Posted by Editor on June 30th, 2009
Written by Kris Drey, Fliqz Vice President of Product Marketing
Admit it, you thought Twitter was nothing but mindless drivel the first time you heard about it. Like me, you reluctantly signed up for an account, searched for your friends, followed them, and Tweeted about your weekend escapades, your deadly hangover, the killer PB&J you just ate…blah, blah, blah.
Then you heard about JetBlue, Zappos, and Woot! using it for business purposes, successfully. Define successfully, you thought to yourself. Well, if you exposed your brand to a new user, saved an upset customer from canceling, made a deal, sold a product, or simply sent someone from Twitter to your site then, you’ve succeeded at something. And you did it with little to no overhead and insane margins. Nice job.
Read more of Kris’ post here.
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Posted by Editor on May 14th, 2009
During a recent visit to email security vendor Proofpoint in Silicon Valley, SC Magazine editor Paul Fisher met with Paul Auvil, Proofpoint CFO. In this wide-ranging interview, they discuss Proofpoint’s success, the global economic crisis and the outlook for the email security market.
Paul has also held the CFO position at VMWare and Vitria, but he’s not just a finance type… trained as an engineer at Dartmouth, Paul also holds several patents on digital video compression. So, he’s always got a lot of interesting thoughts to share. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Paul Fisher: Gary Steele, Proofpoint CEO, said that one of the reasons why he’s fairly confident is that you’ve got a strong cash position. Would you want to start an information security company right now though?
Paul Auvil: No. I wouldn’t want to be in a small start-up right now. There are some companies that are series A, series B companies with some very good technology, but it is hopeless to try to get anyone to buy your products right now if you don’t have strong reference accounts for prospective customers, if you don’t have someone that they can call and can confirm and corroborate that the technology is good. Combine this with the fact that people are increasingly concerned that these small companies aren’t going to make it and it’s not a good outlook.
It’s tough going but it’s proving to be an opportunity for us, in that there’s a large list of very interesting series A companies with very good technology who are essentially trying to find an outlet, a buyer. So we’re pondering that list at this point and trying to decide which of those really have great technology that would be a good addition to our product portfolio.
Read more on Proofpoint’s progress here:
Tags: CFO, financials
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Posted by Editor on February 12th, 2009
By Bryan Stolle, MDV General Partner
This period in history is unique indeed. Yes, the environment for young companies is problematic at best. Business is slowing. Visibility into 2009 – much less 2010 - is uncertain. Capital markets are all but closed to many. But history shows that some of the strongest and most valuable companies emerged from tough economic times. Today’s sobering headlines are sending a clear message: executives must plan accordingly. In market downturns, sometimes demand isn’t altogether negatively impacted for startups (law of small numbers) – and in some cases, demand can even grow.
What we’ve been telling our CEOs is rather than hunker down, it’s time to step up. They’re up for the challenge and will lead their companies with a success plan that includes spending wisely, creating differentiation from competitors, and preparing for the recovery to come. Like all of us, they are learning again the importance of being extremely mindful of budgets. They are also facing the new leadership decisions and challenges around staffing and customer management. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: capital markets, economy, survival
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
