Watch all video interviews from eTail East 2010.
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Ross Kramer is a co-founder and CEO of Listrak, an email marketing software company that serves large and mid-size organizations. Listrak delivers it’s software to customers as a software-as-a-service application.
To date, Ross has launched and directed three technology start-ups. Ross has led Listrak from concept, about a decade ago, to leading email marketing solutions provider serving online retailers, interactive agencies, and direct marketers.
I met Ross at etail east, an e-commerce conference.
As CEO, Ross is responsible for charting Listrak’s strategic vision and direction. Interestingly, his co-founder is his father, Howard, who servers as the grey haired COO / CFO. Howard guides the day-to-day business operations, including finance and HR.
It’s always interesting to run into a family co-founder team since I’ve worked with my brother for the past 10 years. Ross and his dad seem to work well together.
In the above interview Ross talks about some lessons he’s learned along the way as an entrepreneur and manager.
Venture Capitalists
Ross talks about his decision to forego VC funding and bootstrap his way to cash flow positive, and the trade-off’s between taking money (giving away equity and, often, control) and growing fast with venture financing and not taking venture financing and growing slow. He’s met a lot of CEO’s who regret taking the money.
Hiring New Employees
Hiring the right people is critical, especially in the early days of a companies’ life, when each new hire has a big impact on the business. Ross talks about the new-hire interview process and what types of questions he asks or things he looks for in a candidate to determine whether that person will be a good fit for the company, both in terms of cultural fit and a skills. He also touches on how he fires people who don’t fit the company culture or aren’t getting the job done. Firing people is not fun. I can attest to that.
Business Model
Ross also talks about the concept of recurring revenue, especially for software companies. He learned the value of stable, recurring revenue while running his software development company, which lived on what it killed each month before having to find the next project to pay the bills. A lot of digital start-ups have “advertising” as their business model. Recurring subscription revenue, while harder to grow from zero, helps you sleep at night when the economy tanks. Subscription revenue typically grows slower, but retracts slower, than other sources of revenue.
