Sramana Mitra: What do you do on the cash flow management side?
Dara Greaney: We finance a lot of it ourselves. We use a third-party company called Resolve. It’s a spin-off of a popular payment platform for B2C. People like the idea of not having to take the risk online. For larger companies, we do that ourselves. That requires us to do some vetting.
>>>
Dara spoke with us some years back on his previous venture. This time, he has switched from B2C to B2B and brings insights on the nuances of that sector.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the new company that you’re doing.
>>>Sramana Mitra: Are your clients mostly in France or are they elsewhere as well?
Grégoire Chauvin: Half of our clients would be in the US and half in Western Europe.
Sramana Mitra: Can you talk a bit about where you’re seeing adoption? What industry by geography? Is the food and beverage trend global or specific to a particular geography?
>>>
Grégoire discusses two key trends in e-commerce: B2B and marketplaces.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the company.
Grégoire Chauvin: I’m the Founder of Uppler. We are a software company. We develop software that lets you create your own B2B e-commerce platform. We have different use cases for that. What we create the most are B2B marketplaces.
>>>Sramana Mitra: What are the dynamics on the logistics side?
Rob Keve: There is quite a lot there for two reasons. One is consumers have expectations. We’re all sensitized by what the domestic experience is. We all want cheap or free shipping, and we want it to be quick. A lot of that expectation translates into international.
>>>Sramana Mitra: How do you charge?
Rob Keve: We charge a subscription. We’re a software platform. We should not be a pure revenue share. You pay the subscription and can use it for one country or 200 countries. We have many different modules and you can access all of them as much as you like.
Sramana Mitra: The core business model is all subscription. There is no transaction fee model?
>>>
Cross-border commerce is cumbersome. Rob explains why, and how he is addressing the issues.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Flow Commerce and to yourself.
Rob Keve: I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Flow Commerce here in Hoboken, New Jersey. Flow Commerce is a turnkey solution to help any online merchant sell beyond their domestic market.
>>>Sramana Mitra: Can you give me a sense of how much people are paying for things like that? What’s an average deal size? What ballpark is the pricing?
Barry Adika: A company like Adidas has 77 people that’s doing price monitoring every day. They have two lawyers on staff. With our software, they can have two lawyers and another three or four people.
>>>