Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Three and a half, yeah. Then we made our first hire in the fall of 2010. That's when we started going. I viewed that as critical. It was a turning point. I thought, hey, I could have a single product company that does really well, maybe go public, but then it probably has to be sold to somebody or something like that. Or I can try to make it a multi-product company. The decision was to pick something that was clearly not an add-on to our first product. It was clearly so far away from our first product. I was worried that our second product would maybe become an add-on to our first product. So I just picked something that was just way out here, just way, way different. We sold it into the same company, but different buyer, different product, different code line, different everything. So I thought, this is the way to become a multi-product company. It'll either make us or it'll break us. I thought the odds were more likely that it was going to sink us. That's so counterintuitive because normally, you would think you'd want to give the same sales rep something that they could sort of bundle in for an incrementally higher ticket price and leverage what assets you already have. But that, you will do anyway. If you don't go out of business, gravity will take you there. As you go along, it's like, oh, well, maybe we should make an add-on product or not. Like, yeah, duh. If you get confused and you think that an add-on product is really going to float your boat, it's not. Your new product, if you have a chance, should be way out here, and maybe have the potential to be bigger. But it's risky.…

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