BrownHEN interviewed Derek Schueren,
Brown '98, Co-Founder and Vice President of Business Development of Recommind, San Francisco, CA.
1. Derek, please explain the product your company, Recommind, offers.
Recommind is an enterprise software company founded in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco. The company specializes in Enterprise Search, E-mail Categorization, and eDiscovery applications. We provide the information backbone for our customers, using search to tie all the underlying information systems together. This in turn allows them to do everything from enabling their employees to find any and all types of information within their company, to finding, sorting, and filtering information for the purposes of compliance, litigation, and eDiscovery.
2. You are a co-founder. How did you and your other co-founders build the team that Recommind has now? What advice about recruiting and hiring do you have for an entrepreneur?
As we had no money starting out, the first people to work with us did part-time work for no salary and were some of the hardest workers I’ve ever encountered. Luckily, this allowed us to build a prototype system that was key to closing our financing. This early team also enabled us to build some buzz around our company and helped us to recruit more bright people.
I have found that successful ventures typically have very little to do with you and a lot to do with the people that you partner with and recruit. I was very lucky in that my other two co-founders were highly respected and hard working academics who shared the same set of core values as I did. Thus my advice for entrepreneurs is to be passionate about your endeavor and to work hard to network, find, and recruit the best and brightest people you can find. These people should be smarter than you are in their core area of expertise, and they should also share the core set of values that your company exemplifies. For us this is Intelligence, Innovation, and Integrity.
3. Please describe how Recommind protects its intellectual property. What advice do you have for entrepreneurs about intellectual property?
In Recommind’s case, it was quite clear that we had a competitive edge in the underlying technology we developed. The technology performs concept-based search, which gives people a far superior search experience to the traditional key word search system some people still use today.
With regards to protecting our IP, we spoke with various attorneys to get advice and eventually decided to file for a patent. Despite being a costly process, this was an appropriate and necessary step for us. My advice for entrepreneurs in this situation is to find a top notch IP lawyer with whom you have good rapport and understanding, and heed his/her advice. At the same time, balance your need to protect your IP with your stage of development. For example, we did not file our full patent until after our seed financing, opting for a much cheaper provisional patent application shortly after our founding six months earlier.
4. Please explain the marketing process used by Recommind. Your advice about marketing an innovative product would be appreciated.
In my experience, the first part of marketing an innovative technology is not to market at all, but rather to listen. We took our technology out to as many prospective customers as possible and just listened to what they had to say. We suggested different scenarios on how to use our technology and then got a few chances to test out our assumptions. During these trials, a product began to form and we were able to gain our first understanding of how our technology might be used. We then set about to market our product to the target market we were going after. Unfortunately, we were still too enamored with our own technology at the onset and did not focus enough on the business value our customers would receive.
It was only after several years that we would begin to truly understand our customers. However, once we gained this understanding, our market penetration was significant and throughout this process we changed from a technology-focused company to a customer-focused one. If there is one piece of advice that I would give about marketing an innovative product, I would simply say, “It’s not about the technology. It’s about the customer!” I wish someone had told me that earlier.
5. Did you have to make an intensive investment in hardware when the company began? Did you have other major capital costs initially?
The beauty of getting into the software industry is that it is typically not capital intensive and you can easily enter the market. The problem is that everyone else can easily enter the market too, and compete with you! So for us to differentiate ourselves, we had to build something that would truly meet our customers’ needs.
Despite having some very cool technology at our inception, our prototype search engine could only search a small subset of documents. We knew that if we wanted to succeed, we would need to build a search engine that could scale to the tens and hundreds of millions (and today to the billions) of documents. This required considerable engineering capacity and brainpower to ensure that the product was designed and built correctly. So while we did not have to invest in any significant hardware or other fixed costs (we started in a warehouse in Berkeley), we did need substantial capital to recruit and hire some of the best engineers we could find.
6. Do you find yourself attending, even speaking at, many professional meetings? If you do, how do you choose the ones to attend?
When I first moved to California in March 2000 to start Recommind, I knew no one. Right away I signed up for all the professional meetings and networking sessions that I could find. Fortunately, being a Brown Alumni alumnus, I was able to tap into the alumni network quite quickly. This turned out to be key to securing our company’s funding—a nearly miraculous feat in an environment that had become incredibly hostile to the chances of a young upstart company. Sheila Curran, the director of career planning at the time, introduced me to Jonathan Speed, a former trustee of Brown University, who would become our first advisor and who eventually connected us to our angel investor.
One never knows what meetings or interactions will help, so I advise at the start of your venture to go to as many meeting and networking functions as you can—and always try to keep an open mind and attitude. As entrepreneurs, we often get caught up in our own world, so getting out and gaining different perspectives, even if they conflict with your own, can be very productive.
7. How did a biochemistry major at Brown get into the software business? What recommendations do you have for a young person who wants to be able to enter a field that is new to her/him?
Often times what you study in college has little to do with what you end up doing. Rather, I find the influences in your life—from your upbringing through to college—are better indicators of your future career path. My father was an entrepreneur and ever since I can remember, I worked with him in his companies. I did everything from working in his factory, to driving deliveries, to doing his books, to helping him build his next product line. Your life experiences are what really set you up to be an entrepreneur. While I greatly enjoyed my time at Brown, I don’t think that college greatly enhances your probabilities of success as an entrepreneur; rather, it is about who you are and what you want to do that dictates this success. That said, what differentiates Brown from all other universities is that it gives you the freedom to be intellectually curious, take risks, and be entrepreneurial with your education. My recommendation for anyone who wants to enter a new field is to simply do it. Be passionate about it, believe in yourself, and take the risk.
8. Do you worry that a person's reliance on a sophisticated search engine will reduce the intellectual satisfaction of her/his job?
Quite the contrary. Having intelligent search allows people to get the information they need to make fast decisions without spending a lot of time trying to find this information. It is the difficulty of finding and needing to organize information that typically reduces our job satisfaction. Just think about trying to organize our own inboxes. If a software program can automatically file all your e-mails as you desire, and also intuitively understand how to find any given email quickly and easily, then imagine how productive you could be with the important work that you have to do for the day. This is the promise of what Recommind offers companies when we deploy our intelligent information platform across their entire network.
9. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?
For an entrepreneur, fear can be a very destructive emotion. When you first start thinking about starting a company, many of your friends will likely make fun of your idea. When you start to raise money, most people will say you can’t be successful. When you try and recruit smart people, many will turn you down and tell you that your idea won’t work. All down the line you will need to continuously face the fear of failure. It is only those people who press on, who won’t give in to this fear, who can succeed as an entrepreneur.
10. Who are three other individuals who have influenced you?
My mother taught me to always believe in myself, reach for my dreams, and never settle for anything short of the best I could give.
My father taught me what it truly meant to be an entrepreneur. He showed me how to dream, but then also showed me the heart and indomitable spirit needed to reach those dreams. No matter what obstacles my father faced, he always found a way to overcome them, and I have never forgotten his example.
Dean Hazeltine taught us all not only about how to succeed in business, but also how to balance and combine success with giving back to the system that gave you this opportunity. His life is an incredible example for all in how to be a great corporate citizen. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to have been his student and always strive to keep my work in perspective as a result.
11. What is the latest insight (about life, work, play) that you have culled and would like to share with BrownHEN?
I suppose if I were to end this interview with one final thought it would simply be: take risks. Life is too short to wonder about what could have been. If you feel passionately about something then go after it and make it a reality. Perhaps Nike states it best when they say, “Just Do It!"
© BrownHEN.org – 2009
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