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Self-Financing an Artificial Intelligence Software Company: John Rauscher, CEO of Yseop (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You got your first customer in 2007. How much money did you put into this?

John Rauscher: A few millions.

Sramana Mitra: Right at the beginning, you put a few millions in the company, right away?

John Rauscher: No, not right away. We stopped looking for customers when we understood that people didn’t want to buy the product without development tools. I was not working there. I was at Oracle. We stepped back and built what people want—development configuration environment. We didn’t have a salesperson. We got sales by chance or through contacts without really looking. We really started looking for customers in 2009. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money from Kleiner Perkins Later: William King, CEO of Zephyr Health (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the customer segment that you were going after and what was the pain point that you were solving for them?

William King: We’re a technology company first that is focused foremost on life sciences. Simply put, we wrangle this universe of Big Data and put it to use for pharmaceutical companies. What does that mean in practical terms? It means there’s a lot of weakly connected and even disconnected data that exists in the health ecosystem. A great example would be information about physicians, patients, and hospitals. You’d think that there would be strong correlations. What we found is that data is weakly connected or not connected at all. >>>

Self-Financing an Artificial Intelligence Software Company: John Rauscher, CEO of Yseop (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Can you give an example of something that was not possible for a salesperson to do before you introduced your product into the process?

John Rauscher: Let’s take an example of a financial adviser in a retail bank branch. Customers enter from time to time. You go to your bank and look for a financial adviser. You’re going to sit in front of him. The banker is going to secure your ID and account number. He’s going to connect to your data and see in front of him hundreds of data. He cannot understand the data immediately because it takes time to analyze the data. What we are going to do is immediately provide information instead of just data. Information like the customer has been with the bank for 15 years or the customer deserves preferred client status but has not applied for it. The customer actually bought a car last month and that explains why balance is very low this month. You will receive information that is very difficult to see from the data. Yseop is going to analyze the data. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money from Kleiner Perkins Later: William King, CEO of Zephyr Health (Part 3)

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

William King: I left London at the end of 2008.  It was great to learn about business, marketing, and management. The other thing that I’ve always been interested in is the world of technology, given all the devices that we have. The thing that really struck me at J&J was the staggering amount of data that we would purchase and generate. Obviously, a company of 120,000 employees and $60 billion in revenue will produce a tremendous amount of data. When I was in London, I became very fascinated with data. I’d always pay attention to data throughout my career. In fact, one of the things that I’ve learned early on is how critical data is in decision-making. Oftentimes at a big pharmaceutical company, you don’t know the outcome of your decision for many years. Think about drug development. It’s a 10-year cycle. It’s very expensive. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money from Kleiner Perkins Later: William King, CEO of Zephyr Health (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about where exactly in the chronology of the industry you were coming out of college? What did you do at that point?

William King: I finished school in 2002. It’s an international business degree.

Sramana Mitra: Where were you geographically at that point?

William King: I was in Denver, Colorado. When I was in school, there were a couple of things that were really formative. One was studying abroad and two were internships. I have worked my whole life even as a young fellow in the summers. In school, I remember I was working for an irrigation company. Because my dad was in construction, I had many construction jobs over the years. I remember I was digging the irrigation and it was really hot. I remember having this moment when I thought, “I’m in college. We have this wonderful career center and I have never even walked through the front door. I should probably walk in there and introduce myself.” >>>

Self-Financing an Artificial Intelligence Software Company: John Rauscher, CEO of Yseop (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What role did you play in this company? There were other people who co-founded the company and you came in later?

John Rauscher: Yes, I came in as the COO. Then, I became the CEO of the company.

Sramana Mitra: When the company was sold to Oracle, you were running the company?

John Rauscher: Yes, I was running the company. I negotiated the deal with Oracle as the CEO of the company. It was a six-month process. It was a good experience. I didn’t regret it even though I wasn’t a major stockholder. The decision to approve the transaction with Oracle came from the board. I was a stockholder of the company but not a major stockholder. >>>

Self-Financing an Artificial Intelligence Software Company: John Rauscher, CEO of Yseop (Part 1)

John has self-financed and scaled an interesting AI software company built on French technology, and would like to take it public. Very impressive execution!

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

John Rauscher: I was born and raised in France. I did a few jobs as a student. Then, I became a Mathematics teacher. It was important for me to learn how to set goals and understand how language is important for human beings. That was the first step. I came to the US to study English and Marketing at Berkeley. I learned so much in my experience at California that I promised myself to come back and live in the US, and start my company as an entrepreneur. >>>

Bootstrap First, Raise Money from Kleiner Perkins Later: William King, CEO of Zephyr Health (Part 1)

Continuing on our theme of ‘Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later’, here’s William King’s story of building a robust company in the healthcare industry, now funded by Kleiner Perkins.

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 circumstances?

William King: I was born in Princeton, New Jersey. I lived in Princeton until I was 18. I’m the oldest of six children. That’s a little bit unique in that we had a lot of action in the house. The age span was actually a difference of 10 years, which was pretty interesting and pretty heroic, now that I’m a parent myself. As a child, part of my experience in growing up was leading my siblings and helping them to participate. Kids look up to their older brothers and sisters. A lot of what was instilled in me at a very young age is this notion of making good choices, collaboration, and the idea that people are paying attention to the things that you’re doing. >>>