Growing Organically: Sebastian Kanovich, CEO of dLocal (Part 1)

dLocal was spun off from its parent company with 40 customers. It never took any outside funding and has grown to 350 customers within a year. Read on for more.

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 Kanovich: I was born in Uruguay and that’s where I grew up. I lived there all of my life. I went out to study and then came back. Now, I am currently living in Tel Aviv. >>>

Competing with Giants: Colin Earl, CEO of Agiloft (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me similarly about how you position against ServiceNow and Apttus in contract management.

Colin Earl: It’s essentially the same positioning. The Agiloft platform allows us to do two things. It allows us to configure the product to meet the needs of an individual customer in a period of weeks and it allows us to guarantee success – to provide an unconditional satisfaction guarantee that covers both the software as well as the consulting services.

If the customer isn’t happy for any reason within the first three months, they can just call and say, “I’m cancelling the order. Everything works perfectly, but the CIO has decided that post-it notes is the way of the future. That’s where we’re going.” The reason we can do that is, first off, the product itself and implementation >>>

Competing with Giants: Colin Earl, CEO of Agiloft (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to specifics. What was your customer acquisition strategy? Was it direct sales? You had a set of customers who were on your previous product and were switching or upgrading to this one. Was that the first set of customers that you got?

Colin Earl: Yes, that was the first set of customers. The strategy was basically direct sales.

Sramana Mitra: You had a sales force selling this, right?

Colin Earl: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of customers did you go after? Were they Fortune 500, Global 2000, or small businesses? >>>

Building a New Niche Brand from New Hampshire: Yogibo CEO Eyal Levy (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: By the end of 2014, what was your level of e-commerce business?

Eyal Levy: Because we grew the business through other options, the percentage of the online business remained within the 15% to 20% range. Domestically, it grew. It went up to 25%.

Sramana Mitra: I have one question which I can’t help asking. This is one of the reasons why so many e-commerce brands have done so well. It’s because of not having to invest capital in opening stores, which as you state, is very capital-intensive and hard to finance in the growth phase.

How does the revenue that you generate through e-commerce compare with the revenue that you generate through these capital-intensive stores. Can you build this brand largely through e-commerce and not through all this retail expansion? >>>

Competing with Giants: Colin Earl, CEO of Agiloft (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: All these years, it’s a progression and evolution of the same company that you’re still running today?

Colin Earl: That’s right.

Sramana Mitra: This previous product that you’re comparing your current contract management software with, what year was that?

Colin Earl: The first product was roughly in 1996 to 2002. We ran with that product. We used the revenue from it to fund development of, what is today, Agiloft. >>>

Building a New Niche Brand from New Hampshire: Yogibo CEO Eyal Levy (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Why Japan?

Eyal Levy: Through the years and since 2012, people would see our brand if they came to the US and tried it or they’d just read articles online. Some approached us to see if they can start the brand in their own country. With most of them, it just wasn’t the right fit because we really believe in the model that we created, which is the synergy with the brick-and-mortar and online. Some of those leads wanted just online or just stores and didn’t want to have the entire model.

The first person who we really believed could do it was a person from Japan. He read about Yogibo and approached me. He ordered and paid $800 to ship one and wrote me an email that it’s the best purchase he’s ever made. We met a few weeks later in Asia. There was great chemistry. Three months after, we signed the >>>

Competing with Giants: Colin Earl, CEO of Agiloft (Part 3)

Colin Earl: The next thing that happened was somewhat of a surprise. It was being picked up by very large businesses. I won’t mention by name but it’d suffice to say that one client was one of the world’s largest defense contractors. When a guy representing them called, I asked him what they will be using it for.

Then he replied, “We’re going to be using it for satellite communication errors.” Then I wondered, “Why? You’re a Fortune 50 company. You must have something for tracking satellite communication errors. Satellite is one of your primary areas of business.” The voice got really cold at the end of the line. He said, “Yes. If I want to add one field, it takes two months for IT to do it. I have to call in political favors to get it done at that time. Now, I downloaded your product this >>>

Building a New Niche Brand from New Hampshire: Yogibo CEO Eyal Levy (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Now we’re talking 2010. What is the split in the business? How much are you selling through retail? How much are you selling online?

Eyal Levy: Back then, the online business was about 20%.

Sramana Mitra: What happens in 2011?

Eyal Levy: We saw that the model of the store worked. In October of 2010, we opened the second store.

Sramana Mitra: Where was that? >>>