Really interesting interview of Jessica Mah, CEO of inDinero at the SVB CEO Summit West 2012.
InDinero was the sweetheart of the tech press just last September (2011). But after the initial wave of investment and press, they suffered. They overspent the investment money and thought they’d hit success when they hadn’t really. Users weren’t coming back, weren’t paying.
Company culture went downhill. Some employees demanded double salaries.
The few investors who would give them more money to stay alive were giving them really bad termsheets, which they just couldn’t accept.
They decided to bite the bullet and cut down on costs - lay off employees, get rid off the office, go back to the living room eating ramen.
But that didn’t solve the traction problem.
The turning point finally came when Jessica realised that there were all these companies in her backyard, who weren’t using InDinero.
So, she went and spoke to her friends who were running companies and asked them, “Why aren’t you using InDinero?”
They all told her the same thing. “It doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t do this XYZ weird thing I need.”
To which Jessica said, “Ok, how about we charge you a lot of money (sic) and we can do all of this for you?”
That turned things around for them.
(Source: youtube.com)
