Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli (Part 1)

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

David Ciccarelli: I was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. It’s a city of about a hundred thousand residents located just at the northern tips of the Lake Superior. Before graduating high school, mom and dad suggested to all the kids that we needed to >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Switching gears to the business model, it sounds like it’s a regular SaaS business model. What kind of average deal sizes are you seeing? Are you focused on the large enterprises or is this also mid-market? Where is the target audience?

Greg Besner: The wonderful part of culture and engagement is the diversity of companies and customers. What we’ve learned in the last three years is that leaders care about culture regardless of their company and their industry. We have customers all over the world. We have customers from all industries and sizes. It’s really been amazing and it’s wonderful to see that leaders in all >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You mentioned that there were a few things that you zeroed in on. You had very good access to validate your idea. In fact, your decision to start this company came out of people coming to you on this topic. What were those nuggets around which you built the product?

Greg Besner: Let me describe the problem a little bit and then I’ll describe how we solved it. The problem that companies were having was that we have a new generation of employees that make up the largest cohort in the workplace today. All employees now are able to give and get feedback on almost all parts of their life now. The paradigm for generations and decades leading up >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So CultureIQ begins in 2009?

Greg Besner: No. CultureIQ was started in 2013.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s jump to the CultureIQ beginning. What was the concept? Why did you start CultureIQ? What problem were you going to solve?

Greg Besner: I would say that the interest in culture was from being involved with Zappos. When I got involved, there were about 70 employees. When we sold it, there were thousands of employees. Many of them were warehouse workers and call center >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you start the corporate business?

Greg Besner: 2002 is when Sarbanes-Oxley was made effective. I actually don’t remember exactly when we launched with our first corporate client but it was probably in 2003.

Sramana Mitra: What was the sales model for the corporate business? At that time, were you selling on the phone? How were you getting those customers? How were they finding you? What was the method of selling? >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In your situation, having worked in finance, very often, there tend to be good friend investors. As angels, they act as friends and family angels. I love what you said that you raised money from your customers. It’s something that we’re talking about from a methodology point of view.

We have done a few case studies of entrepreneurs who have basically raised money from their customers, which is a fantastic way to raise money because not only do you get the customers in as investors and promoters of what you’re doing, you’re also getting actual revenue into the company from these customers. Across the board, >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after Wharton?

Greg Besner: I ended up going to Goldman Sachs. At first, it felt like a disappointment that I wasn’t starting a company. Although I was doing entrepreneurial things, I was not pursuing entrepreneurship full-time. I’m still happy I did go to Goldman Sachs for a few reasons.

Firstly, it was an incredible culture. I had no financial services background before being recruited to Goldman Sachs. The fact that they trusted their culture and their training and that they would recruit me was really amazing. The training was really incredible. It was the first feel of how culture could be so powerful for business. I’m sure you’re familiar with Fortune’s 100 best >>>

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Greg Besner, CEO of CultureIQ (Part 1)

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

Greg has built three businesses and shares our philosophy of capital efficient entrepreneurship. Read on to learn more about his journey.

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?

Greg Besner: I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which people think of as a small casino town although there were no casinos there at that time. My father was a taxi driver for 38 years. My mother was a housewife until the casino industry started in >>>