Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: By the time you found your product-market fit, there were other players in the market in the visualization space like Tableau. What did you experience from a competitive challenge point of view?

Allan Wille: We actually saw relatively little competition. That’s because we were going after small and midsize companies. Even today, the business intelligence and visualization space is very crowded, but it’s crowded in the enterprise. All those players exist to sell into larger organizations. They have an outbound sales force. They’re very expensive and complex.

We focus on the small and midsize companies where they don’t have an analyst or they don’t have an IT person. How can we be prescriptive and >>>

Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The product idea was based on what you were doing for Nokia and what you wanted to bring for the other mobile operators, right?

Hannu Verkasalu: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: This is now the post-iPhone era.

Hannu Verkasalu: Yes. Now more and more companies were interested in mobile being a medium for content and services. Of course, Nokia was no longer >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn? What were the key levers that you learned to push or look to push at that point?

Allan Wille: I think the obvious one was that our revenue was simply not growing. That was the one that was staring us in our face. We did have some successful customers, and we had heard that they relied on and loved our product. However, the rest of the model was just too difficult. Every time I chatted with other CEOs, that was the sense I got. Sometimes people are polite, but I wasn’t certainly hearing the yes. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 1)

Hannu has done three companies, including the one that he is doing now – Verto Analytics. We love stories of successful entrepreneurs from different parts of the world, and this one, from Finland is a wonderful one!

Sramana Mitra: Tell me where you come from, where you were born, raised, and in what kind of background.

Hannu Verkasalo: I’m originally from Finland. I was born in the northern parts of Finland, which is famous for Nokia. I moved to Helsinki to do my university studies. I did quite a bit of different studies in business and technology in Helsinki. About 15 years ago, I started my first company. It was all about mobile apps, which was an industry driven by Nokia at that time. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. Serendipity and luck are very big drivers in entrepreneurial success. People who don’t acknowledge that are basically fooling themselves and aggrandizing themselves in undeserved ways.

Allan Wille: That was an easy lesson. I’ll give you another example. The lesson there was, “we were not making any money, and here was an opportunity to make money.” It was very black and white. Making that change was fairly obvious.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you make off that deal?

Allan Wille: That was our very first real deal. I think we made $35,000 on an annual basis. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Your company seemed to have somehow found its stride, but you left. When you left that company, what did you do next?

Allan Wille: It’s a long story. I’ll put out some of the highlights. We started Klipfolio in the fall of 2001. At that time, since all I knew was the funding scenario, the idea was we’re going to go out and raise money. That’s what we did with the first company. Of course, there was no angel and VC in their right mind who was going to invest in a pre-revenue startup. That was a very good lesson for me. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Very typical overfunding, lack of discipline story.

Allan Wille: It really is. I don’t think we’ve seen that kind of feverish pitch to the same degree. We saw IoT and Big Data, and now we’re seeing the same thing with AI. I think there’s a lot of money being thrown at some of these companies, perhaps, prematurely.

Sramana Mitra: There’s plenty of money being thrown around, especially in this whole unicorn phenomenon. You may have seen it already since you follow my work. We’re doing this Debt by Overfunding series right now.

Allan Wille: I’m a big believer that funding at the wrong time can be a kiss of death. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 1)

Often, it takes a long, long time for a company to hit its stride. Read Allan Wille’s journey of great perseverance.

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?

Allan Wille: I was born here in Canada. Before I turned one, we moved to Switzerland. My father is Swiss and my mother is Canadian. I spent the first 14 years of my life growing up in Switzerland. My dad was a banker. Later on, we moved back to Canada because he wanted to start his own business. That has certainly influenced me. >>>