Featured Videos

Bootstrapping from Canada: FluidWare Co-CEO Aydin Mirzaee (Part 1)

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

Aydin Mirzaee is the co-CEO and co-founder of Fluidware (formerly Chide.it), an Internet software company which offers feedback solutions in the form of FluidSurveys and ReviewRoom. Prior to co-founding Fluidware he was the CEO of bOK Systems Corp, and he also has experience working R&D at Nortel. He is a graduate of the University of Ottawa.

Sramana: Aydin, let’s start by reviewing your personal background. What prepared you for your journey as an entrepreneur?

Aydin Mirzaee: I grew up in New York City. When I was 12 years old, I had an interest in entrepreneurship. I started shoveling snow for people and that interest morphed into something more serious when my brother and I got introduced to the web. We started building websites at a young age. We then got into the web hosting business a bit as well. As we went to college, we knew we wanted to build a company of our own, and we wanted it to be a big company. >>>

Moving a Technology Company from Israel to America: Perfecto Mobile CEO Eran Yaniv (Part 7)

Sramana: What does your ecosystem look like? Who are some of the other players in this market?

Eran Yaniv: The other players are partners that can resell and provide partners on top of our platform. That can include companies like Accenture and the other major players in this market. There are a lot of those types of companies all over our platform. We have a strong partner with testing houses and they use our product as well. The value-added resellers are able to provide full solutions to the market. >>>

Moving a Technology Company from Israel to America: Perfecto Mobile CEO Eran Yaniv (Part 6)

Sramana: When it comes to the device platform, where do you see the maximum activity? Does it roughly correlate with the market share of the operating systems?

Eran Yaniv: I don’t think there are any surprises. It correlates very nicely with the operating systems. As a specific platform, the iPhone 5 is a highly utilized platform in our cloud. From an operating system perspective, Android has the most use. The market is starting to believe that Windows will become important for a segment of the market. We have received a lot of demand for Windows-based handsets. We correlate with the market, but we serve more than what the platform’s actual market share is at. >>>

Moving a Technology Company from Israel to America: Perfecto Mobile CEO Eran Yaniv (Part 5)

Sramana: How has your company developed over time? Since you evolved into an enterprise product, how has your deal size changed?

Eran Yaniv: I can give you an example. There is a company on the retail side that started with us using a $500 a month subscription. When we looked at their usage, we saw that they were very strong users. We connected with them and got them to start expanding their use of the public cloud so that they moved to a few thousand dollars in subscription feeds. Shortly thereafter they went into a private cloud solution for a deal that approached $200,000 a year. They recently expanded their private cloud globally, so it now covers North America and Europe. We are now talking about a deal size that is just shy of a million dollars a year. >>>

Moving a Technology Company from Israel to America: Perfecto Mobile CEO Eran Yaniv (Part 4)

Sramana: Given that you were facing a tricky market with uncertain revenues, how were you able to finance the cash requirements to keep your human capital?

Eran Yaniv: We did not have enough revenue coming in to keep the status quo. When you make the right decisions financially and organizationally, then your VCs will appreciate that. They will support you through the long haul. That is exactly what happened.

In addition, we gained some new funding from the Israeli Chief Scientist. That, combined with our VC funding, helped us survive that period. We could not have done that if our investors did not believe in us. Our investors believed in us and the moves we were making. >>>

Moving a Technology Company from Israel to America: Perfecto Mobile CEO Eran Yaniv (Part 3)

Sramana: How did you finance the company? Did you get the VCs to finance the concept?

Eran Yaniv: That is an interesting question. The concept we had in place that we were going to use to target mobile developers needed some engineering development. It did not need too much, but to prove the concept we needed some funds. We had worked with a VC in Israel called Carmel Ventures. They gave us a pre-seed funding to prove the concept out and take them, with that concept, to a few potential customers. They wanted to verify, with the market, that this was a good concept to go forward with. They gave us $250,000. We started out, literally, in a garage. We had five people there managing a simple budget. We proved the concept with Vodafone and a carrier in France and got good feedback. We did that tour with the VCs, and that led to our first round. >>>

Moving a Technology Company from Israel to America: Perfecto Mobile CEO Eran Yaniv (Part 2)

Sramana: What was the premise on which you founded Perfecto Mobile?

Eran Yaniv: I have two small stories from my past that I can tell to answer that question. When I worked for Converse, we would develop instant mobile applications for mobile operators in the U.S. We developed them in Israel and then came here to deploy them. When we did that we realized that in the US the entire environment, from the firmware to the handsets, was different. We had to redevelop aspects of the application. That is when we thought of the idea of remotely accessing handsets in the target markets. >>>

Moving a Technology Company from Israel to America: Perfecto Mobile CEO Eran Yaniv (Part 1)

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

Eran Yaniv is the CEO and founder of Perfecto Mobile, a company which provides cloud based mobile testing, automation, and monitoring products and services. Prior to founding Perfecto Mobile, he was the vice president of product marketing at Comverse America. He also served as the general manager of the Comverse Mobile Data Division and led a major turnaround in the performance of the division by bringing in accounts such as Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. Prior to Comverse, Eran was the general manager of the Valisys Quality Management business unit at Tecnomatix, where he also served as the director of research and development at Tecnomatix Ltd. in Israel.

Sramana: Eran, let’s start by reviewing your past so that we can understand where you you’re your entrepreneurial roots. Where are you from, and where did you grow up?

Eran Yaniv: I am originally from Israel, which is where I was born. I spent most of my life in Israel. When I was a kid, I moved with my parents to the U.S. and I lived in Philadelphia for three years. That gave me a good taste of what America is like. When I had to join the army, which is required of everyone in Israel, I postponed my enlistment by three years so that I could attend school and earn my engineering degree. >>>