How can businesses be as strategic as possible when choosing a developer who will take the
time to understand their business and have the skills to stay competitive?

Building custom software versus buying a SaaS solution

When organizations need software to automate a process, the easiest solution is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). There are hundreds, if not thousands, of SaaS products on the market to automate nearly every aspect of your business, from accounting to project management to sales. SaaS products are quick to implement, affordable, and easy to use.

The downside? You’re limited to SaaS functionality built for everyone and not specifically for you. Your business workflows must fit into the SaaS technology rather than the technology customized to your business requirements and can interfere with the way your employees perform daily tasks and inhibit your unique strategies. SaaS is often the most affordable option at the expense of flexibility. A SaaS application built for the masses can only do so much. A custom application can do anything you need. It lets you own the product allows for growth and additional features while giving you a competitive edge.

Become more efficient and more productive by building what employees need rather than compelling them to work with limited SaaS functionality. Organizations might hesitate over the initial investment and the questionable return on that investment. Still, a custom solution will often prove to be much more cost-effective in the long run and can even make you money.

Custom, like SaaS, is not a fit for every case. There are plenty of SaaS products on the market that fit basic requirements or work as short-term stepping stones. The decision to go custom ultimately comes down to your specific needs. There’s no need to shift if a one-size-fits-all solution works for your team, but if you are constantly running into roadblocks in your off-the-shelf solution or have complex processes, custom could be your solution.

What makes a custom software solution be compelling?

Hours saved on team effort and time spent on a specific project. If your processes are highly customized, it’s reasonable to assume your software would also need to be. Instead of requiring teams to change the way they work, they can define the most efficient workflow in their software requirements.

Increased opportunity for customer acquisitions. You can build your strategies into your workflows using custom software to give your organization a competitive edge using tools that benefit customers. Perhaps your strategy has faster onboarding, better customer service, or a more personal approach. All these strategies can be built into custom software rather than limited by the same SaaS workflows used by all your competitors.

Intellectual property. With custom solutions, your organization drives the outcome, and you own the codebase, and it becomes your intellectual property. You no longer have a solution if your SaaS application goes out of business. With custom software, you own the solution.

Custom software needs a skilled team to build it. A competent development team requires several factors and solutions —technical, financial, and even cultural. Together, you work towards improving business workflows, revenue, and growth. Knowing what you need will help you describe what you’re looking for with prospective partners, compare skill sets, and ultimately decide the best fit for your project. Because a custom software solution gives organizations a competitive advantage in their industry – the caliber of developer talent needed to fit the bill may be more difficult to find than you realize. Custom software developers can offer a molded workflow that meets client needs and supports employee preferences. Still, they also need to have experience troubleshooting, managing enterprise projects, and building rapport with you when (at times) you may not know what you want or need.

Here are four tips to keep in mind when searching for the perfect partner:

They Need To Understand Your Business Needs

You understand the nuts and bolts of your business, but the development agency does not. Very few developers will take the time to understand your workflows step by step. They will code an application based on the requirements you tell them. If you are non-technical yourself, you may not even understand what you are asking for until the product doesn’t align with your vision. The right partner will bridge the gap between technology and your business requirements. They will ask questions not just on the technical specifications but also on what is driving these workflows. The development firm must share the same level of competence and depth of experience to understand your project’s technical and business considerations.

They Should Anticipate Long-Term Project Needs

Since custom software is more flexible and scalable, the partner you choose must take the time to understand your unique business requirements and the way you work. They must build scalable solutions so that you can always make changes as your organization grows and anticipate any pitfalls so that technology is no longer an issue in your growth. Finding the right partner who knows what it takes to build a solution to support future services proactively rather than reactive is critical. The agency and development team will need to be a quick thinker with experience selling and making decisions around software modifications.

You Should Understand that Top Talent is in High Demand

Gone are the days you could hire a single developer to handle all your IT needs. Most projects require a team with a diverse set of skills and expertise. “Full-stack” developers are as rare and mythical as unicorns. Not only that, but demand for software engineers is higher than we’ve ever seen before. Amazon alone has more than 20,000 available tech roles. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, more than 1.2 million unique job postings were in early September. This translates to higher developer costs to get quality services.

What About Hiring Internally?

That topic could be an entire article by itself. Hiring internally for your software needs can be a great solution but comes with its own host of challenges. Without diving into too much detail, you’d need to consider: a CTO, what kinds of development resources you’d need, UI/UX resources, proper implementation and production processes, and maintenance and security procedures. This is more challenging if you are non-technical. While building a successful internal development team is entirely possible, it can be a significant investment of time to get them up and running. Ultimately, this decision boils down to your specific business needs.

A Strong Partner

The goal of choosing the right development partner goes beyond the project alone. An ideal partner understands your company’s larger mission, is aligned with your future goals, and collaborates with you as a ‘partner in crime’ to achieve these goals and realize your vision. As in any relationship, a strong partner is characterized by transparency and trust related to all aspects of project development, efficient ongoing communication, and clarity around expectations at every stage. Most of all, the developers you work with must take the time to understand your requirements and the way your business flows, so they can build a solution that gives you a competitive edge and makes you money.

The post Top Considerations When Choosing a Developer for Bespoke Projects appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The funding round was co-led by Lee Fixel of Addition Capital and Mo Koyfman of Shine Capital, with participation from Ripple Ventures, Scale-Up Ventures, Kevin Mahaffey, Funders Club, and Y-Combinator. Mo Koyfman, Founder and General Partner at Shine Capital, referred to the firm’s participation in the round by stating:

“Rose Rocket is uniquely positioned to be the transportation industry’s first network-driven SaaS company, where collaboration between the various network participants drives growth of the platform and opens up meaningful monetization opportunities. Rose Rocket’s world-class team is bringing the right product to market at exactly the right time.”

Rose Rocket was founded in 2015 and has been helping transportation companies improve their communication efforts ever since. The platform improves the efficiency of trucking operations by changing how customers, freight movers, and systems communicate with each other.

The increasing interconnectedness between logistics and freighting has resulted in fertile growth for Rose Rocket to experience rapid growth. Over the past 12 months alone, the startup has seen its user base grow by more than 900% as a result of the increasing demand as tech adoption continues. Justin Sky, CEO and Co-Founder of Rose Rocket, said in this regard:

“When we started building trucking software, we found that the industry was left behind by the movement to SaaS. Over the past decade, we’ve seen the industry shift from pen and paper to on-premise systems to using modern software. This is the first time in our industry’s history where collaborative network effects are even possible. We are so excited to be able to continue building products that help our customers unlock their operations and network.”

Freighting and logistics were some of the industries most negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the problems resulting from the use of legacy systems. By helping organizations improve their operations via a specialized software suite, Rose Rocket expects to shield the industry from similar disruptions in the future, becoming a major player in an industry essential for the global economy.

The post Rose Rocket Get Ready To Scale Its Trucking Operating Software After Raising $25 mln in Series A Funding appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Origin Ventures, BBG Ventures, The Fund, and JFF (Jobs for the Future), all participated in the funding round.

In 2020, co-founders Muriel Clauson and Young Jae Kim created Anthill with its headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. Drawing on human science and skills data, Anthill provides a comprehensive platform to accomplish our goal of understanding and growing a deskless workforce.

This group is estimated to make up about 80% of the global workforce.

In the opinion of the two company co-founders, the company’s name and mission are derived from the concept of an anthill. Each person contributes an important role to his or her organization – like an ant.

However, deskless workers seem to be the most overlooked when they are key players in the global ecosystem. Anthill wants to create an opportunity for companies to connect, grow and meet the needs of these workers.

Principal of Rethink Education and Anthill’s newest board member, Ebony Brown, is excited to join and lead the funding round that will help Anthill develop this comprehensive platform and support this deskless workforce.

Origin Ventures partner Scott Stern thinks Anthill is a good solution to a growing need for better HR solutions globally. This new investment will help the company grow its platform, expand its team and better serve the world’s deskless workforce (approximately 2.7 billion people).

While both of Anthill’s founders are studying for PhDs in industrial-organizational psychology, they already have experience working with large corporations and world governments on shaping future organizational strategy.

This startup has already overcome barriers to connecting deskless employees to most large enterprises. Employees will get insights into their skills and opportunities by answering a few questions through the mobile app that Anthill created.

Corporate recruiters can better engage and interact with workers and can deal with retraining or internal migration issues. Drawing on historical data, Anthill provides novel technology that makes predictions about skills, revenue drivers and comparisons in the deskless workforce.

The post Startup Anthill Raises $3 mln in Seed Funding Round appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Some of the world’s leading security vendors and internet companies, as well as major national financial institutions, are powered by RiskIQ’s cybersecurity technology to protect their digital attack surfaces. Late last year, RiskIQ announced that its Passive Total product could integrate directly with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Azure Sentinel, allowing them to be a part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association.

The number of phishing attacks increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, as everything moved online, and RiskIQ’s cybersecurity offerings are needed now more than ever. So, when will they IPO? Given their track record and up-to-date threat analyses, the company would enter the public market with a strong hand. There’s a current trend of going public via SPAC, but RiskIQ did not respond for comment when Grit Daily reached out about their potential plans to go public.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, RiskIQ was named a “strong performer” in The Forrester Wave: Vulnerability Risk Management, Q4 2019 evaluation, which tested on fourteen criteria for security and risk professionals. The company received the highest possible score in the categories of Digital Footprinting, Execution Roadmap, and Partner Ecosystem.

Last month, RiskIQ published their 2020 Mobile App Threat Landscape report. On the report, Benzinga reported, “With a proactive, store-first scanning mentality, RiskIQ observes and categorizes the threat landscape as a user would see it, monitoring both the well-known stores like the Apple App Store and Google Play and more than 120 secondary stores around the world.”

Funders include Summit Partners, Battery Ventures, Georgian Partners, MassMutual Ventures, and National Grid Partners. Their competitors include other hard-hitters in the industry, including Confiant, Inc. and F-Secure Corporation. The company’s website offers a plethora of resources, including infographics, white papers and data reports and analytics about the cybersecurity threat environment.

RiskIQ’s multi-faceted approach to cybersecurity as well as its commitment to educating the public on all manner of cyber threats by collecting, formatting and disseminating data makes them an asset. The company has an impressive suite of clients and continues to partner with major industry players.

The post When Will RiskIQ IPO? appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Tigera offers cloud-native connectivity solutions that enable businesses to connect and secure their container-based applications. Their technology is used by major companies around the world, including JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, ServiceNow, Visa and Robinhood. The company recently launched Calico Cloud, which will help make kubernetes clusters more secure, and give teams increased observability. The pay-as-you-go SaaS was announced late last month. 

The company’s projected annual revenue is $10.5 million, and it boasts 82 employees, though its C-suite and board are made up entirely of men. Tigera’s current president and CEO, Ratan Tipirneni has been with the company for 3 years, and created 2 SaaS companies, IPTouch and PersonalMD.com, before taking the helm of Tigera.

In 3 rounds of investment, Tigera raised $53 million via 6 investors, according to Crunchbase. Tigera’s main competitors are Cohesive Networks, Aviatrix Systems, and CloudOps, Inc., but Tipirneni has the highest CEO rating among them, according to Owler.

Before the pandemic, Tigera had dozens of face-to-face events per year, but COVID-19 forced the company to move training events online, which it did using Skytap. The move encouraged open-source customers to upgrade to the paid version so they could get virtual hands-on training.

Investment banks are seeing a lot of interest in companies that are making it easier to use Kubernetes. While SEC rules do not allow for much talk about an IPO announcement. Cloopen Group, a cloud solution provider announced its IPO in early February and took in $320 million in offering proceeds. If Tigera plays its cards right, it could also see an upsized IPO if and when it goes public. 

The post When Will Tigera IPO? appeared first on Grit Daily News.

When you make bets as big as she does, you have to seek out opportunities and white space so that you’re not betting the same way that everyone else in the market is. She shared tremendous advice on our podcast for the next generation of women in tech. One of her comments was particularly illuminating: “You make money as an investor when you’re contrarian in your opinions but you’re right.”

Listen to her snappy insights on our Like a Boss podcast here.

“Venture is a lot about making decisions and putting the capital to work, thereafter the longer term engagement is the board relationship. Being on the board is probably the most rewarding part of the job.”

Mary D’Onofrio

The post Meet An Investor Who Makes Big Bets appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Like any business that evolves with the industry and adapts to customer needs based on feedback and growth, Etailz–now Kaspien–underwent a top-to-bottom rebranding to better position their evolved services and mission. This follows a chain of leadership changes in recent years as Kunal Chopra was named CEO of Etailz in July 2019. Chopra then also became CEO of the parent company–Trans World Entertainment–in April 2020. Trans World Entertainment is also rebranding to Kaspien to better align with the subsidiary and bring a new age of growth for their partners. 

“Kaspien is in a different place in the market than we were 1 year ago, much less 10 years ago. Today, there are thousands of third-party sellers, agencies, and software providers offering brand services for online marketplaces. It’s a fragmented market. As etailz, we were one of those fragments. As Kaspien, we are defragmenting the market, pulling all the services, tools, data, and integrations brands need to succeed on ecommerce under one roof.”

Kunal Chopra, CEO, Kaspien

So why would a company rebrand, now of all times? Well–simply put–they outgrew their old name and needed to take on a new one that better represents their expanded portfolio of offerings, all geared toward growing brands online.

Humble beginnings 

As an established third-party seller on Amazon, Etailz became quite known in the industry for their expertise as a third-party (3P) retailer. During the early founding days in 2008, Etailz began as a niche 3P seller of eco-friendly products. As they branched out and partnered with more brands, they grew naturally and so did their offerings. They developed proprietary software for the Etailz internal teams which evolved into SaaS products and became a foundational benefit for all partners. 

This paved the way for Etailz to offer a full suite of ecommerce software and services and build a platform that helped over 4,000 brands grow their sales on Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and other major ecommerce channels. Through this journey, Etailz averaged a 30% lift in sales for their partners with their marketing, totaling nearly $1 billion in retail sales. The reputation of Etailz in the ecommerce space preceded them as the go-to third party retail partner and while they still dominate as a 3P retailer, they’ve packaged everything they’ve developed that’s enabled their past success into different models to suit partner needs. 

Kaspien to unify a fragmented ecosystem

Rebranding to Kaspien serves to bring the well deserved attention to their data, strategy, platform with machine learning and AI, as well as their agency arm. Ecommerce is complicated and to succeed in today’s competitive landscape, companies need to be at the forefront of all the best practices in marketing, advertising, and all things digital. It requires selling on multiple platforms, controlling pricing, protecting the brand, social media marketing–and much, much more. All of the tools for accomplishing and managing many essential elements for successful ecommerce become fragmented and complex as you layer software upon software and partner with multiple agencies for different needs.

While Etailz became synonymous with retail partnership–where they buy inventory and sell it on Amazon, etc.–Kaspien will be more. Kaspien aims to build its reputation as an elite one-stop-shop for ecommerce solutions offering its classic 3P retail service, managed agency services, and proprietary, powerful software. All of their services and strategies are informed by their experience and data in working with over 4,000 brands and powered by artificial intelligence technologies like machine learning.

Everything under one roof

The vision for Kaspien is to simplify the rapidly evolving marketplace ecosystems filled with agencies, software, and retailers and ultimately better serve their partners. Kaspien will serve as a dedicated partner who could provide all the needed services to grow an online business. Industry-leading services include selling on Amazon and beyond, digital marketing, social media marketing, inventory and supply chain management, brand protection, tax compliance, and creative services. For the brands served by Kaspien, this is a great stride forward as the services and software they use every day expand through further internal development, integrations, and acquisitions. 

Behind the rebrand

The name Kaspien was inspired by the Caspian Sea, the largest inland sea in the world. Like many waterways, it’s a hub of commerce. There is also debate whether it’s a lake or a sea; it’s more than it appears to be. The name can grow with the company as they continue to evolve and pays homage to their unique approach operating as a retailer, agency, and software provider. The logo utilizes an abstract “K” as a graphic element and the negative space subtly incorporates a forward pointing arrow, representing forward thinking, innovation, and leadership – traits that Etailz was founded upon and Kaspien will continue to embody. The hexagon behind the ‘K’ is inspired by patterns prevalent in nature due to the hexagon’s efficiency, from bees’ honeycombs to the Giant’s Causeway. Their value proposition is rooted in maximizing efficiency, and Kaspien’s logo is an homage to this.

It’s an exciting time to be in the ecommerce world where you can focus on creating a great product and enlist the expertise of companies like Kaspien to partner with. The top-to-bottom rebranding is a landmark move in the ecommerce space and it’s a big win for Kaspien to move into 2021 with a brand new look and attitude. 

The post Etailz Rebrands As Kaspien, Ushering the Next Generation of Ecommerce Services and Software appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The risk can be especially great for small- to medium-sized businesses, which are less likely to have robust security systems in place to protect their data. Hackers know this, and actively target these companies to gain access to customer data or to launch ransomware attacks.

The good news is that protecting your business’ data isn’t as hard as you might think. There are now several tools on the marketplace designed to help you keep your data safe and secure. Here are some of the best.

Hoxhunt

According to the Better Business Bureau, companies in the United States have lost over $3 billion due to phishing attacks since 2016. It is estimated that in 2018 alone, 80 percent of businesses received some type of phishing email.

Part of what makes these attacks so commonplace is because they are remarkably effective at tricking employees. What seems like a legitimate email gets an employee — or even the boss — to click on a dangerous link that compromises financial data or unleashes a virus on the system.

Hoxhunt is designed to counteract this by providing automated training on how to react and respond to phishing emails. A gamified platform runs phishing simulations to engage employees and change their mindset regarding these emails. This helps reduce the threat from phishing emails, while also encouraging prompt reporting of potential breaches.

Lookout

Cloud applications have made it easier than ever for employees to perform work outside of the office. While this can greatly enhance productivity, it also introduces new risks for your data, particularly when employees are using a mobile device or accessing information from an unsecured network.

Lookout is a mobile endpoint security tool that focuses on many of the risks inherent to smartphone and tablet use. App analysis addresses risky app behaviors, app data transfer vulnerabilities, and potential spyware that could be inside a smartphone app. The system also evaluates connected devices for security risks based on configuration issues, outdated operating systems, and behavioral concerns.

Identifying and blocking these potential data breach sources ensures that company information is kept safe, regardless of where someone tries to access company information.

Torii

Today’s businesses are increasingly reliant on SaaS tools. While this can be extremely helpful in reducing IT costs, it also decentralizes much of the tech that helps keep the business running smoothly. As your company adopts more SaaS tools, it can become increasingly difficult to oversee privacy settings and access permissions.

This is where Torii comes in. Torii serves as a centralized management platform for all applications and third-party tools — even financial tools and business applications like Slack and SalesForce. From this central hub, you can control user access and permissions for all your tools. This ensures that only authorized parties will have access to needed tools and data, making it easier to protect confidential information. 

This system also helps you know which applications receive the most use, who is using them and how much money is being spent on them so you can optimize your use of SaaS tools. Identifying redundant SaaS tools and cutting them can reduce overhead and simplify processes for your employees.

HTTPS Everywhere

As nice as it would be to have your employees dedicated to their jobs all day, the fact is that most will take breaks throughout the day. For many, that means time spent browsing the internet. Unfortunately, not all websites that your employees might visit are secure.

Sites that don’t use an “https://” extension are not encrypted, meaning any information that is entered on such sites can easily be intercepted by others.

The free web browser extension HTTPS Everywhere alleviates this threat by essentially rewriting site requests so that all websites you visit become encrypted. This helps protect the information you or your employees submit online. This extension is currently compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and Opera web browsers.

AxCrypt

Encrypting your web browsing activity is one thing, but the files stored on your company’s computers or cloud networks should also be protected. A physical or digital security breach could all too easily allow someone to steal the information stored within your files.

AxCrypt directly addresses this concern by allowing users to encrypt files with either a 128-bit or 256-bit key. Files can still be shared with others within the company network. The encryption ensures that even if the files were intercepted by a third party, they would not be able to access the information inside.

AxCrypt can also be used for cloud storage tools like Google Drive and Dropbox, ensuring that these files are kept safe even if an unauthorized user gained access to your system.

Now is the Time to Protect Your Business’ Data

Protecting your internal data and information you have collected from your customers should be a top priority for any business owner. As you use these tools and take other steps to enhance your cybersecurity, you will be better equipped for the challenges and opportunities of the digital age.

The post 5 Tools to Help Your Business Better Protect Its Data in 2020 appeared first on Innovation & Tech Today.

The post 5 Tools to Help Your Business Better Protect Its Data in 2020 appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Or at least that’s the thinking behind Andy Cloyd’s investment in Summersalt, a women’s swimwear brand that he claims has “been a rocket ship.” Cloyd, a Principal and venture capital firm, Cultivation Capital — which invests in early stage start ups — says he stumbled into the field of investing and, in an ultra competitive market for investor dollars, looks for “perfect storm” founders executing on an idea.

Grit Daily caught up with Cloyd to pick his brain on investing and what names top his list of good ideas.

Grit Daily: For the uninitiated, how do you become a “venture capitalist?”

Andy Cloyd: Being honest, my path into the industry was equal parts ignorance and luck. I started my career in a traditional management consulting gig and decided that, at 23, spending five days a week onsite at a big pharmaceutical company was the not the place I wanted to be, so I started to look for opportunities to get into the tech/startup world. In what became a truly life changing moment, I stumbled across a program called Venture for America that matched recent college grads with opportunities in the startup world outside of the traditional tech hubs of Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston. After an extensive interview process, I was lucky enough to be selected to join the next cohort of the fellowship.

At first I intended to go into sales at a “Saas” or “software as a service” company but stumbled across Cultivation Capital in the Venture for America network and thought that although I knew very little about early-stage investing at the time, VC might be a good way to drink from the firehouse and learn a lot about the startup world at an incredibly rapid pace. On a trip to St. Louis, I was lucky enough to get to meet several the brilliant partners at Cultivation Capital and, ultimately, decided that Cultivation was where I wanted to spend my next few years. From there, the rest is history; my thesis played out, and it’s been an incredibly rewarding learning experience that I’m abundantly grateful for.

GD: What are some key metrics that you look for when vetting a startup?

AC: Given that I am still in the early innings of my investing career and still have a lot to learn, this is something that is constantly evolving. Admittedly, I was quite misguided initially, placing an over emphasis on brand name customers and took decks financials as gospel; I have since started to develop a healthy dose skepticism which leads me to ask the right questions that help get to the bottom of an opportunity much more quickly.

Although this is not an original idea, I think two questions that have led me in a good direction are: Why this team and why now? The world has grown so ultra competitive. It takes a truly special group solving a problem that wasn’t ready or able to be solved in the past — or didn’t exist — but, for whatever reason, is uniquely able to be solved today to build a sustainable competitive advantage and lead to a favorable outcome.

Since we are early stage investors, we sometimes don’t have adequate sample sizes to meaningfully leverage traditional SaaS metrics fully in our initial analysis, but we need to know that the team has a clear understanding of the levers that will drive those metrics in the future and have an idea of what they might look like at scale.

GD: What verticals do you think are most ripe for consumer-led disruption in the next twelve months?

AC: Personally, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at real-estate and construction tech. There is just so much value wrapped up in those assets worldwide, yet it remains one of the least productive industries and continues to lag on the technology adoption curve. The industry is ripe for disruption on so many parts of the value chain from design to construction to property management and ultimately, on the real estate transaction itself.

Even just with companies I have on my radar, I’m already feeling the early stages of disruption coming, and I look forward to partnering with the best of the best in the space to help them bring that disruption to market as quickly as possible.

GD: What is your favorite investment that you’ve made to date? What were your expectations for that startup when you first invested in them?

AC: Not to say that I don’t love all of the founders and companies that I have invested in, but unequivocally, my favorite investment to-date would have to be Summersalt, the direct-to-consumer women’s swimwear and travel-leisure brand. Lori Coulter and Reshma Chamberlin are one of those rare “perfect storm” founding teams where as soon as you meet them, you just know there is something unique about them that will lead them to success. Unlike many other direct-to-consumer brands in the market today, Summersalt has so much more than just a great acquisition and marketing engine.

On the founding team alone, they have over twenty years of deep design, sourcing, and supply chain experience that has allowed them to rapidly iterate on product and distribution to respond to changing consumer demands while maintaining healthy margins to scale the business in a sustainable way. We were one of the first commitments on their seed round in early 2018 and participated in their Series A led by Founders Fund later that year. It’s been a rocket ship since, and we are just getting started.

GD: What are your words of wisdom for any founder that is in fundraising mode?

AC: Don’t get discouraged by a “no,” or even 100 “nos.”

There are so many reasons why an investor might say no (or nothing at all), and to be honest, a good number of those reasons probably have little to do with your businesses. In the same way that a you as a founder can’t concurrently do every single thing perfectly across the entire business, neither can a VC. Sometimes, it’s just a bad time in the fund life or even just a bad day for the team. We try to minimize these situations by building repeatable, metrics driven processes, but we are all human and make mistakes.

Each time you pitch is idiosyncratic; don’t let past performance affect the next meeting. Keep at it and find that investor that truly gets it and believes in what you are doing. Those are the folks that will be the partners you want and need on your side during the inevitable highs and lows.

GD: What’s so appealing about being a “venture capitalist?”

AC: The people I get to work with every day, in particular, the entrepreneurs. Although society has crafted this persona of the tech entrepreneur being a 21-year-old scrappy developer in their room with nothing to lose, in reality, most of the founders I encounter are experienced industry experts with high opportunity costs that have given up stability, comfort, and wealth to pursue their dream of building a business solving a real problem they felt first-hand at some point in their career.

Not to mention, many of these folks have families at home who also are making a sacrifice in pursuit of their family member’s dream of building the company. It’s a really invigorating environment to be in every day, and I love the opportunity to help and support these inspiring founders on their journey.

Looking for more venture capital coverage? Check out the latest investment in iFarm.

The post Andy Cloyd talks Venture for America and the investability of women’s swimwear appeared first on Grit Daily News.

John Zanni: I’m John Zanni. I’m the president of Acronis and also the president of the Acronis Foundation.

Jordan French: Great. So John, you and I, we have gotten to know each other a bit. You had a storied career at Microsoft. One thing the show’s audience is interested in is how to grow their business more quickly, certainly – and you come at it from a pretty interesting angle. One of the things that you did that you told me, was shift business models. So can you explain what you did at Microsoft?

JZ: Sure. Yes, so I was at Microsoft for 16 years. Besides some of the early part of my career, which was more about learning about how to work within Microsoft, I’ve always been in a business development or new business area – usually related to the internet in some form or fashion. One of the items we talked about was that I took over the hosting channel when it was about a $150 million business, which at the time was quite disruptive. While everyone else, including Microsoft, was selling perpetual licenses with maintenance, I was going around with my team and selling subscription services to hosters to create offers based on Microsoft technology. So that was quite a bit of difference.

Over a period of six years, we root that business to being about $1 billion of run rate and incubated also the syndication of what is now called Office 365, and other services. So it started with just software being used on a subscription model, to software and services being used on a subscription model. That was a pretty fantastic transformation and of course, seven years later, those businesses are massively bigger than they were, even when I left.

JF: So what’s the difference between selling a license and  selling a subscription? Especially from a revenue standpoint.

JZ: Yeah. So the difference is when you sell a subscription, you get a little bit of money very frequently. When you sell a license, you get a lot of money up front and then you have to renegotiate the license for however long the term is – one, two, three years. The challenge there, of course, is that when you sell a subscription, you don’t get a lot of money up front. So if you have a business model that’s used to that, you can see a dip in your revenue that you have to manage very carefully. So that transition needs to be thought through regularly. The beauty about subscription is that it’s a gift that keeps on giving, and so it just keeps on growing, and growing, and growing.

JF: And for Microsoft, was this the first time that they experimented with a subscription model?

JZ: They had some other models like that – some on the consumer side, but definitely in the business side, specifically with B2B offers. This was, as far as I know, one of the first ones that they were doing it. They did it because service providers were offering a hosted service, and according to the traditional Microsoft licenses, it was not permitted – so Microsoft had to make a license that allowed this new business model to be compliant.

JF: So one of the things that you did as a consequence of this, was change the terms of service of a license. Is that what I’m hearing?

JZ: Correct. Yes.

JF: Wow. So you must have hit some resistance at some point in this change. Is that right?

JZ: Oh, of course. Well at first, the resistance mostly came from salespeople who had accounts. They were selling big deals with a lot of money up front, and then the guys would come to me and say, “Oh, I like John’s offer better because I can just pay a little bit.” And all of a sudden, they didn’t meet their quota and I was a hated man within the enterprise sales group. Over time, the resistance was more…I would just say standard, in that no matter whether you’re a $50 million company or a $50 billion company, there’s never enough money to do everything you want to do, and so I had to compete for resources just like everybody else did.

JF: On that issue, we can all intuit that it’s a matter of incentives for salespeople. If they’re selling a subscription versus license and receiving a lot of funds up front, were there any solutions that you crafted? For example, amortizing a sale to get a commission?

JZ: Yeah. We tried a number of activities. It turns out, you have to….you have to, as an executive, you just have to make the decision because the sales motion is different. One of them is  more of a partnership, which has some marketing components. The other one is more transactional. If you look at companies that have been successful in transforming from being a pure perpetual license company, to a subscription or services company, they’ve made some pretty difficult decisions. Adobe, for example, who literally overnight went from no perpetual to subscription. Microsoft, if you look at its history, it has made not as extreme of a change, but over time it has made those decisions. If you go to the Office website today, I challenge you to go find a way to buy Office as a perpetual license, for example.

JF: It sounds like it’s had a profound mark on the industry. Let’s look at the reasons why you would do that in a business. Why switch from what otherwise seem like sufficient revenues, from a license to a subscription model?

JZ: Oh, that answer is easy. It’s the customer who wants it. Businesses would never make such a change unless there were some external factors that drove it, and the reality is that the internet and cloud brought two major changes: consumers got used to getting a lot of quality services for free – basically advertiser-funded, and then businesses saw they were able to reduce capex and start their business with a much, much, much smaller investment through subscription. That’s the way it goes. And now, it’s really ultimately driven by customer demand and request. Yeah.

JF: Yeah. Today it would seem that the status quo is a subscription model. In fact, it seems like there are whole crops of tech companies every year that pride themselves as being labeled SAS companies.

JZ: More and more. I mean, I’ve been…how should I say, waiving the subscription flag for 15 years. But what I’m seeing now is we’ve definitely passed the point where the default is subscription, and the backup is perpetual. Now of course there are still a lot of companies who buy perpetual licenses, but that’s becoming less and less.

JF: And you’re now president of Acronis. You’ve moved on from Microsoft. For those of you in the audience who don’t know, Acronis is a leading cyber protection firm best known for its backup software, largely on the internet price side. Why were you brought into and hired by Acronis?

JZ: Sure. So we actually prefer the term cyber protection because it’s more than just security. It’s about really protecting all aspects of data, including authenticity and access. The reason I was brought in was that we, too, had made that transition from a traditional, on-premise software company to a software and services company. We also wanted to build a service provider channel, which I did in the past. So that’s why I was brought in. In the first year or so at Acronis, the only thing I was focused on was jumpstarting our cloud business, and specifically, our cloud business as sold through service providers: telcos, hosters, and managed service providers.

JF: Fascinating. And was there a reason articulated why? Why move from the license structure?

JZ: Oh yes. So there was….well first, the industry was moving there. I mean, you’ve got companies like Carbonite who are 100 percent subscription, right? And the other part, though, is our heritage. Acronis and its founder, has always been channel-based and service provider channel base. So this is a motion we deeply understood, or at least the people brought into Acronis when Serguei came back. And so we made a bet that this was a way to uniquely grow the company, and frankly, leave the competition in the dust.

JF: Sounds like it. And for the analysts – the financial analysts in the audience, c-suite executives who are running public companies – to what degree do you see an impact on earnings multiple, or from feedback from investors, when you pivot to this model?

JZ: Okay. So I’ll add a caveat that I am not a finance person. I’ve seen two items that have been consistent when I’ve talked to investors and finance people and analysts. One, at the early stages of your investment of moving into this kind of service, especially leveraged subscription service. What I mean by leveraged is that the way we grow is we have four factors: number of service providers, number of customers for service providers, number of devices per customer, amount of storage per device. They all multiply, and because they all multiply into…oh, and of course, the fourth one is price per storage. Because they’re all growing, and one sort of flat lowering a bit, you get this accelerator effect.

Getting an investor or analyst to understand that at the early stages is very difficult because it’s an exponential growth curve that, of course, is relatively flat in the beginning. The second part is once you hit a certain threshold, they start understanding that this thing has its own momentum and just won’t slow down. I can tell you that even during some of the downturns while I was at Microsoft, the subscription business was still growing at strong double digits.

JF: Fascinating. So something for the audience to look into for sure. This is John Zanni with me, president of Acronis, formerly with Microsoft, who built up Microsoft’s hosting business. John, for those who want to get in touch with you, how can they find you?

JZ: It’s very easy. I’m always on, but jz@acronis.com. (No relation to the DJ), is the easiest way to reach me.

JF: Great. Well thanks, John. I appreciate your time.

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