Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Can you help me understand, timeline-wise, when you managed to get this two-sided marketplace figured out? By the way, this two-sided marketplace going through credit cards and escrow is a very popular trend today. In your evolution, you came to this conclusion organically. When was that in the history of your entrepreneurial journey?

David Ciccarelli: It was 2007. The company incorporated in 2005. This transactional platform, which we broadly call marketplace fees, came about in 2007. We had a bit of a bumpy start because, obviously, we had to figure some things out. It came into >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: While you were going through this evolution, did you still have the recording studio running?

David Ciccarelli: We began a working relationship. We quickly grew quite fond of each other. Stephanie likes to say that’s when it got to be romantic. Through that experience, we recognized that we couldn’t exactly have garage bands coming to a studio with Stephanie putting a baby to sleep in the back room.

It made a lot of sense for us to pivot to a website and to just do the work ourselves. All the other recording equipment, we actually sold off. We used the funds from that equipment to hiring a web developer on a freelance basis to further enhance the website >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It was basically a recording studio business model, right?

David Ciccarelli: At the very outset, yes. This is where the story gets a little bit more interesting. When I opened the studio, I got my name in the local newspaper. What I didn’t realize was that my wife was a classically-trained singer. She’d sing at weddings, funerals, and special events. She was looking to get a demo CD done of her voice.

Her mom, being quite the savvy marketer, saw this newspaper article and cut it out and left it on her bed for her to read, >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli (Part 1)

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

David Ciccarelli: I was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. It’s a city of about a hundred thousand residents located just at the northern tips of the Lake Superior. Before graduating high school, mom and dad suggested to all the kids that we needed to >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Switching gears to the business model, it sounds like it’s a regular SaaS business model. What kind of average deal sizes are you seeing? Are you focused on the large enterprises or is this also mid-market? Where is the target audience?

Greg Besner: The wonderful part of culture and engagement is the diversity of companies and customers. What we’ve learned in the last three years is that leaders care about culture regardless of their company and their industry. We have customers all over the world. We have customers from all industries and sizes. It’s really been amazing and it’s wonderful to see that leaders in all >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You mentioned that there were a few things that you zeroed in on. You had very good access to validate your idea. In fact, your decision to start this company came out of people coming to you on this topic. What were those nuggets around which you built the product?

Greg Besner: Let me describe the problem a little bit and then I’ll describe how we solved it. The problem that companies were having was that we have a new generation of employees that make up the largest cohort in the workplace today. All employees now are able to give and get feedback on almost all parts of their life now. The paradigm for generations and decades leading up >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So CultureIQ begins in 2009?

Greg Besner: No. CultureIQ was started in 2013.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s jump to the CultureIQ beginning. What was the concept? Why did you start CultureIQ? What problem were you going to solve?

Greg Besner: I would say that the interest in culture was from being involved with Zappos. When I got involved, there were about 70 employees. When we sold it, there were thousands of employees. Many of them were warehouse workers and call center >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you start the corporate business?

Greg Besner: 2002 is when Sarbanes-Oxley was made effective. I actually don’t remember exactly when we launched with our first corporate client but it was probably in 2003.

Sramana Mitra: What was the sales model for the corporate business? At that time, were you selling on the phone? How were you getting those customers? How were they finding you? What was the method of selling? >>>