When we started with New Day at Work in 2010 it was crystal clear for Hans de Graaf and myself that we wanted to launch Workspace 365 worldwide. But how to do this? That question was unanswered for a while.
By the end of 2011 the first version of Workspace 365 was ready for private beta. A moment were we looked forward for more than a year. Our focus was to help small business with a complete tailor-made workspace. While this was going well, we made the decision in 2012 not to focus on finding more customers. Instead we started the conversation with many IT partners who already offer Office 365. With this we envisioned an even greater growth potential for our product.
Together with our partners, we have created new value propositions since then. With these propositions many opportunities revealed themselves, both locally and internally. We realized that with the current momentum we shouldn’t hold back. The time has come to go international.
While this decision was made rather quickly, the question how to fund this adventure had to be answered. Time has come to answer the phone calls from potentials investors and venture capitalist. Since the beginning, many showed interest. We believed that the longer you wait with external funding, the better it will be for the success of a startup. Time will tell.
Finding the right investor is a time consuming process. You just don’t want the type of investor who is there primarily for the money. New products are build every day, but creating a worldwide new ecosystem takes time and effort. After meetings with several different parties we felt the strongest connection with Value Creation and Company (VC&C). Their knowledge and experience with similar companies gave us the confidence and a perfect match between two companies. But of course, funding is also about money. Clearly, funding for New Day at Work means that we can onboard new partners quicker and expend our team on key positions.
We are currently working with KPN to launch the first major partner with their ‘own’ Workspace 365 for their partners and customers. A major milestones as many KPN alike companies are following what KPN is doing. Believe it or not in the world of large telecom providers, KPN is a frontrunner in regards to cloud services.
All in all, 2014 will be a challenging year for us. Will we be able to realize these international ambitions? Will we be able to help KPN successfully launch 2014? We aim to keep you posted about the progress.
Erik Nicolai
