Insights and musings about customer service and managing a SaaS software company.
Archive for the ‘Venture Capital’ Category
December 1, 2011 by Yuval Brisker
“New research shows that over the past year, SaaS company valuations grew twice as much as valuations of legacy software companies rooted in the client-server world.”
An article from GigaOM highlights, with astonishing clarity, how SaaS companies have continued to show incredible resilience and pronounced strength in terms of valuation, in relation to the rest of the technology and broader market. According to the article, “SaaS valuations tower head-and-shoulders over…other…categories”. Those who follow the SaaS market know that this is not a passing fad, but a sustained strength that has been maintained for many years in a row.
Looking at the graphs in this article – we are happy with this massive public market validation for the decision that Irad and I made when we founded TOA and considered which technological and business path TOA should take. TOA is now the only provider of enterprise-SaaS solutions for mobile workforce management, serving tier one customers worldwide and processing over 65 million appointment annually, setting us apart from the field of legacy software providers with whom we compete.
We know that delivering Software as a Service is not easy or simple, and those companies who have exhibited the ability to do so and continue to grow aggressively over the years deserve the valuations that they are getting. We also know that there is no way to masquerade as a SaaS provider – you either are, and know how to do it and have all your DNA wrapped around it…or you’re not. There is no hybrid. Delivering value in this context is very black and white.
We are gratified that the long-term value that we know our solution delivers to our customers, translates directly into long-term value for shareholders.
May 12, 2011 by Yuval Brisker
Today, TOA announced that it raised $17.2M in a Series D lead by Sutter Hill Ventures with the participation of Tim Draper, Fort Washington and existing shareholders Intel Capital, Draper Triangle Ventures and private investors.
It’s an exciting moment for us - as we look at the rapidly evolving technology market and see only opportunity at every level and I want to talk a little bit about that.
First and foremost this is about extending TOA’s leadership in cloud-based on-demand enterprise Software-as-a-Service – or what we call “eSaaS“.
Secondly – it’s about maximizing the potential of mobile internet and mobility applications.
And third – it’s about taking advantage of the opportunity of the awakening global market for mobility applications for mobile employees – a previously sleepy market that has been undervalued and underinvested in to date.
1) eSaaS – TOA has near perfected the art of enterprise SaaS. Enterprise SaaS is NOT just about a web-based solution or producing software that’s accessible via a browser – Enterprise SaaS or eSaaS (as I like to call it) – is about something completely different. It’s about:
- integration – and the availability of the sophisticated tools to allow for the complex interweaving of SaaS with legacy software systems with ease. Emphasis on sophisticated and ease! Without these – there is no chance for a SaaS solution to be viable for the large enterprise.
- flexibility – the ability to provide a solution that has the kind of malleability to literally morph with the clients’ business and respond to the ever changing business and technological environments that is the reality for most enterprises – definitely OUR clients and their businesses.
- reliability – as we witnessed a few weeks ago with amazon web service big event – providing a system that is 100% there for the enterprise is NOT easy and doing so is a huge responsibility and needs a high degree of expertise. This is not easy to come by or easy to deliver. Don’t let anyone fool you. TOA does it with expertise.
- scalability – the ability to support huge distributed businesses with high volumes, and to continue to support their growth into the long term
In 2004 – when we launched TOA and the first version of ETAdirect, we took enormous inspiration and even guidance from Marc Benioff – we bet our future on many of the ideas he espoused and beyond. We knew that it would be risky to go after the big enterprises with SaaS and that many IT departments would look at us and think that we were out of our minds to try and provide a system for them from outside their firewall. But the tide of technology is relentless and things have definitely moved in our direction. SaaS is here to stay and more – 10 years from now – it’s going to power the majority of businesses – not only small but medium, large and extra large. We made the right decision at the absolute right time back then to bet on SaaS. Betting on eSaaS as the next frontier was betting beyond SaaS for the SMBs – and it has given us the experience, the expertise and the track record a software company MUST have in order to successfully sell to large enterprise IT. We are excited about the many amazing new things that we are doing and will be unvaling in the coming months and years.
eSaaS is different from regular SaaS in very many ways and as software is delivered more and more via the SaaS model – the needs for eSaaS solution to replace the old legacy enterprise software solutions that run businesses today and in the past – will only grow and become dominant and only way – and TOA is well positioned to expand to meet the challenge and the opportunity.
2) This is about mobility and the Mobile Internet – maybe if you were living in a cave in Tora Bora (which obviously you weren’t) you might not be aware of the real revolution that is happening in people’s lives. Everyone is connected in multiple ways via multiple devices and many channels. The smart-phone and the tablet is in its infancy as a business device and TOA is well positioned via its early adoption of the smart-phone / iPad as THE platform of choice and a completely browser-based application to take advantage of many new developments that are here and coming soon. Mobility is king and device and platform agnostic apps will lead the way to the many platforms we intend to make the most of our early leadership providing eSaaS via the mobile Internet to millions of users worldwide who do work in the field. Those users are the same users who have iPhones and Androids and use them addictively in their personal lives. They expect nothing less from software when they go to work – and yet in many (or most) cases they are still using antiquated systems on antiquated platforms on antiquated devices. Opportunity abounds.
3) Lastly, this is about the needs of the global market of mobile employees – the mobile workforce management software market has been around for a long time but has been, to date, underserved and undervalued – the convergence of many of the trends that I described above provides a real inflection point for a market that has seen little change in the past decade. TOA’s solution has a patented predictive technology and an approach and completeness that provides relevant and transformative value to the many satisfied customers and users it serves. We want to bring that to every enterprise that has people working in the field. They all deserve the best. The market of mobile employees is huge and they deserve TOA and we intend to bring it to every corner of the globe.
Thanks to Andy Sheehan from Sutter Hill Ventures who showed immediate and unflagging enthusiasm for us and our vision- I know he sees what we see. Thanks also to Tim Draper for his great intuition and continued inspiration. A big and special thanks to our long term supporters at Draper Triangle Ventures, Early Stage Partners and Intel Capital, as well as the private investors and friends who saw the vision from day one and have stuck with us from the start. Lastly – I want to thank our immensely dedicated employees and our great customers – this just validates what they already know.
As Jeff Bezos says: It’s Always Day One!
Stay Tuned!
May 5, 2010 by Yuval Brisker
As creatures of habit and pattern – there are some patterns that we, people, recognize, but many that we don’t. And though these patterns may stand out to others, we ourselves may be oblivious of them. Maybe we are even in denial of them.
Why? A way of keeping us from being exposed to too much information, a protection mechanism from things we don’t want to know or just because we move around our world not always 100% aware of everything we do…
At the end of the day - it doesn’t really matter because the patterns are there and they can be harnessed for the greater good.
So when Irad and I started TOA Technologies with the goal of solving what is commonly referred to as ‘the cable guy problem’ (or customers waiting at-home from 12-4 or all day for some kind of appointment without knowing when it will actually happen) we thought that, if we could only identify those patterns and connect we could use them to help solve this daily but incredibly annoying and costly problem.
Our assumption was that even in the most dynamic environment – like a field operations environment – there will always be behavior or “performance patterns” that could pretty easily be recognized and documented, ultimately help better plan, schedule and manage the work-day of the many field service people out there. We thought that by identifying these performance patterns and building a mechanism to communicate them, we could help the companies be more predictive and respectful of everyone’s time. By being able to identify specific performance pattern of the specific people who provide the services or goods – we came to the conclusion that we could accurately predict when an appointment would happen and how long it would take. We could then offer up that information to all the stakeholders in the appointment – the planners, the managers and supervisor, the dispatchers but most importantly to the Customers.
Two weeks ago – after a long 6-year gestation period the US Patent Office finally recognized the uniqueness of our idea and the spefic combination of methodologies and technologies that we combined to solve this problem and awarded us a Patent Number 7,693,735 . The first of many.
I want to thank Irad here for the great work he did in steering this to completion. Though the concepts and the composition of the patent is/was ours jointly, the last two years of negotiations and execution was Irad’s alone. Thanks!
Since we got the patent I have been saying that I now know for sure that those who get a patent deserve a patent. Either because they were truly geniuses who came up with something completely and radically new or because they had the perseverance and the conviction to believe that what they had was unique and fought for it without compromise. In both cases the award is honestly due.
April 22, 2010 by Yuval Brisker
Today Irad and I are at Intel’s Software and Services Day. Intel is our largest shareholder.
We had the privilege of hosting Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO. I am attaching a picture of Irad explaining TOA to him. Paul, like most people, ‘got’ what we do in less then 60 seconds! He told us that he’s looking forward to his next ‘Cable Guy’ appointment…as long as that Cable Guy is powered by TOA (and Intel…). 
It’s inspiring to be here at this event in the heart of the Valley with the other software providers that Intel invested in like Zend, Panorama Software and Perspective Pixel.
Irad and I are energized from being part of this group and getting a peak at some of the world’s most cutting edge technologies.
