One-on-One With Somen Mondal

One-on-One With Somen Mondal

July 17, 2015 • Business, Features, In the Magazine

Selling for Success: How Somen Mondal took moonlighting to the next level

{ interview by David King }

Spending time with Somen Mondal is like hanging out with an old friend. Even if you’ve never met him before, his confident manner and relaxed personality can put anyone at ease. We had the chance to speak with the successful entrepreneur at a critical juncture in his professional life. Hot on the tails of selling his lucrative first start-up, Field ID, Somen is back in the game and in the process of launching his second start-up. Here’s what he had to say about innovation, entrepreneurship and what success means to him.

Getting Your Bearings

Bay St. Bull: It was after graduating with a B.A.Sc. in computer engineering that you took your first stint at entrepreneurship with N4 Systems. When did you realize that you wanted to focus on developing and selling a product or service—something proprietary?

Somen Mondal: I always knew that I wanted to start a business and be my own boss. It’s something that’s always been ingrained in me. Focusing on a specific product, particularly a software product, was something that my business partner and I realized after starting out. We began with the attitude of just wanting to make money any way possible. From our experience doing consulting gigs, we real ized that we wanted to scale faster, and not based on how many hours our team was working. Nothing scales faster than software, especially cloud-based software-as-a-service. We learned that lesson fast and realized it was the direction we wanted to go in. We haven’t looked back since.

BSB: During what we’ll call Moonlighting Phase 1, where you juggled N4 Systems and your full-time job, you made the observation that things weren’t sustainable the way they were going. Was this a gut feeling?

SM: I’d like to think I make very calculated risks and decisions. It’s actually a common misconception that entrepreneurs are huge risk takers and work off of gut feelings. When we decided to go full-time with Field ID and quit our stable jobs, we only had one customer. I systematically looked at different factors related to both my business and my personal life. Business-wise, I realized that we could be in a potentially huge market that is completely under-served. From a personal standpoint, I looked at the risk of quitting my job and realized that the opportunity to start my own business was too good to pass up. The biggest risk was that I would fail and have to go back to working full-time. Based on these factors, I decided to go full time with Field ID. Generally speaking, I’ll pick data and calculated decision-making over gut feel every time.

The Idea

BSB: All great businesses start with an “Aha!” moment. What was that moment for you?

SM: When looking at an opportunity, I focus on two things: Is there a problem to be solved? And, are there a lot of people experiencing this problem? At the heart of it, entrepreneurs are problems-solvers. And, the truth is it was a customer who came to us with a problem. They managed inspections with a pen and paper and it was a huge pain for them. They came to us with the issue and an idea to automate and digitize inspections with the web and mobile devices. This opportunity met both my criteria. It was a real problem that wasn’t just an inconvenience, but was costing companies huge sums of money.

Not only that, it was a compliance issue. We discovered with some research that a lot of companies were having the same problem. It was then that we realized we were onto something. It became our focus. Other ideas, tasks, and even jobs got the back seat.

BSB: When exploring opportunities as an entrepreneur as you did with Field ID, was there an emphasis serving a specific type of customer or market segment?

SM: If we did one thing right, it was to focus on specific subsets of customers. With Field ID, and with our new company, Ideal Candidate, we had a razor sharp focus on a specific profile. Although we knew Field ID had a potentially huge market, we focused on very specific niches. We took a systematic approach of entering one industry at time.

We would get familiar with the players, build a reference-base, a customer base, and then, when the time was right, we would move on to another niche. We couldn’t have tackled the big companies without this strategy. We had our eyes on the big picture, but we knew that in order to get there, we had to take a lot of small steps and have a lot of small incremental wins.

The Jump

BSB: After finishing up your MBA, you entered what we’ll call a short Moonlighting Phase 2, and landed a bank job while continuing to push forward with Field ID. At what point did you realize that you had to make that final jump towards entrepreneurship and cut everything else out?

SM: The point that I knew I had to make a decision was when we had one happy, paying customer and a product that could be sold to similar organizations. To be honest, it wasn’t a simple decision. On the one hand, I had a very stable job that paid relatively well. On the other hand, I wasn’t happy going to work. I didn’t look forward to it. The decision to move forward partly came out of that. I wanted to do something that I found exciting and made me happy.

Practically speaking, I also had the least amount of risk at the time. I had no dependents and was living at home with my parents. So I asked myself: “Do I follow my dream and take a calculated risk?” When I looked at the opportunity that way, the choice was obvious. I always tell people you can get a job at any time in your life, but the opportunity to start a successful business doesn’t come by very often.

BSB: What kind of counsel and advice did you seek during this time and were there any people in particular who helped shape your early decisions?

SM: To be honest, most people discourage entrepreneurship. Looking at the statistics, it really doesn’t make sense to go down the entrepreneurial path. Friends and family typically don’t approve someone quitting their job to work in an attic for no money. But for me, entrepreneurship was always the plan. There was never any question in my mind.

Growing and Selling

BSB: You’ve often spoke about the importance of an early focus on sales. This is a concept we find often gets lost among entrepreneurs who see every idea and audience as some sort of golden ticket. In your opinion, what was the bigger driver to the success of Field ID, the concept itself or your ability to sell it to your customers?

SM: The main reason we were successful is because we were able to execute properly. Most business don’t fail because they have a bad idea—it’s usually because the founders aren’t able to execute a plan. The biggest factor in our ability to deliver was our ability to scale and grow a sales team. I would 100 percent say that the biggest driver for our success with Field ID was our relentless focus on customer service and customer acquisition. Our ability to consistently innovate our sales process and methodolog y, to use a metrics-driven approach to fine-tune the process, is what allowed us to be successful. It’s all about execution.

BSB: After building Field ID for five years, you decided to sell the company to Master Lock. What influenced that decision, and was the transaction a challenging process?

SM: We actually never put Field ID up for sale. We were growing very fast and intended to continue growing the business. I’m a firm believer that good companies are never sold; they are bought. When Master Lock approached us, we weighed the risks versus the rewards. The decision-making process was based on that analysis. That, coupled with the fact that Shaun Ricci and I had all of our eggs in one basket. When the final negotiated figure was presented to us, we decided that the rewards far exceeded the risk. To be honest, I found the whole experience exciting and enjoyable. I learned so much going through that acquisition, it was incredibly interesting.

BSB: After the transaction was complete, did you experience any regret? Or were you satisfied with the result?

SM: I had absolutely no regrets. I was happy with the outcome. Not only for Shaun and myself, but also for the entire team. It was a win-win for everyone.

On to the Next One

BSB: After selling Field ID, did you take some time off from business to recharge your bat-
tery, or were you already chomping at the bit to get started on your next venture?

SM: I regret not touring the world or going on an extended vacation, but I was so eager and excited to start something new that I couldn’t wait. I took a total of two weeks off between selling Field ID and starting my new company, Ideal Candidate. It took me two weeks to find the perfect attic to start the new company.

BSB: Was the process of coming up with the concept behind Ideal Candidate similar to the process in coming up with Field ID?

SM: The process was identical. The only difference was that with Ideal Candidate, we were trying to solve a problem that we had experienced firsthand: how to identify and hire top salespeople. We were so sick of using recruiters and making hiring decisions based on gut feeling. We knew there had to be a better way. So we took a methodical approach and evaluated the problem against others, and we decided it was something worth pursuing. Breaking with inefficient and antiquated recruiting practices—that’s a huge problem to tackle.

BSB: How are you enjoying being back in the start-up environment? Has the experience so far been much different than the experience with Field ID?

SM: I absolutely love being in a small start-up environment. The first days, when there are no rules or boundaries, are the most magical. They’re also the most fun. The challenges are similar, to be honest. The frame of building a great product, acquiring reference-able customers, and building a marketing and sales machine is all similar.

Balance and Winning

BSB: When we first met, you mentioned that you were embarking on a spiritual retreat. What did you learn about yourself on your journey, and how else do you seek personal and professional balance in your life?

SM: One of the many things I indulge in is going on unique vacations. Going to the Himalayas in India was an eye-opening experience. It was great spending time with people who view the world in a way that is so different from my own.

Travel in general, whether it be in the Himalayas or Miami, is the one thing that gets me out of the office. It’s one extravagance I allow myself to indulge in.

BSB: The Bay St. Bull is about winning—what people do in their lives to win at work, travel, pleasure, food, everything. What does winning mean to you?

SM: Winning to me means having the freedom to do what I want every day. It means waking up and being excited and happy to go to work. It’s about beating all the odds and reaching my goals. And it’s also about always setting new goals so that I’m perpetually in motion, working towards something.

Field ID Ideal Candidate Somen Mondal