Featured Videos

Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 1)

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

Maxine Manafy is the founder and CEO of Bunndle, an app distribution network. Prior to founding Bunndle she held various sales and executive positions with companies such as Viximo, Mochi Media, Yahoo, KLA-Tencor and Intel. She is a graduate of San Jose State University and Stanford.

Sramana: Maxine, where does your story begin? Where are you from?

Maxine Manafy: I was born here in the Bay Area, in San Francisco. I was raised in East Oakland. Both my parents are immigrants and entrepreneurs as well. My father is from Iran and my mother is from Samoa. My father built his own furniture business, so he had a furniture factory. My mother worked in the family business, and we all were raised around that environment. My interest in starting my own company has always been there. >>>

Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 7)

Sramana: What kind of penetration do you think you have into your TAM, specifically to sales forces?

Chris Cabrera: I think it is still a pretty nascent market and the number is still low.

Sramana: Is the TAM basically your revenue and Callidus’ revenue?

Chris Cabrera: Oracle has some products in this area, and they do not report exactly how much they do in variable comp. I have heard they do as much as $300 million a year. IBM does not report their numbers, either. Callidus is a public company, and they are still at a $100 million run rate. >>>

Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 6)

Sramana: What are some of the key strategic points today? What needs to be done for you to scale to a $500 million  company?

Chris Cabrera: We need continued solid execution with growth rates exceeding 30%. We are the only pure-play SaaS comp player as well as the experts in comp. We have terabytes of data from our customers, and when we anonymize and aggregate that data, we can find trends and correlations of data which help our customers understand how to incentivize correctly. That is exciting and is the future opportunity for Xactly. >>>

Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 5)

Sramana: The period over which you have built your company is also the same time as the emergence of SaaS. What was the hardest aspect of scaling on the customer side?

Chris Cabrera: In the early years there was a lot of skepticism of SaaS. In the early days we were relegated to companies that had 500 reps or fewer. Companies with thousands of reps were still struggling with the advent of SaaS. Every year we have seen improvement in that area. We get bigger and bigger customers, and we are going deals with thousands of seats. Our customers are now huge companies like American Express and Salesforce. >>>

Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 4)

Sramana: Did you build the product around the five companies who indicated they would purchase your solution?

Chris Cabrera: We took all of that into consideration. Of the five companies that we showed to the VCs we ultimately ended up closing four of those companies. It worked out very well and that is what allowed us to get our Series A round of 4 million dollars. >>>

Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 3)

Sramana: What was your observation of the market in 2005 that prompted you to found Xactly?

Chris Cabrera: At Callidus we were very focused on the high end of the market. Our systems were very expensive. We had traditional enterprise software, and companies paid a lot of money to get installed. These deals could be $5 million or more. We were struggling to find enough companies willing to pay millions of dollars for the technology, which is a bad thing for a public company. >>>

Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 2)

Sramana: Selling the first few instances of a new product is vastly different than building a sales organization that the market has validated and accepted. Could you talk about what is unique about the early sales process? You don’t have reference accounts, you are selling a new concept. What have you learned over the years?

Chris Cabrera: There are things that a sales person needs to do. When you are making the very first sales, those things are incredibly amplified. We always talk and train on the sales side that you need to have relationship selling. You need to be the trusted advisor into the company. When you are selling that first customer it is more important than ever. People believe you and trust you. >>>

Building a Pre-IPO SaaS Company: Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly (Part 1)

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

Chris Cabrera is the founder and CEO of Xactly, a leading incentive compensation management software suite for companies of any size. He has more than two decades of successful senior management experience at both early-stage and public companies and has managed sales, marketing, operations and business development. He is also the co-author of “Xactly Sales Compensation for Dummies.” Prior to founding Xactly Corporation, Cabrera was the senior vice president of operations for Callidus Software. Before joining Callidus Software, he ran North American channel sales at Silicon Graphics. Cabrera earned a bachelor of science degree in business administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurship from the University of Southern California, and a master’s degree in business administration from Santa Clara University.

Sramana: Chris, let’s get started by reviewing your background. Where do you come from? What are the roots of your entrepreneurial journey?

Chris Cabrera: I grew up as one of five kids. Originally I was brought up in Boston, although my family moved a lot. I moved to Northern California for high school. My father was a serial entrepreneur at a time when being an entrepreneur meant you were a bootstrapped entrepreneur. My household was very entrepreneurial. I worked with my dad every summer in his office. >>>