Exactly, especially if you intend to bootstrap, I think you have to have a good accounting streak in you. Thats our vision. Its also massively matrixed. I was one of the spearheads of that. : Wonderful. Thats the degree I had. Sanjay Shah: Yes. You need a lot of patience as well when youre selling into the enterprise. : We have a very demographic process. Supply chain is a more recent term, but back then, it was operations. Alejandro: Got it. So, life was great. We were lucky that in our initial years, our go-to-market partner was SAP, and enterprise software was virtually nascent, and SAP was selling hand over fist. Sanjay Shah: It wasnt the money or the capital. You hear all these nightmare stories of startups that are doing very well, but theyre not able to project or manage the cash flows and their budgets accordingly. How are you even going to sell it? Thank you, Alejandro. I believe that if you engineer great product, and then dovetail or piggyback on top of a huge, successful go-to-market organization like SAP has globally, then that would be the recipe for success. We felt that we needed to bring in some external expertise to help us grow the subscription part of our business. So something struck me and I said, Well, I cant do it here. Of course, thats important because it establishes a benchmark of sorts, but also to provide us with the expertise that we need. It is important that we strike a partnership with a very large player that can give you a tremendous amount of reach into the marketplace globally, and SAP was a natural partner for us because they have thousands and thousands of feet on the street. : Correct. I wanted to give up a very small portion of it while drawing on their expertise. You need a lot of focus and dedication and a lot of persistence. What was the next thing that youve learned? Q: You could have built another magnificent property somewhere else. Till some months ago, few outside the business circles had heard of Chicago entrepreneur Sanjay Shah. So I decided to explore. Alejandro: So for the people that are listening . Must Read: Roman Rittweger On Starting His Business At 52 And Raising $100 Million To Disrupt The Health Insurance Industry. So in having a degree in finance and having work experience in accounting is not exactly something that would draw potential employers for an operations position. My first two hires are still with me and still with the company. If you want me to do your fundraising for you, click here. Alejandro: Wonderful. : Then, all of a sudden, the idea of perhaps starting your own business starts to become more tangible and have more color. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune). If you engineer good products and show value, then customers will come your way. I think that has been a bit of a challenge for us having built a business on licensing software and all the follow-on revenue that comes as a result of that has been a bit of a bump for us. Those are the revenue streams for us. Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More. Alejandro: Wow! Contact: Mr. Alex Dehnert Communications Manager Vistex, Inc. 2300 Barrington Road, Suite 550 Hoffman Estates, IL 60169 Phone: 847-490-0420 alex.dehnert@vistex.com SOURCE Vistex, Inc. Obviously, one step in the wrong direction can be fatal. Going back to what you were saying that you were bootstrapping this and doing a couple more shifts that you used to do, at what point do you say, Now, I can finally jump on this fulltime? But the reality now is different. That was a very marketable resource. We consider ourselves fortunate in having been able to arrive some of that. Sanjay Shah '89 MBAtech entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and chief architect of international enterprise software giant, Vistexjoins us on this episode of Lehigh University's College of Business ilLUminate podcast. Sanjay Shah: What have I learned about growth? Fast-forward to today. There are so many constituencies both from a product standpoint, from a technology standpoint, and from a go-to-market standpoint. I wanted to get some operational experience and work on the operational side of things, operation supply chain, different terms. I was fascinated and intrigued by the software. Some of it was just this level of fierce independence we wanted to have that I think we can pull this off because what we did during the day was highly marketable. How would you differentiate a private equity profile from the venture capital that perhaps the earlier-stage guys that are listening are probably looking at? It was a German software company that had been around for 20 years already by the time they came to North America. It is important that we strike a partnership with a very large player that can give you a tremendous amount of reach into the marketplace globally, and SAP was a natural partner for us because they have thousands and thousands of feet on the street. That is more than a fulltime job in and of itself. What attracted you to it? If youd like to do it, you can do it, but our R&D is in Germany, and youll have to do it here. And I wanted to move back to the U.S. My family wanted to move back to the U.S. : Very cool. Listen to what everybody has to say. Everything was very hunky-dory. : I was there for roughly two and a half years. : The future is theres more of everything. Founder and CEO of enterprise software company Vistex to talk about balancing the benefits and harm of technology. What kind of marketing do you need to be able to sell effectively? Everybodys journey is unique, and everybodys circumstances are unique. : Wonderful. Ellen Milligan , Donal Griffin and Karin Matussek 7 October, 2020 08:42 am IST We want more growth, more customers, a larger solution footprint. Then there is annual maintenance tied with it. Sanjay Shah, of South Barrington, is the founder and CEO of Vistex, a software company based in Hoffman Estates. The estimated Net Worth of Sanjay C Shah is at least $11.9 Million dollars as of 7 June 2021. : And in terms of enterprise sales, Sanjay, that you were eluding to, what are your biggest takeaways from enterprise sales because its a beast. My world was within a one-mile radius. Then there is annual maintenance tied with it. Especially, the larger the organization that you sell to, the more durable and the more persistent you need to be. Shah's $5 million gift will name the new Vistex Institute for Executive Learning and Research. Vistex also sells its applications to customers who aren't SAP customers. There is no one path to success. You have these ideas and visions of growth, and then there is reality unless youre exceptionally fortunate. The whole business paradigm has changed as I described. Theyre very skilled these days in terms of how they decide what to buy. VISTEX CEO AND FOUNDER SANJAY SHAH. : Really interesting here. The first type of software in supply chain that was the first of its kind back then. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. So what kind of challenges were you guys dealing with? They would help us build and scale our cloud business and yet be comfortable being a minority investor. It's just some people came in a lot earlier than others. Why did you decide to come to the U.S. because I believe it was business school? I look forward to seeing the final product. I was an SAP loyalist. They were raised here. All of my family and extended family lived in a one-mile radius. My true passion was developing software. Then from what I hear, it seems it was more you build it; you build something great and something that people would like to use, and then theyre going to come. Anything you wanted. Then to ensure that they continue to receive value as they expand their portfolio of products. Just enter your email below. One is I think I have learned to be a better listener. View Sanjay Shah's profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. Start Free People Search A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Directory of Profiled Business People: Sanjay Shah Sgrignuoli, Philip - Shahait, Mohammed > Shah, Ruskinarxon - Shah, Sayad > Shah, Sanit - Shah, Sanjaykumar > Shah, Sanjay 1-25 of 525 Contacts 1 In my early days, I used to be confused. I was fascinated and intrigued by the software. Maybe I should trust A more than B, so I should do what A said. No. Alejandro: Sanjay, what is the way that you guys make money with this? [Q&A: Beam Suntory CEO rides whiskey boom at home and abroad ], [Q&A: FCB Chicago ad agency CEO says big ideas still work on little screens ], [Q&A: Shinola looks to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., and stakes a claim in Chicago ]. Alejandro: Then after this, you join probably one of the companies that has had the major and probably the biggest impact on you as an employee and also as a founder SAP. We go in as explorers, not as conquerors because we know that the right kind of input is very critical to the engineering of a product. An entrepreneur cant say, Yeah, Im also on a double-duty and be able to sell into the enterprise. How was life there? We want more growth, more customers, a larger solution footprint. Also, remember, if you need any help whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at, Roman Rittweger On Starting His Business At 52 And Raising $100 Million To Disrupt The Health Insurance Industry, He Built Turo Into A $1 Billion Business And Now Is Investing In Startups That Make Humanity More Resilient, Shelby Clark On Building Turo Into A $1 Billion Business And Investing In Startups That Make Humanity More Resilient, Important Things To Look For In An Investment Contract, He Sold His Last Company For Millions And Now Raised $38 Million To Identify The Best Sperm With AI And Improve IVF Outcomes, Gurjeet Singh On Selling His Last Company For Millions And Now Raising $37 Million To Identify The Best Sperm With AI And Improve IVF Outcomes. Sanjay Shah '89 MBA, tech entrepreneur, founder and CEO of enterprise software company Vistex will be featured at the 14th lecture in the Donald M. Gruhn '49 Distinguished Finance Speaker Series. They decided to hire me, but they said, The only position we have open for you in Operations is in Canada. I said, Ill take it.. What is private equity? Then the logical progression was to work in accounting. Sanjay Shah (born September 11, 1970 in London) is a Dubai-based British businessman. Sanjay Shah is the founder and CEO of Vistex which is an enterprise software company, providing solutions to drive customer growth and partner relations. Mr. Shah owns over 4,833 units of Beyond Meat Inc stock worth over $1,242,588 and over the last 3 years he sold BYND stock worth over $4,445,039. Why did you decide to come to the U.S. because I believe it was business school? So I grew up in a very close family both literally and figuratively. Theres always some business to be had with on-prem software, but were also getting more aggressive and investing heavily to grow our business in the Cloud as they say; to sell our software as a subscription. Q: When you bought the property, you said the build-out will take a year to 18 months and cost about $15 million. That was a very marketable resource. Sanjay Shah: Its interesting. Thats how I was able to bootstrap. You spend time in classrooms learning about things, but spending time on the shop floor learning how actually products are put together, how they are transported, how the logistics work in terms of the distribution networks of large companies. I come from a family of traders and accountants. Sanjay Shah: Yeah. Alejandro: Now, you have them as a strategic partner, so obviously, the relationship is there. A lot of our revenue also comes from upselling. Sanjay Shah: The future is theres more of everything. Thats what helped us make the call with the partner we chose. Hello everyone and welcome to the, show. Denmark, which is trying to recoup some 12.7 billion krone ($2 billion), or close to 1% of its gross domestic product, says the entire enterprise was a charade. CEO, and Chief Architect, Sanjay Shah, is the WINNER of the 2019 Ernst & Young (EY) Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Midwest Award. Software maker Vistex announced it has raised $65 million in funding from Accel-KKR, a private equity firm based in Silicon Valley. Yes, he owns a business software company, Vistex Inc ., which is estimated to be approaching $200 million in annual revenue. Vistex Asia-pacific Private Limited's Corporate Identification Number is (CIN) U72900MH2003PTC142888 and its registration number is 142888.Its Email address is chirag.shah@vistex.com and its registered address is UNIT NO C R 12TH FLOORNIRMAL BLDG 241/42 BACKBAY RECLAMATION NARIMAN POINT MUMBAI MH 400021 IN . Thats our vision. How do you build and scale a cloud business? I think you have to be your own advisor and your own decisionmaker. What were some of the early days like? Most high-end penthouses in large cities tend to be multiple stories. If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. For more than 20 years, Sanjay Shah has led the company, a pioneer in transforming how organizations take their products and services to the marketplace through trade, channel and vendor programs, pricing, performance incentives and rights & royalties. Its important to stay grounded and be a good listener. Shah, 49, Vistex's founder and CEO, recently gave $5 million to his business school alma mater, Lehigh University's College of Business and Economics, with the goal, he said, of helping it better compete with other top business schools. They used to call it Platinum Consulting, where we go and help troubled SAP projects across the globe. I love Chicago and this property provided me the vantage point to take in the city. They continue to receive value as they expand their portfolio of products I cant do it here intend... Has raised $ 65 million in funding from Accel-KKR, a larger solution.! 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