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Building a Global Enterprise Software Company from Portugal: Paulo Rosado, CEO of OutSystems (Part 1)

We’ve looked at a few case studies of European companies successfully turning themselves into global ones. SDL, Mendix, and Sitecore are just a few examples. In that select club, OutSystems is a key player.

Sramana: Paulo, let’s start out at the beginning of your story. Where were you born and raised? What was your journey like leading up to the OutSystems story?

Paulo Rosado: I was born in Portugal. I attended the Universidade Nova in Lisbon and I graduated with a computer science degree in 1988. In 1992 I went to Stanford University where I received my masters degree in computer science. I then worked in Silicon Valley until 1997. After that I returned to Portugal to start my own company. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services, Scaling Using Content Marketing: John Sundberg, CEO of Kinetic Data (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Unfortunately, that’s the problem with enterprise sales cycles. They are just so very long.

John Sundberg: Exactly. I did so many demos of the software to them. It was ridiculous. In one of the demos I did for them, they had people from all over the world call. I had given a 1-800 number. The phone bill alone that I had to pay was $3,000 for this demo. It was an interesting learning lesson for me. 1-800 numbers are not a good idea. If the company doesn’t have enough money to pay you to call, they don’t have enough money for software. I got rid of that 1-800 number six months after that.

Sramana Mitra: That’s a decision I made too.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Montreal, Canada: Silanis CEO Tommy Petrogiannis (Part 7)

Sramana: How did your strategy work when it came to reaching credit unions?

Tommy Petrogiannis: We ended up partnering with CUNA which does the technical due diligence for a community of 700 credit unions who do not have the technical resources to do that internally. CUNA will make recommendations for the best suppliers in any give space.

Sramana: Where are you now in terms of revenue?

Tommy Petrogiannis: We are in the $20 million zone. Over the past four quarters, our new business bookings have been growing 30% per quarter. We are helping ourselves by making the product easier to find and evaluate. We have had some major customers become customers very quickly through self-guided evaluations. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services, Scaling Using Content Marketing: John Sundberg, CEO of Kinetic Data (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did you go around that problem?

John Sundberg: We took the product and we broke it up into a whole bunch of smaller pieces. That big suite application had a survey application, scheduling application, workflow application, and form generation system. We broke them into smaller pieces so that we could then add in a complementary way. They had their existing pieces and it’s easier for us to sell a survey capability to add to their existing system. We effectively made a whole bunch of applications that were add-on in nature rather than core in nature.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Montreal, Canada: Silanis CEO Tommy Petrogiannis (Part 6)

Sramana: It sounds like the legitimacy of e-signatures for legal purposes really changed the entire direction of the company.

Tommy Petrogiannis: That really changed us as a company because we moved from within the walls of an organization to outside the walls of an organization. We gave them the ability to interact with customers without making them wait for paperwork or making them come into the branch.

Sramana: Which verticals are your primary adopters today?

Tommy Petrogiannis: We generated 70% of our revenue today from banks and insurance companies. The government generates 15% of our revenue and a bunch of other verticals are starting to rise up. Healthcare is the next big vertical that is rising up. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services, Scaling Using Content Marketing: John Sundberg, CEO of Kinetic Data (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: If I got this right, you were drawn into this Remedy projects and as you were working on these, you saw the opportunity to build framework around the various Remedy problems that you were seeing and be able to productize what you were doing as projects essentially.

John Sundberg: I see it a little bit differently. I saw a business problem that people had and the common tool was Remedy. Therefore, I used the Remedy tool to solve these common business problems. You described it as Remedy problems. I describe them as business problems. Remedy was just the tool that usually got me invited to the party, so to speak.

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Bootstrapping Using Services from Montreal, Canada: Silanis CEO Tommy Petrogiannis (Part 5)

Sramana: Outside of the DoD contracts, where did you get the remainder of your revenue?

Tommy Petrogiannis: It came from industries that were regulated and needed operational efficiencies. This included pharmaceuticals, aerospace manufacturing, and lots of departmental sales for paperwork efficiencies. After the DoD, manufacturing was our next largest vertical followed by aerospace manufacturing. We knew that we did not want to just stay in those markets. We really wanted to get to a consumer-facing market.

Sramana: It sounds like the DoD contracts that you were able to secure were a key moment for your company. What was the next major milestone? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services, Scaling Using Content Marketing: John Sundberg, CEO of Kinetic Data (Part 1)

You have heard me discuss bootstrapping using services quite a lot. Here, we also take on another important key strategy for customer acquisition: content marketing.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some background. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised and in what kind of circumstances?

John Sundberg: I’m currently in St. Paul, Minnesota, which is where our office is. I was born in Minneapolis. I’ve been in Minnesota all of my life. My wife is from Connecticut. My upbringing was very open-minded. My dad taught positive attitude and sales training and indirectly, I’ve had that positive attitude all my life. He ran his own company. It was a small company. As a result of watching that while growing up, I thought I wanted to work in a big company. >>>