Video: Javier Soltero on the First Million

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  Dana OshiroPart-time Partner
  Heavybit

Javier Soltero CEO of Accompli

According to Accompli CEO and former Redpoint Ventures EIR Javier Soltero, no phrase has motivated him more than an investor saying aloud, “Your product sucks.”

The entrepreneur took the core technology behind a company that had already deadpooled, and bootstrapped it as Hyperic to sell it to both Springsource and now, VMWare.

In this Heavybit presentation, Soltero talks about what it’s like to build a product “diamond” (modified funnel) for an audience that is perhaps the most “jaded, cynical and busy customer ever” — namely, the developer.

Soltero explains that user flow should act as a roadmap for product, sales and marketing. He credits much of his success with Hyperic to reducing barriers to a purchase.

Says Soltero, “Be specific and detailed about the user steps. In our case, [the user] goes to Google, enters Tomcat Monitoring, goes to landing page, clicks button, fills form, picks package — I mean every single step. In our case it turned out it was 39 steps, which is a shitload of steps. So, we said, “look, this has to be 3 steps.”

For a complete look at how Soltero made the leap from near-dead company to major acquisition, check out his Heavybit talk.