Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 4)

Sebastian Petersen: If you want to start an ecommerce company today, it’s very difficult to do it without a lot of funding and thinking big from the very beginning. Today, buying visitors and customers is four times the price it was 10 years ago. You have to think more creatively today.

Sramana Mitra: I’d say yes and no. The game has switched more to unique merchandise. All the generic stuff, you can buy on Amazon. You can’t really compete against Amazon.

Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In 2009 when you went public, what was the market share situation vis a vis you versus FaceForward?

Tarek Sherif: They had a larger market share when we went public. They were larger, certainly, in terms of revenue and market share, but we were growing much faster.

Sramana Mitra: Were they public?

Tarek Sherif: They were public. Why would anybody in their right mind go public in 2009? We went public in June of 2009 where our second tech company went out the door. It was a terrible time. The worst market you had in a century short of a depression. Why would you go public?

Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What country did you first go into outside Denmark?

Sebastian Petersen: Norway and Sweden. Then we started going south into Germany and France.

Sramana Mitra: Was there something different that Norway and Sweden wanted?

Sebastian Petersen: Only simple things. Once we started moving out of Scandinavia to Germany and France and especially Eastern Europe, we really had to start tweaking our websites to the local community.

Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What other strategic moves did you make between the $10 million round and the IPO where you grew revenues tremendously? Was there anything you did strategically?

Tarek Sherif: Yes, I think there are a couple of things. Let me take you back one step. So, we had two mantras when we were building the company. From day one, we always had a very long term view. Some people say that but we really live that. We looked out 5 to 10 years. We made decisions with that in mind, which aligned very well with our customers who make 20 to 30 year bets on drugs.

Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Can you tell me how many years are we talking in this mode? When did you move out of your mom’s house to your own apartment?

Sebastian Petersen: We only did that for about six months.

Sramana Mitra: How much were you doing, revenue-wise, when you moved to the apartment?

Sebastian Petersen: I guess $10,000 a year.

Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The first customers that you were getting traction with, how much were they paying you?

Tarek Sherif: We tried a couple of different charging models. At first, we thought about a per-patient model. Back then, people were charging per data point. We tried a couple of those and they were frustrating for us.

So when we tried the per-patient model, one of the things that you learn very quickly in clinical trials is, you almost never enroll patients at the pace that you think you will. It’s always slower. So it takes forever to enroll patients.

Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 1)

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What a wonderful story of an ecommerce company bootstrapping to $12 million from a small town called Horsens in Denmark. All 60 employees work out of Horsens currently.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Sebastian Petersen: I’m from Denmark. I would say I had a pretty ordinary background. Both my parents were working in the public sector. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit together with one of my best buddies growing up. We were always together.

Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to when you decided to get together and start this company. What was the idea? What did they want to do?

It sounds like they brought the technical and domain knowledge about the CRO industry. What did they have? What was in their mind that they wanted to do?

Tarek Sherif: What was in their minds was that the process of running clinical trials was very complex and a very manual process, in particular, how you gathered and managed the data.