Startup of the Day - VM6 Software
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The BizSpark startup of the day is VM6 Software, based in Canada. You will find below an interview with Eric Courville, Founder & COO of VM6 Software. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!
Website: www.vm6software.com.
Interview with Eric Courville, Founder & COO of VM6 Software
Tell us who you are and your role in the company:
Founder & COO.
What did you do before creating your company?
I worked for other start-ups. I was an early employee at PlateSpin and Embotics as VP WW Sales and Business Development for both of them.
What is your company’s mission?
Expand the use of virtualization by removing cost and complexity from traditional solutions
In 140 characters or less, tell us what your company does:
We provide the only scalable all-in-one IT infrastructure software designed to offer all the benefits of virtualization without the associated complexity and costs .
How did you get the idea for your company?
Over 5 years of experience as a system integrator deploying 100’s of virtualization infrastructure and listening customer expressing their challenges regarding the cost and complexity of current virtualization solutions and requesting simple, integrated solution, easy to implement and install.
Tell us about your funding history. Are you currently looking for funding? If so, how much?
Was self funded until February 2010. Just received Venture Capital funding of $4M in February 2010 to support our growth and expand our operations.
How many employees do you have? How many developers?
Under 20 employees. Half is development.
Are you hiring? If yes, what are you hiring and where?
Hiring mainly Inside Sales and System Engineer. Team is complete for now, but we’ll need more hires as we grow.
Which platform are you building on? Why?
We leverage Microsoft Server 2008 and R2 with Hyper-V as requested by customers to simplify their operation and reduce cost.
Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet area?
Make virtualization accessible to smaller IT environment such Mid Market and Remote Offices / Branch locations. Everyone is focusing in the Datacenter, but there is an even greater market that is looking to get the same benefits that virtualization has provided in the Datacenter, that is the SMB and Remote location.
What do you think about the BizSpark Program?
I believe it’s a great program to support and help young and promising organization with limited resources at the beginning. It’s also important to align roadmap and product direction to avoid overlap.
Do you have any advice for young Software entrepreneurs?
Stay focus. Know your target market, your benefits to customer and focus on bringing them value. It’s easy to be distracted from your target market and from the real value you’re providing to them. Customers want to see quick ROI and low TCO. Focus on this.
Who’s your role model?
One of my ex boss, 10 years ago, who taught me about listening to customers and working with them to create value. He also taught me to be honest with myself and get the true feedback from customers, good or bad and work toward offering the best quality and value for customers. If you do that, success will follow for sure.
What’s the ONE THING you would like readers to take away from this interview?
Listen to your customers. Understand their environment and propose simpler and cheaper way to reach their objectives. That’s what we’ve done with our solution VM6 VMex.
Published: 3/30/2010 9:44 AM
Company: VM6 Software