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Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the next move after Maxim?

Chris Grandi: I took a pretty divergent turn. I thought that maybe I wanted to be in Wall Street. I joined the Goldman Sachs Associate program out of Harvard Business School and joined their fixed income group. I was an associate in that group specifically focusing on high-yield debt and bank loan debt. It’s essentially high-yield financing to companies. I was there for a very short period of time. I was very thankful that I got the opportunity to work on Wall Street, but I realized technology was in my heart. Also, the timing of this was 1998. That was the first Internet boom. At that point, a friend and I had a business idea to start an Internet company. I decided not to go back to Wall Street.

Sramana Mitra: What was that company?

Chris Grandi: We had conceptualized this idea of people using the Internet for online invitations. >>>

Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You were able to cater to all that from Prague?

Vince Steckler: Both from Prague and the community. Prague is very cosmopolitan. We can do a lot of support and customization but what’s most important is the community. Most users don’t realize where the company is from. Brazilians tend to think the company is American. Mexicans, who know it’s so popular in Brazil, thinks it’s Brazilian. Very few realize that it’s Czech. When they do, they don’t necessarily know what Czech is.

Sramana Mitra: What is the customer acquisition strategy?

Vince Steckler: The customer acquisition strategy is pretty straightforward. It’s to build a damn good product. It’s almost like Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams. Build it, and they will come. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Process: Todd Dunlop, CEO of RingPartner (Part 1)

Most serial entrepreneurs have figured out certain unique ways in which they operate. In this story, we get to learn about Todd’s process.

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

Todd Dunlop: I was born in Montreal but I grew up in the suburbs just outside of Toronto. I have grown my entrepreneurial journey from my lawn maintenance business back when I was a kid and evolved that to where I now live which is on the most western part of Canada.

Sramana Mitra: Where did you do all your schooling? >>>

Bootstrapping a Virtualization Services Company: Chris Grandi, CEO of Abacus Group (Part 1)

Chris had significant domain knowledge in the hedge fund industry. He has self-financed a successful company offering to secure virtualization services to the segment with high service levels.

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?

Chris Grandi: I was born and raised on the East Coast outside of Washington DC, and I grew up in suburban Maryland. For university, I went to the West Coast and attended UCLA. I then continued on to graduate work. I got my MBA from Harvard Business School. I moved out to San Francisco, California where I’ve been for approximately 20 years. >>>

Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me how you got there.

Vince Steckler: It’s basically a few things. When the company went into France, we started at the community side. The competition in France at that time had English language products, which doesn’t really go very real well in France. So we built a French language product. Since everyone in the company was Czech, there wasn’t anyone who knew French but there was one developer who claimed he knew French. It turns out his experience with French was because he had a couple of French girlfriends. The quality wasn’t very good. >>>

Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 4)

Vince Steckler: It was very intriguing because it was a very engineering-oriented company. Of the 40 people, there was one person in Finance, one person in Marketing and Sales, and 38 engineers. They weren’t doing very good business because there wasn’t anyone paying attention to it. I actually joined there taking what people would probably consider a lot of risk and massive base pay reduction.

Sramana Mitra: They were doing all online?

Vince Steckler: All online. It was a freely distributed product with a premium product. They were one of the early starters of the freemium model. There wasn’t much difference between the free product and the paid product. From the time someone downloaded the free product until the first time they got asked for any money was 15 months. There was just so many obvious things you could do, but it was also a product that had a very loyal user base, which is very important. >>>

Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How much were they doing at that point?

Vince Steckler: In 2008, they did about $18 million in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: This was all self-financed?

Vince Steckler: Yes. The company had actually never taken any investment into its treasury. The company, by the way, is a Unicorn. We’re worth well over a billion dollars. They were doing $18 million in 2008 and this year, will do about $300 million. They did meet with some VCs. They found one VC who told them three things. One, don’t diversify your business. Two, you don’t need an investor, which is strange coming from a VC.

Sramana Mitra: Strange and true actually. I’m amazed to see that level of integrity. >>>

Building a Unicorn from Prague: Avast CEO Vince Steckler (Part 1)

Vince has built a $300 million a year security software company out of Prague, with a global customer base. Fantastic story, a must read!

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?

Vince Steckler: I’m originally from LA but I don’t remember much of it. We left when I was two. I grew up in Orange County in a place that we lovingly call Garbage Grove. Its official name was Garden Grove. I was always a geek. I studied Mathematics and Computer Science in school. I finished two Bachelor’s in four years.

Sramana Mitra: Where was that?

Vince Steckler: University of California – Irvine. This was back in the late 70s. I graduated in 1980. I kicked around as a programmer for many years. I worked on, strangely enough, nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons safety. I eventually moved back to the East Coast, working >>>