Startup of the Day - ClickTale

The company of the day is ClickTale, based in Israel. ClickTale delivers innovative In-Page Web Analytics that reveal the mystery of what visitors actually do inside website pages. You will find below an interview with Arik Yavilevich, CTO and Co-founder of ClickTale. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.clicktale.com.

Interview with Arik Yavilevich, CTO and Co-founder of ClickTale

Who are you?

My name is Arik Yavilevich. I am the CTO and Co-founder of an Israeli Internet Startup called ClickTale. ClickTale delivers innovative In-Page Web Analytics that reveal the mystery of what visitors actually do inside website pages, allowing you to analyze and optimize website performance and usability. Our unique solution provides movies of your visitors' actual browsing sessions, heatmaps of aggregate behavior inside the web page, and advanced behavioral analytics. ClickTale fills a gap left by traditional web analytics that only measures activity between pages.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘company of the day’ per Microsoft?

We like it.

What did you do before creating your company?

Before ClickTale I was developing software in various companies and institutions in Israel. Mostly dealing with web and ecommerce, but also working with image processing and video compression codecs.

How did you get the idea? What s the genesis?

Being a webmaster and managing my own sites, I felt the “pain” of not knowing how visitors use them. Fortunately, at that time, the web became more and more dynamic and “AJAXy” so I could use my technical skills to create an alpha version of the system. I then joined forces with my co-founder, Tal Schwartz, and together we founded the company in 2006.

What do you sell? What is your company’s mission?

We sell an innovative In-Page Web Analytics service that is offered in a SaaS model. The team at ClickTale works hard to build tools for webmasters that would unlock the black box that surrounds a typical website today. Information provided by ClickTale influences design, usability and marketing decisions, and eventually helps create a better, more profitable and easier to use web.

What is your market?

ClickTale addresses the needs of website owners, website marketers and companies with web presence in general. Ecommerce websites benefit especially from ClickTale, often able to increase their conversion rates, by as high as 400%.

Any clients? References? Partners?

ClickTale has recently launched an affiliate program with ShareASale, the program’s first month was a huge success. In addition to that ClickTale has partnerships with Omniture, A2 Hosting and oDesk. Sharon Magen, our VP of BizDev, does a great job for ClickTale and is always happy to develop new channels and partnerships for us.

Funding history? VCs? BA?

ClickTale started as a boost strap in a garage, and later raised a seed round from angel investors. In December 2007, ClickTale secured a round of funding from YLVentures, a boutique European venture capital firm.

Growth? Internationalization?

We had terrific growth in 2008. ClickTale had grown by about 4 times during that year. Since day one, we have received very good feedback from blogs all over the world in all possible languages. Thanks to that buzz we now have customers from many different countries.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

ClickTale has 10 employees, 6 of them are great developers.

Are you hiring? If yes, what? Where?

We are not hiring at the moment. However, we are investigating the possibility of out sourcing our support processes to a third-party. It is a difficult decision with potentially interesting results.

Which platform are you building on? Why?

ClickTale is based on the Microsoft stack. In the beginning we were using classic ASP and MSSQL Express but quickly switched to the .NET platform. Today we use a combination of .NET, MSSQL and Windows Servers as our platform. We like the .NET architecture very much. It works great; it is fast and has a clear and easy to use documentation.

Do you have any Software IP? Is there something that you’re the only one to do on the market?

ClickTale has IP in several fields related to In-Page Web Analytics, including a patent pending. Those innovations allow us to collect our data in a way that has minimal impact on the visitors, and then replay the interactions accurately.

Looking for funding? If yes, how much?

ClickTale isn’t actively seeking for funding. The current financial situation is bad for fund raising. Today we prefer to invest our time in increasing our revenues instead of raising funds in exchange for equity.

What about the BizSpark Program? What do you think? Are you going to join? Why?

BizSpark has a substantial role in our ability to utilize Microsoft tools while growing the company and achieving success.

Any advice to young Software entrepreneurs?

Go out early with your product. Don’t wait too long to show your venture to the world. Then, once out, start monetizing it as soon as possible.