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Scaling a Pre-IPO Enterprise Software Company: Anaplan CEO Fred Laluyaux (Part 5)

Sramana: What application areas are we talking about?

Fred Laluyaux: We enable hyper growth and hyper change. We empower users to enable data-driven decisions in real time. HP is live with Anaplan to do their territory and quota plans around the world. They deliver territories and quotas to their sales reps globally. Other companies use Anaplan for financial applications. Other companies use Anaplan for trade and promotion management.

When you think about Anaplan, think about a tool that gives business analyst the ability to build and share models on their own at an enterprise scale. We have 140 billion populated cells in the HP model for example. The users do not feel that heavy, complex process to set up their model. They just know they can run a model to collaborate with thousands of users and that they can modify their models in real time. We liberate business users by giving them spreadsheet like immediacy. People love the ability to modify a spreadsheet and see the numbers recalculate on the fly. When you do that in Anaplan, we do those calculations in real time. The model is smarter than Excel and a lot more scalable. >>>

Finding a Viable Monetization Model: wefi CEO Zur Feldman (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What led you to going to the startup world after all these years of Packard Bell?

Zur Feldman: The experience in Packard Bell was very different because when I joined the company, there were 16 people. Packard Bell helped to revolutionize the PC industry and actually create what we see today – all these personal computers at home, which was something that nobody really thought back in 1986. My experience there helped me understand a few things. Number one is that a small idea can be a huge idea if you really focus on doing something, even if it’s new. >>>

Scaling a Pre-IPO Enterprise Software Company: Anaplan CEO Fred Laluyaux (Part 4)

Sramana: When did your transition to Anaplan occur?

Fred Laluyaux: This occurred just over 2 years ago.

Sramana: When was Anaplan founded?

Fred Laluyaux: The story of Anaplan is very interesting. The founder, Michael, was working for a company that was acquired by Cognos, which was later acquired by IBM. There was a lot of industry consolidation that occurred from 2002 to 2006. Michael spent 4 years at IBM before leaving in early 2007 to work on Anaplan. He actually locked himself in a barn in the UK and started coding. It took him 4 years to come up with the core technology behind Anaplan.

The company incorporated in 2007. In 2010, we did a Series A and in late 2011 we did a Series B for $11.2 million. We had 10 customers such as Jive and MacAfee by that time.

Sramana: So by the time you got involved in the company it had completed two rounds of financing?

Fred Laluyaux: Yes, I joined right after the Series B financing.

Sramana: What was the premise for founding Anaplan?

Fred Laluyaux: First, the goal was to leverage the availability of scalable and affordable in-memory computing. That occurred in 2006 when 64 bit memory became affordable. The objective was to resolve modeling and planning issues that business users face when they are in hybrid roles. >>>

Finding a Viable Monetization Model: wefi CEO Zur Feldman (Part 1)

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

8 million users and no revenue. What do you do? Find out from Zur Feldman.

Sramana Mitra: Zur, let’s start with your personal story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of circumstances?

Zur Feldman: I’m originally from Israel. I spent all my youth in Israel. I ended up spending 26 years in different places in the US. Through different paths, which I can later talk about, I ended up studying in New York. My first degree is in Photojournalism and Television. I then went to Los Angeles and joined UCLA. I studied Business Administration and spent a big part of my time there – nine years. I made a switch from the diplomatic core into high-tech industry in 1986. >>>

Scaling a Pre-IPO Enterprise Software Company: Anaplan CEO Fred Laluyaux (Part 3)

Sramana: What did you do after the company was sold?

Fred Laluyaux: That was in 2006 and for the first time, I found myself working for a real company, Business Objects. I did not think that I would stay there for more than 2 weeks, but I felt responsible for my team. I committed to stay there for a year. I liked that company. I was able to develop the performance management business for this BI company and I did a very interesting project. I learned how a publicly traded company worked and I was hitting a groove when SAP acquired Business Objects. At that point, I knew it was time to leave. >>>

Buliding a Venture Scale Analytics Platform Company: Birst CEO, Brad Peters (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: In that strategy, were you actually partnering with Salesforce and going to market through the AppExchange?

Brad Peters: We were. Salesforce is a fairly hands-off partner. I wouldn’t say that it was a huge help. That has generally been my experience talking to other people. You find Salesforce customers on your own and tell the story to them directly. AppExchange was a nice technical integration point. It wasn’t that great a marketing tool.

Sramana Mitra: I’ve heard big feedback on that. Some people have been very successful generating leads out of AppExchange and some have not. It sounds like in your case, it has not.

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Scaling a Pre-IPO Enterprise Software Company: Anaplan CEO Fred Laluyaux (Part 2)

Sramana: You started your reseller or distributor business right after college. How did you handle the crash when you realized the business was no longer viable?

Fred Laluyaux: I was actually ready to move on. I did that business from the age of 23 to 27 years. There was no VC funding, so it was hard to find money. The word startup did not exist. All this time, I was looking at the US trying to figure out a way to get there because everything was happening in the US. I felt that I was fortunate because I had spent the past four years running my own startup working with American technology companies. I caught the startup bug. >>>

Buliding a Venture Scale Analytics Platform Company: Birst CEO, Brad Peters (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about what happens after you did the reset. What was your go-to market strategy with the new horizontal product?

Brad Peters: We had to sit down and figure out what the go-to market strategy was going to be. There was a lot of experimentation. We couldn’t make our enterprise product available to everybody from day one. So we had to pick a small piece of it and make that available. It was not able to satisfy the entire market. We had to find little pieces of that marketplace that we could grow, expand, and drive. We tried a lot of value propositions – some of which worked, many didn’t. Ultimately, as we kept building the product and getting it richer and more robust, we continued to put more enterprise capabilities into the product. As we ultimately got those enterprise capabilities into the product, we started to compete in that main market. It was late 2010 when we really nailed it and things started to click. >>>