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Building to $10 Million in EdTech: Panopto CTO Eric Burns (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: They basically asked you to become the CEO of this entity that was already funded?

Eric Burns: I actually became the Chief Technology Officer because my competencies at that time were that of an engineer. I’m now the Chief Product Officer and I’ve done a lot of the CEO duties. We have this unorthodox operating structure that ended up working very well for us. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur Who Understands ‘Work’: WorkMarket CEO Jeff Leventhal (Part 4)

Sramana: Did you build it beyond the $12 million that you hit in year two or did you sell the business?

Jeff Leventhal: In 1998, we had the opportunity to sell the business to a public communications company and they are still running the business today.

Sramana: How much did you sell that business for?

Jeff Leventhal: We sold it for $6.5 million. I was 28 years old, living in New York City. That was real money for me. I did not have partners in that business. I did not do things like stock options. I did give 23% of the money that I received from selling the company to the employees of the company. >>>

Building to $10 Million in EdTech: Panopto CTO Eric Burns (Part 2)

Eric Burns: I got to work on some interesting things like building a search engine from scratch, designing a large-scale storage system, and building a UI—basically, building an entire system from the ground-up. One of the other projects that I got involved in, even as early as 1998, was capturing lectures in a classroom. CMU [Carnegie Mellon University] is a teaching institution where a lot of great presentations are given every day. Initially, e-commerce wanted to experiment with online class delivery. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur Who Understands ‘Work’: WorkMarket CEO Jeff Leventhal (Part 3)

Sramana: Based on what you were charging customers, what was the cost of acquiring hours from providers? Did you have a fixed price or were costs variable?

Jeff Leventhal: We tried to make most of our deals paid out at around $55 an hour. However, we billed our clients in 30 min increments and we paid in 15 min increments. That made a big difference in the margin. We did not learn that immediately but we did figure that out. The margins of the business were very good and the business was profitable almost from day one. >>>

Building to $10 Million in EdTech: Panopto CTO Eric Burns (Part 1)

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

One of the issues we’ve discussed is the slow-growth nature of the EdTech industry. This interview explores the question in depth, and shows how Panopto is mitigating the issue through sector diversification.

Sramana Mitra: Eric, let’s start at the beginning of your story. Tell us where you were born and raised, and in what kind of circumstances.

Eric Burns: I was born in Nashville, Tennessee. My father, at that time, was in a seminary to be an Episcopal priest. He finished seminary and we moved to Knoxville, Tennessee when I was very young. My dad opened his parish there. My mom was a psychologist.

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A Serial Entrepreneur Who Understands ‘Work’: WorkMarket CEO Jeff Leventhal (Part 2)

Sramana: What did you do after you sold LANSafe in 1995?

Jeff Leventhal: As an entrepreneur, I have built my companies based on what I have learned in previous companies. This led me to launch a business called Remote Lojix. What I had discovered while running my previous software business is that companies were having a really hard time solving technology problems once they identified that they were having the problems. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur Who Understands ‘Work’: WorkMarket CEO Jeff Leventhal (Part 1)

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

Jeff Leventhal has built four businesses in the domain of ‘work’ and has created a blue-print of managing distributed workforces on behalf of companies. All four businesses have monetized well for this serial entrepreneur who really has the magic touch!

Sramana: Jeff, let’s start with a bit of background. Where were you born and raised?

Jeff Leventhal: I was born in Florida. I was raised in New York and I lived in New York City for 20+ years. I now live on Long Island where I was raised. >>>

Building a Fat Startup: Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: As long as you are delivering and executing on what you said you were going to deliver on, there is no shortage of capital. In your case, you have delivered a product. You’ve had customers. Your pricing model is validated. Your business model is validated. You’re ramping up well. These kinds of deals generally do not face any shortage of capital.

Sunny Gupta: From my perspective, you’re absolutely right. Over-delivering based on what I’ve told them I’m going to deliver has opened up more opportunities. At some stage, we did move more into a hyper-aggressive growth. We’ve been very capital-efficient but there was capital at our disposal. Whether it’s ramping our sales capacity, investing in more product capabilities, or marketing capabilities, we’ve been fortunate from that perspective to ramp ahead of the curve.

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