“European start-ups should not be timid”

Please login or
register

Stefan Kyora

15.04.2016
Pedro Bados Nexthink

This week Nexthink announced a $40 million financing round and plans for an IPO. We asked Nexthink CEO Pedro Bados how the EPFL spin-off evolved into a global company, his plans for further growth and what he has learned.

Mr Bados, you founded Nexthink together with Vincent Bieri in 2004. Since then, you have raised $65 million in funding. What lessons have you learned about financing a Swiss ICT company? What are your tips for founders?

The first tip is that financing a company is the job of the CEO. You can not delegate it. The second tip is that European companies should not be timid. We can build up great companies here. We have everything we need – and we can attract top class investors. If you as a founder really believe in your company, others will too. Take Nexthink as an example: for the last financing round, we had five term sheets on the table from prestigious US VCs.

Nexthink has attracted investors and customers from around the world. Like many Swiss start-up founders, you have an engineering background. What have you learned about selling over the past years?

Oh, quite a lot. Maybe the most important insight is that selling has changed dramatically in the last few years. Customers are very well informed today and they know what they want. This means that you don’t need sales people to persuade customers. You need people that are able to listen and understand what the customer wants, and help them to achieve their business goals. Our customers have to be able to trust them. When I interview someone for a sales position, I ask myself if I would select the candidate as a coach or consultant. These are the people that can sell solutions like ours.  

You clearly have been able to select the right sales people. Nexthink announced strong growth for 2015.

Yes, indeed. Last year was the best year in the company’s history. The response to our new Nexthink V6 from customers and reviewers has been fantastic. We grew more than 50% – with 157% growth in North America and more than 60% in the DACH region.

Nexthink focuses on real-time analytics and visualisation of the IT infrastructure from the end-user perspective. This improves security and allows it to deliver first-class IT services to end users. What kind of technological challenges did Nexthink have to solve in order to develop its solution?

We faced three different sorts of challenges we had to adress. First, we collect data from very different devices – Windows PCs, Macs, mobile devices of all kinds, etc. Second, our solution is analysis of the data in real-time. To be able to do this, we had to develop our own database technology. Third, the data that we collect is very complex: one of our customers is the French Ministry of Defence with 300,000 endpoints. We have to visualise the data in a way that is clear and helpful.

Is Nexthink active globally in terms of customers?

We have 600 customers in 16 countries across Europe, the Middle East and India, and 25 customers in the US.

You have now opened an office in Boston. Why Boston and not New York, San Francisco or Silicon Valley?

Good question. The answer is that it is easier to manage the company from Boston than from the west coast, and I will be moving there myself. And Boston is a centre of B2B software, so it’s easier to find qualified staff. In New York, for example, the ICT industry is more focused on fintech and B2C companies.

Will all the Nexthink management move to Boston?

No. The management is already working from different places: our CMO is in the US, our VP of Sales is in the UK. My goal is to concentrate the management in Lausanne, Boston and London.

In the press release on the financing round, an IPO is mentioned. Do you plan to go public on NASDAQ?

The IPO will take place within two years. At the moment, NASDAQ would be the best solution, but things might change in the future.

0Comments

More news about

Nexthink SA

Company profiles on startup.ch

Nexthink SA

rss