Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: There are lots of lead customers, which is really important for a startup.

Hannu Verkasalo: You’re right. Let’s talk about the incident on mobile. Many of these companies including Google and Facebook want to support new innovations and new ideas. In many cases, they use you because they want to bring something new to the market. In Europe, people care more about the name and the reputation. They are more conservative. Big companies are less willing to spend money on a new product.

Sramana Mitra: 2010 was when the acquisition happened? >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Eventually, where did you raise money from?

Allan Wille: The Series A lead was from Canada. That was from OMERS. OMERS, of course, has a big history with Hootsuite and Shopify. They know that space very well. Our seed round had both Canadian and US investors. I don’t know if you know Maya Hayman at Converge?

Sramana Mitra: I don’t.

Allan Wille: She’s amazing. She was instrumental in helping us get the seed round together. She participated in all of our follow-on rounds. Just recently in January, we announced our Series B, which was fantastic as well. We closed a $12 million round. It’s a story of a lot of perseverance and listening to >>>

Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many investors did you have and how much money did you raise?

Hannu Verkasalo: We raised $2 million.

Sramana Mitra: From investors in Finland?

Hannu Verkasalo: Yes, we had two investors from Finland and a couple of angels. I put in quite a bit of money. Knowing what I know now and through the experience of building Verto, I think we could have built it into a much bigger business. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: By the time you found your product-market fit, there were other players in the market in the visualization space like Tableau. What did you experience from a competitive challenge point of view?

Allan Wille: We actually saw relatively little competition. That’s because we were going after small and midsize companies. Even today, the business intelligence and visualization space is very crowded, but it’s crowded in the enterprise. All those players exist to sell into larger organizations. They have an outbound sales force. They’re very expensive and complex.

We focus on the small and midsize companies where they don’t have an analyst or they don’t have an IT person. How can we be prescriptive and >>>

Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The product idea was based on what you were doing for Nokia and what you wanted to bring for the other mobile operators, right?

Hannu Verkasalu: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: This is now the post-iPhone era.

Hannu Verkasalu: Yes. Now more and more companies were interested in mobile being a medium for content and services. Of course, Nokia was no longer >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn? What were the key levers that you learned to push or look to push at that point?

Allan Wille: I think the obvious one was that our revenue was simply not growing. That was the one that was staring us in our face. We did have some successful customers, and we had heard that they relied on and loved our product. However, the rest of the model was just too difficult. Every time I chatted with other CEOs, that was the sense I got. Sometimes people are polite, but I wasn’t certainly hearing the yes. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 1)

Hannu has done three companies, including the one that he is doing now – Verto Analytics. We love stories of successful entrepreneurs from different parts of the world, and this one, from Finland is a wonderful one!

Sramana Mitra: Tell me where you come from, where you were born, raised, and in what kind of background.

Hannu Verkasalo: I’m originally from Finland. I was born in the northern parts of Finland, which is famous for Nokia. I moved to Helsinki to do my university studies. I did quite a bit of different studies in business and technology in Helsinki. About 15 years ago, I started my first company. It was all about mobile apps, which was an industry driven by Nokia at that time. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. Serendipity and luck are very big drivers in entrepreneurial success. People who don’t acknowledge that are basically fooling themselves and aggrandizing themselves in undeserved ways.

Allan Wille: That was an easy lesson. I’ll give you another example. The lesson there was, “we were not making any money, and here was an opportunity to make money.” It was very black and white. Making that change was fairly obvious.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you make off that deal?

Allan Wille: That was our very first real deal. I think we made $35,000 on an annual basis. >>>