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Bootstrapping Using Services: Manish Sood, CEO of Reltio (Part 2)

Manish Sood: Consider how these customers look at engaging with their customers, vendors or gathering any kind of competitive information around products they are selling in the market. All of these different types of problems, whether it’s customer loyalty, customer experience, or customer engagement, requires you to think about bringing data together from multiple sources— both internal and external, regardless of whether it is master data or the interactions that are taking place.

More often, we started seeing the pattern that the customers today may start out with a specific point of view, but that point of view evolves quite rapidly as their businesses evolve. A simple example of what we saw in the market was the work that life sciences companies were doing. Their business model of going out and selling directly to the prescribers was morphing quite rapidly into a very complex account-based sales process. They now had to not only understand the information about the prescribers that they were engaging with, but they also had to figure out how best to go and get their drugs on the formulary list that was being provided on a specific plan by a provider and used by large, >>>

Building Significant Revenue with Inbound Marketing from Israel: Pepperi CEO Ofer Yourvexel (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Before we get into the new venture story, you mentioned that you ran two startups while you were in the US. Were they companies that you founded or recruited to run? How did those come about? It sounds like that’s where you got some of your entrepreneurial experience as well.

Ofer Yourvexel: The first one was an engineering company in the semiconductor industry. I was very young. It was a well-established engineering company in Israel. I was the first VP there. It was not a startup. It was more of an engineering company. Enigma was a startup. I basically knew some of the founders. It was more of a relationship. One of the founders who right now lives in New York has a Ph.D. from MIT. He’s a very good friend of mine from school. He offered me to manage the US operations, but I wasn’t one of the founders in that startup.

Sramana Mitra: But you had a bit of an experience of being in a small company?

Ofer Yourvexel: Yes. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Manish Sood, CEO of Reltio (Part 1)

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

Here’s yet another case in point in our Bootstrapping Using Services series. Manish is scaling Reltio super fast at this point, and has raised venture capital, consistent with our theme Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later.

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?

Manish Sood: I was born in the northern part of India. I grew up and went to school there. I went to an engineering college in the southern part of India, which was a new experience for me from a location perspective and getting acclimatized to the overall culture and environment. >>>

Building Significant Revenue with Inbound Marketing from Israel: Pepperi CEO Ofer Yourvexel (Part 1)

If you can build a business with inbound marketing primarily, without having to invest heavily in outbound marketing and sales, it is generally much more capital efficient. Ofer shares his experience in building Pepperi from Israel in that revenue run rate.

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

Ofer Yourvexel: I’m from Israel. I was born and raised in Israel. In terms of background, I’m from a regular family in Israel. Nothing good or bad in particular.

Sramana Mitra: What about school? Did you do school in Israel? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from North Carolina: Ateb CEO Frank Sheppard (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you in terms of revenues?

Frank Sheppard: Last year, we did $21 million. Over the last two years, we’ve grown 20% and we’re projected to grow 20% this year.

Sramana Mitra: Current business is growing at about 20%. How profitable is your business? Do you put a lot of profit into growth? What’s your philosophy in managing?

Frank Sheppard: We always run the business profitably but the majority of our profits are reinvested into the growth of the company. It’s an exciting time. Our goal right now, as we share with our pharmacy customers, is to invest in the development of the tools, parts, and pieces to make them successful. We are, for all intents and purposes, reinvesting almost every dollar. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from North Carolina: Ateb CEO Frank Sheppard (Part 6)

Frank Sheppard: The other part of it is the reorganization of pharmacies. Traditionally, pharmacies are focused on filling prescriptions and are very reactive to patients coming in for that purpose. We’re doing things to make a lot of pharmacies more proactive, so instead of waiting for patients to engage them, we’re trying to find ways to enable them to proactively manage their workload. That’s one of the things that pharmacists, in particular, are always excited about. They can control what’s happening in their pharmacy. It, ultimately, opens up enough time for them to be very active to their patients. We’ve turned the model upside down. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from North Carolina: Ateb CEO Frank Sheppard (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I want to probe that a bit before we go beyond 2010 to the new mode. Let me just get the benchmarks on the 2005 to 2010 when you started focusing on patient reminders. What did that do to your business in terms of growth? Where were you in 2010 for instance?

Frank Sheppard: We continued to grow. After 2005, we climbed to being in the $11 million to $13 million range.

Sramana Mitra: So in 2010, we’re talking about a $12 million dollar company. What was the product strategy? When you were talking about trying to change patient behavior, what drives change in patient behavior? What have you learned about the market? >>>

 Bootstrapping Using Services from North Carolina: Ateb CEO Frank Sheppard (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How fast were you able to course correct on that? I imagine that when you saw that things were not working out, you fired the CEO. When did that happen?

Frank Sheppard: Late 2003, I believe. We were probably short of bankruptcy, but like all good entrepreneurs, we were too stupid to do that. It took us probably 18 months to get fully back. By 2005, we were back to a very healthy and well-run company.

Sramana Mitra: The business went back to your original pharmacy solution?

Frank Sheppard: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What was the revenue level in 2005? >>>