Building a Robust Niche Business: FilmTrack CEO Jason Kassin (Part 2)

Jason Kassin: The ability to record all your distribution agreements in film and television was the genesis of FilmTrack. That has changed dramatically since even the mid 90’s. There was not any such thing as streaming back then. The notion of the business was distributing content to various mediums and territories, various languages and channels, and being able to record the terms of those arrangements. It’s almost like an inventory system, but it’s a multidimensional inventory. I was doing that at the same time that I was  >>>

Building a Robust Niche Business: FilmTrack CEO Jason Kassin (Part 1)

You’ve heard me say over and over again that niches make for great business opportunities. In this story, you will read how an entrepreneur with deep domain knowledge in the film industry created a robust niche business.

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?

Jason Kassin: I’m from a little town called Brooklyn, New York. I was actually born in upstate New York just by accident. It was summer and that’s where my family happened to be at that time. I came of age, from a computer standpoint, during that dawn of the personal computer era. I’ve been working in the computer world and the software world since the dawn of the personal computer era. >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: By the time you raised Series A, you already had $20 million in revenue?

Don Mal: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Can you discuss what kind of equity cap table did you raise that money on? We have a very big philosophy in our program where if you operate tightly with small amounts of capital, you have a lot of leverage in follow-on situations. >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Excel has huge training out there. People know how to use Excel. From a user adoption point of view, Excel-based interface would have a much bigger adoption.

Don Mal: My favorite line is that only Facebook has as many users.

Sramana Mitra: How much money did you raise?

Don Mal: We raised $1.3 million. We originally set out to raise $1 million because we felt that we needed that to start a company, >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Why was he calling you? How did you know this guy?

Don Mal: We were together at Clarity. This is Rishi Grover, one of the Co-Founders. He’s 20 years younger than me. This is where it connects to the golf business. He said, “I need someone to help raise the money. We need someone to start our sales and marketing.” All that experience came together for me to be able to confidently leave a million-dollar job to come work and start a new software company.

Sramana Mitra: What stage did you raise money for Vena at? What did you have? Did you have some 

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Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Don Mal: Then I went to another software company but only for a very brief time. When I went to the services company, even though it was successful, I decided that I missed selling products. I did a couple of things. While I was in the consulting business, I did go to school and picked up a certificate in project management, because I wanted to get a better handle on the whole services business.

I went to York University and did a one-year PMP program. I ran to somebody who was looking for a VP of Sales and Marketing for a European software company that had an office in Toronto and Boston. This was between 2000 and 2001. I took that job. Then the >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay with the company?

Don Mal: I was there for four to five years. I was 24 years old when I started there. I grew from inside sales to outside sales, and I eventually led sales at SoftKey when I was 27 years old. I had about 18 sales people reporting to me in major leagues cities in the US as well as in Toronto. I became Director of Sales at 27 for a company that sold for $4 billion a few years later. It was quite an amazing opportunity.

Sramana Mitra: Did you have equity in the company? >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You grew up watching that way of life or owning your own business. That’s very common actually. I’m also an entrepreneur’s daughter. It makes that very big difference.

Don Mal: I used to help my father in different roles. When I turned 16, I actually got a job selling insurance to fishermen. There is a company that sells accident insurance to fishermen. They hire kids in school. I got this job where I drove to the fishing docks.

As fishermen used to come in with their catch, I would sell them a $10 insurance policy that would protect them if they lost an 

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