Serial Entrepreneurship in CAD: SolidWorks and Onshape Founder Jon Hirschtick (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Any other strategic decisions that you made in building SolidWorks? 

Jon Hirschtick: One is, we decided to sell exclusively through a dealer channel. We would not sell directly. If you want to buy SolidWorks, you have to go through dealers. That was a huge decision. It had all kinds of implications. It turned out to be a very shrewd idea.

Serial Entrepreneurship in CAD: SolidWorks and Onshape Founder Jon Hirschtick (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Who funded you?

Jon Hirschtick: The first investor to commit was Atlas Venture. Axel, my co-founder from my first company, is the Managing Director of Bolt and an associate at Atlas Ventures. He got interested.

He introduced me to Mike Payne, co-founder of PTC. Mike and I met. We have very different personal styles, but intellectually, we totally agree on what we needed to do in this industry.

Serial Entrepreneurship in CAD: SolidWorks and Onshape Founder Jon Hirschtick (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to?

Jon Hirschtick: 1993. I stayed two and a half years with Computer Vision. 

Sramana Mitra: I started at MIT in the Fall of 1993.

Jon Hirschtick: So you were a freshman at MIT.

Buying Back a Business: ShareBuilder 401k CEO Stuart Robertson (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is the technology angle to this?

Stuart Robertson: All our plans are sold online. We enable anyone to come to the site, get a quote, and buy the plan.

Sramana Mitra: How do people become aware of the fact that you exist?

Serial Entrepreneurship in CAD: SolidWorks and Onshape Founder Jon Hirschtick (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What were you doing at this point that got you to Kleiner Perkins?

Jon Hirschtick: I started when I was 24. I was probably 26 years old at this point. I didn’t know what I was doing. Part of being an entrepreneur is, you just keep doing things. You think a bit and do a lot.

Buying Back a Business: ShareBuilder 401k CEO Stuart Robertson (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Stuart Robertson: I jumped into telecom for seven years. At that time, telecom was going to be deregulated. They were hiring all these marketers. My first job out of grad school was running what is now part of AT&T. I was launching caller IDs and consumer voice mail.

Serial Entrepreneurship in CAD: SolidWorks and Onshape Founder Jon Hirschtick (Part 1)

Jon has founded two important CAD companies and sold both for significant exit prices. Read on for his awesome entrepreneurial journey.

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?

Buying Back a Business: ShareBuilder 401k CEO Stuart Robertson (Part 1)

Stuart built Sharebuilder 401k. The company got acquired. Recently, he has bought the business back.

Read on to understand the nuances.