto our website. Some bought online. For some, we would call them after they sign up and ask them if we can give them a demo. That encourages them to buy.

Sramana Mitra: What were you learning about the companies who were buying? >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you go in this mode of in-person selling? What kind of revenue level did that get you to?

Bhavin Turakhia: In that first set of businesses, which we call the web presence business, I actually did in-person selling for the better part of six years.

Sramana Mitra: There’s no choice. At that time, there was no other way of selling.

Bhavin Turakhia: That, and entrepreneurship is a journey that comprises of getting your hands dirty and doing lots of things yourself. Today, I don’t necessarily do a lot of selling except for really big deals. I have teams that do that and to effectively recruit the right people and mentor them the right way, you need to be there yourself. We’ve done it all from legal to marketing. In many ways, it was a good opportunity for us to gain that expertise. >>>