Sramana Mitra, 2018, Part 2: the first customer, the 2008 crisis and the product question

Bootstrapping From Romania, Part 2 (the last), Sramana Mitra’s blog, January 2018. I was then co-founder and managing partner of Tremend. Part 1 covers my path to founding Tremend in 2005. Topics: Tremend’s first customer, backend work for Silicon Valley start-ups, the loss of the largest customer in 2007 to 2008, the product question with sales and marketing as the main obstacle, and a five-person team set aside for Tremend’s own product.

§A first customer with a backpack and Bluetooth

“Someone could wear a backpack and walk around a concert. You could get a message on your phone saying, ‘Turn your Bluetooth on.’ Then you get a catalog. That was the solution.”

How Tremend got off the ground: a start-up whose solution was designed for Nokia. Custom hardware, a portal and “some embedded pieces of work”. “The technical challenges around it are quite amazing.” The solution was deployed in bus stations and in other public areas. “That’s how we got our first customer.”

Elsewhere.

• Business Magazin, 2017: “We have been developing IoT solutions since 2007 and we want to use this advantage.” („Dezvoltăm soluţii IoT încă din 2007 şi vrem să folosim acest avantaj.”)
• Moldova Invest, 2023, among Tremend’s early projects: patented solutions for Bluetooth connection for Qwikker, a location-based mobile content company.

§Silicon Valley start-ups, then the 2008 crisis

“In the 2007 to 2008 timeframe, we also experienced the crisis in the sense that we lost our largest customer. That year, we didn’t grow, but we didn’t go down.”

Backend services for Silicon Valley start-ups: “Yes, that was our main market for several years.” After the crisis year, “a steady evolution”, Tremend started diversifying its market base to Europe. “From there, it got more and more diverse.”

§The product question: sales and marketing

“If you invest $100,000 to build the technical part, you should be prepared to have a million in sales and marketing.”

Other business models: “We’ve been asking ourselves the product question all along our history. Our main problem is sales and marketing.” Tremend had built 10 smaller websites with some local exposure. International exposure meant “we had to invest a lot.” Sramana Mitra’s reply: she does not often agree with such rules.

§95% services, and a team of five for a product

“Yes, we saved up to have a team of five – exactly the number you said.”

Tremend was 95% services, with revenue of over €5.5 million the previous year. On whether that profitability allowed setting aside four or five people for a product: “Which is exactly what we did last year. We started building our own product.” The product: “an IoT business orchestration platform.”

Elsewhere. Recorder, 2018, a month later, among Tremend’s projects: “a new IoT (Internet of Things) marketplace” („un nou marketplace IoT (Internet of Things)”).