Triumphing Three Failures — The Profoundis Story
Profoundis was founded in 2012, a dream of four technology professionals — Arjun Pillai, Jofin Joseph, Anoop Thomas Mathew and Nithin Samuel Oommen, who were batch mates while pursuing their graduation in engineering.
Profoundis was acquired by FullContact, a US-based contact management platform in August 2016. Two of the intervening four years were spent by the Profoundis team on three products which failed. This was followed by “Vibe”, the product behind the success of Profoundis.
FullContact is basically a Data analytics company, fundamentally dealing with customer data, data about people and companies. So they have the ability to collect and collate the information of people from across the internet. They have a contact management application which anyone can use to actually find out information about their contacts. For businesses they have suite of products and APIs which give them extra context of their customers. FullContact story in Cochin started with the acquisition of Profoundis.
The birth of vibe started with a lot failures according to Jofin. They created 3 products, which did not see much of a success in the market place, with some being unable to get customers attention and some being unable to get the customers to pay. But then , the team considered all these not as failures, but as a great learning opportunity and grounds for improvement
At one phase, their third product, which was called the I-Testify, started gaining customer attention. It was a testimonial management software, which gained them around 400 signups with a pretty good rate of 1 or 2 sign ups per day. They were successful in converting some of their customers into paid customers as well. They did face a challenge of fake and casual sign ups, but they had a very tactical approach in dealing with these fake ones. They used the email-id’s of the registered users to find out details about them , and decide the authenticity from the perspective of the person being a customer. It was during this process that they found out that there are many tools in the internet that would help them in doing these kind of works. And this triggered a thought in them, that why don’t they find out a solution to actually eliminate the problem of having a lot of fake sign ups and not having enough information about the customer.
To resolve this problem that they had found out, the team created a chrome plug-in, over a weekend and published it. And within a week of its introduction, they observed a huge increase in the traffic due to this plugin. Apparently, a very influential person based in US happened to come across this plugin and really liked it as he had faced the same issue. It soon got publicity through social media and the good word was spread. The team was overwhelmed when they got over 4000+ sign ups overnight, and it was only then that they realized, they have made a product that is actually useful for other people. Further, with a great deal of careful modifications and alterations, Vibe was born !!
Jofin says that at the end of 2014, did they end up launching Vibe which was very much similar to FullContact which used to be a people data aggregation platform. So the inception of Vibe started and they gained some traction which got them 100,000 + users, and 150+ companies and it eventually kept growing.
Initially, what kept them going was their bootstrap funds, they managed to get a grant from the Chile govt. Later, at a point where they felt that their product is viable enough to be taken out into the market did they approach angel investors and investors who are passionate about entrepreneurship. They started off with 6 investors who were a versatile group of people, which increased the teams motivation as well as confidence in moving forward. And for the team their relation with their investors has always felt just like an extension of the team rather than a formal one.
The team vividly remembers that the news of acquisition was well received by the employees as they could continue doing what they have been doing all along, unlike other acquisitions where the company that’s being acquired gets killed. And now after the acquisition, the team feels that the operations remains the same , even though the client list has been merged. But then, certain factors have been cut down and some other factors which needed more attention are being concentrated on more.
When asked about what have been his takeaways as an entrepreneur, Jofin says, he chose to be an entrepreneur. All of the founders had a passion to do something, something different, not following the convectional path. He was in Infosys for two years before starting the entrepreneurial journey and all other founders worked at different companies. Two months in a startup and the kind of learning and experiences they acquired being an entrepreneur can never have gained in a large company. It’s incomparable. The larger picture you get, the challenges you are exposed to, it teaches you a lot. Entrepreneurial journey is not stable and there are times when you are very happy, there are times when you feel low, It teaches you how to be composed and handle situations calmly and maturely. Professionally whatever he has achieved, it feels like five times , because he started this.
“All a person needs is passion to build something. At times when failures hits you hard and you are devastated, the team spirit and people with similar thoughts and people who are fun to work with, give you synergy to work even harder. You fail but you just move on.”
As a part of coursework for the course of “Entrepreneurship” under the guidance of Mr. Sijo Kuruvilla George, a team of eight students (Reuben, Pooja, Monalisa, Athira, Sourav, Harish, Sreevatsan and John ) interviewed Jofin Joseph, one of the founding members of Profoundis, on their entrepreneurial journey and the interaction with Jofin has been a great learning experience for the entire team.
Links to the interview video are provided below :
Part 1
https://www.facebook.com/ENT101course/videos/754172271437553/
Part 2
https://www.facebook.com/ENT101course/videos/754215338099913/
Part 3
https://www.facebook.com/ENT101course/videos/754241921430588/
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