Startup of the Day - Appature

The company of the day is Appature, based in the US. Appature creates Enterprise Marketing Solutions tailored to the unique needs of the healthcare industry. You will find below an interview with Kabir Shahani, CEO and Co-Founder of Appature. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.appatureinc.com.

Interview with Kabir Shahani, CEO and Co-Founder of Appature

Who are you?

CEO and Co-Founder.

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

Certainly an honor – we appreciate the vote of confidence!

What did you do before creating your company?

Worked at a consumer Internet start-up in business development.

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

Chris Hahn and myself decided to found Appature before having any idea, really. Our focus was on solving big software pain points, and our philosophy on what makes a great company (business model, culture, values). The idea for the actual Appature product came from a set of key problems my father identified during his 30 year career in healthcare marketing and as the President of White Space Healthcare Marketing. Chris and I were able to validate the problems he’d seen with other players in the market, and over time our team has come up with a solution that now addresses the entire marketing value chain from Data Optimization, Marketing Action, to Customer Insight.

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

We sell an enterprise marketing product with the core focus being on a system that is Surprisingly Simple® for marketers to use.

What is your market?

Our target vertical is healthcare.

Any clients? References? Partners?

We have some large clients including Johnson&Johnson, and Microsoft Health Solutions Group.

Funding history? VCs? BA?

The company has been bootstrapped to profitability.

Growth? Internationalization?

We do have plans for growth as we line up the right partners.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

We have 11 full-time employees, 5 are developers.

Are you hiring? If yes, what? Where?

We don’t currently have any open headcount, but we plan to expand our team by the end of the year.

Which platform are you building on? Why?

We are on the Microsoft stack, but are also using some open source technologies. We’ve found this to be the right combination of price, performance, and extensibility.

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

We have provisional patents filed on our technology, and our vertical focus lends us to having capabilities that are specialized to our target customers.

Who’s your role model?

Too many to list. Important to always be learning and there are certainly a number of very successful business leaders!

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet areas?

There are a myriad of opportunities always being created in Software, especially when it comes to leveraging the web. The most difficult task is knowing where and how to focus.

Looking for funding? If yes, how much?

We are in the fundraising process to commercialize our product and increase our time-to-market.

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

The BizSpark program has been an incredible asset to us in our early stages, and continues to be a great way for us to stay connected to core Microsoft technologies and how they can benefit our time-to-market as well as our customer experience.

Any advice to young Software entrepreneurs?

Focus on solving real problems and don’t get your ego caught up in your ideas (hint: it’s hard to do this).

Anything else you’d like to say?

Seattle is the best place to start and grow your company!