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Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO Phil Copeland (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: I think there is that, but there’s also a process that you have articulated very clearly. We have seen this process come up many times. This process of following a product that is somewhat successful in the market and doing this kind of system integration and value-added reseller work on top of it so that you basically simmer in customer scenarios. Where the art comes in is to figure out which problem can give you enough of an opportunity to build a real product and a business out of it.

Phil Copeland: You learn as you go. The big waves that have changed over my 25 or 30 years is obviously that whole launch of the PC industry and the opportunities that it created and the client server computing revolution. These are big changes in the industry and have had major impacts. I missed out on the Internet revolution when it first came along, but then the launch of tablets and iPad just had a profound impact on the way that everybody does business.

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Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO Phil Copeland (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let me get a bit more granular in some of these steps. When you started getting the sense that there was this product opportunity while you were essentially acting as a reseller and system integrator on top of what became the Adobe technology, what was your business situation? You were a self-financed company. What kind of revenue levels were you pulling at that point? What year are we talking about?

Phil Copeland: We started Avoka in late 2002. By about 2011, we were probably up to $10 or $11 million in revenue through a lot of consulting services work. We used to sell some of the Adobe products as well as our own products. We’d grown that business from scratch to around $10 million in revenue. We were starting to get a small amount of money from selling our own product as well but it was relatively small in those early years. >>>

Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO Phil Copeland (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I think the process that you’ve outlined is a very effective process. I’ve seen case study after case study where people have been successful in doing this. That’s to take some existing product that’s in the market, start selling and do some sort of a value-added reseller or system integration kind of partnership. That enables entrepreneurs to get close to customers, learn their problems, and then productize and build IP based on that knowledge. You’ve very clearly articulated a process that absolutely works. It’s a tried and true proven process.

Phil Copeland: I couldn’t agree more. I’ve run through this talk a few times. There’s a time and place too for getting venture-backed businesses, but I have to say that some of the worst disasters I’ve seen in businesses starting up are companies that have had too much money to start with. There was a classic company in Australia in the early 2000s that was backed by two really first-class >>>

Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO Phil Copeland (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after that?

Phil Copeland: There were a lot of lessons learned out of that. First of all, the original business was self-funded and was grown out of cash flow. Spot On was my first venture capital-based business, and it was also started in San Francisco. That was a really interesting experience. After that, I returned with my family to Sydney and once again, spent a bit of time wanting to start another technology business. I wanted one that was self-funded because after the dot-com boom, it was much harder to raise capital. Frankly, I was looking for a new idea for business that we could self-fund. It needed to earn money pretty much from the outset. >>>

Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO Phil Copeland (Part 2)

Phil Copeland: I had started that business from home. My wife was working at that time and it was self-funded. Five or six years later, I think we had about 70 or 80 employees. We’ve become established as one of the significant distributors and service providers around client server computing in the Asia Pacific region. In 1996, we were acquired by a large US software company Open Environment Corporation, which had recently listed on NASDAQ. They were looking for a business partner and a base to establish their Asia Pacific operation as well as acquire some of the products that we built along the way. That was my first exit from a company. In fact, the irony of that story was that six months later, I stepped in as the acting CEO of Open Environment for a year during its sale to Borland. >>>

Building a Global Technology Company from Australia: Avoka CEO Phil Copeland (Part 1)

Phil bootstrapped Avoka using services around an Adobe product, and then developed core IP and a product of his own at Avoka. The methodology is tried and true, and worth learning from.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the beginning of your story. Tell us where you’re from, where you were born and raised, and in what kind of circumstances.

Phil Copeland: I was born in Sydney, Australia in 1958. I attended school in Australia and studied Architecture in the late 70s and graduated in the early 1980s. People of my generation had little computer education at school and even at universities. My first exposure to computing was when I was writing my thesis on passive solar design. >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Is anything else interesting in your story? I find it fascinating. It’s great that you did this from Switzerland. It’s a very interesting angle that you figured out very early on in the history of the Internet. It’s wonderful to see that.

Samy Liechti: I think I have a message to all new and future entrepreneurs. I saw so many very nice detailed business plans. I think the most important thing is to start a business. The second message is it will be hard, but it’s worth it.

Sramana Mitra: You have chosen to bootstrap this company right? Right now, you’re at what level of revenue? >>>

Building a Subscription E-Commerce Business from Switzerland: Samy Liechti, CEO of Blacksocks (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In Switzerland, how do you market for your kind of offering? How much could you grow in Switzerland?

Samy Liechti: In the socks segment, we now have 20% market share. With 20% market share, we can grow up to 30% to 35%, but we will never dominate the whole market. We started about two years ago to invest more marketing money outside our country. It seems to be working.

Sramana Mitra: Now that you’re investing outside of Switzerland, in terms of geographies, where are you putting your marketing dollars? >>>