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Bootstrapping Using Services to $15 Million in Venture Capital: Gravitant CEO Mohammed Farooq (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

We continue to see exciting enterprise software companies being built by entrepreneurs who have roots in the consulting business and who have taken their domain knowledge and customer insights to develop compelling products to solve specific problems. Gravitant is yet another case in point.

Sramana: Mohammed, let’s start our discussion by reviewing your background. Where do you come from? What are the roots of your entrepreneurial journey?

Mohammed Farooq: I am originally from India, close to Hyderabad. I went to engineering school in India and came to the United States in 1991 to attend graduate school. I was born in 1967 and went to school locally in India. I attended Gulbarga University in India where I studied mechanical engineering. I attended graduate school in Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, I completed a dual degree in operations research and computer science. I then did an MBA in finance as well. >>>

From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

I see so many people making excuses for why they are not successful – discrimination, fate, luck, all external factors. Read Tomas Gorny’s story. I hope it will give you some perspective and some attitude adjustment that hopefully propels success.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your background. Tell us where you are from, where you were born and raised, and in what kind of background.

Tomas Gorny: I was born originally in Poland. I lived there for 14 years. It was a communist country. Poland didn’t have middle-class families at that point in time because everybody was relatively poor. At the age of 14, I moved to Germany where I spent another six years. Then at the age of 20, I moved to the United States.

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Bootstrapping a Global Software Product Company Using Services From Denmark: Sitecore CEO Michael Seifert (Part 7)

Sramana: How well has the company grown?

Michael Seifert: We have roughly 10% of the global market share.

Sramana: How does the market share split up? Who is number 1?

Michael Seifert: There are many vendors in our market. I usually describe this as an oasis battlefield out there. The group at the top is Sitecore, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, and Salesforce. I have seen that group on top over the past two years.

Sramana: What percentage of that market do you think the other players have?

Michael Seifert: I wish I knew! >>>

Bootstrapping a Global Software Product Company Using Services From Denmark: Sitecore CEO Michael Seifert (Part 6)

Sramana: Could you give me an example of some of your customers?

Michael Seifert: One of the better examples is one of Europe’s largest airlines, easyJet. When they went live on Sitecore a few years back, they had a huge launch strategy, which is normal for large enterprises. When you turn on the new site it is substantially different, so you let traffic in little by little. The important thing to remember about easyJet is that they only sell online.

They used Sitecore to build an experience platform that offered a very highly customized experience. There was a lot of effort targeting existing customers that they knew as well as anonymous customers, the best possible way that they could for each customer. They found that by doing so they were able to increase their conversion rates by double digit rates. That is a big deal when you only sell online. >>>

Bootstrapping a Global Software Product Company Using Services From Denmark: Sitecore CEO Michael Seifert (Part 5)

Sramana: What is an example of a capability beyond building websites?

Michael Seifert: You can say that once you start gathering information about website visitors, you start to learn a lot about them. Crafting personal emails is a natural extension from that. At that time, we started to explore email marketing, mobile technologies, and many other things. >>>

Bootstrapping a Global Software Product Company Using Services From Denmark: Sitecore CEO Michael Seifert (Part 4)

Sramana: You said Sitecore was profitable from the very beginning. How long did it take you to reach $1 million in revenue?

Michael Seifert: I think we had about $500,000 our first year. We reached a million dollars the year after.

Sramana: Was Sitecore a pure product company, with services left to the sister company?

Michael Seifert: We are very religious about having a pure product company. Even today, 90% of our revenue comes from licensing and maintenance. The services component is really not existent. >>>

Bootstrapping a Global Software Product Company Using Services From Denmark: Sitecore CEO Michael Seifert (Part 3)

Sramana: How long did the parent system integrator company have to subsidize Sitecore?

Michael Seifert: Sitecore as a company has always been profitable, however, we would not have made it without our sister company. If we had a cash flow crunch, they could help us out. I think that if we did not have our sister company, then we would have had to take angel investments at an early stage. >>>

Bootstrapping a Global Software Product Company Using Services From Denmark: Sitecore CEO Michael Seifert (Part 2)

Sramana: What drove your decision to move back to Denmark as opposed to staying in Silicon Valley?

Michael Seifert: There were several factors that weighed in on that decision. Personal relationships and family relationships factored heavily in my decision. I like starting business with other people and I had a larger social network in Denmark. I had a larger professional network in Denmark as well. >>>