Evangelos Simoudis
Managing Director at Trident Capital focusing on investments in Internet and software businesses.
Prior to entering venture capital, Evangelos had more than 20 years experience in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering.
Evangelos earned a PhD in computer science from Brandeis University and a BS in electrical engineering from Caltech.
Analyzing Social Analytics
Social (media, technologies, applications) continues to penetrate the corporate world. To date the penetration has primarily been driven by the demand to take advantage of Facebook’s massive reach and enable companies to get closer to their customers. More recently, companies started taking similar advantage of Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. The quick adoption of social by [...]
A Comparison between Pacific Crest’s 2011 and 2012 SaaS Survey Results
Two weeks ago Pacific Crest held its annual technology conference in Colorado. David Spitz and Brendan Barnicle ran their annual SaaS workshop where I was invited to participate. The workshop opened with Brendan’s presentation on the results of the CIO survey the bank conducts and continued with David’s presentation on the SaaS company survey. The [...]
2Q12 Performance for Trident Capital’s SaaS Portfolio; the Importance of Accurate Metrics Prediction
In recent weeks Lazard Capital Markets, Piper Jaffray, Morgan Stanley and Pacific Crest issued the results of their most recent CIO surveys. The results point to decreasing IT spending during 2H12, mostly because of the worsening global macroeconomic environment. This is a reversal from survey results we had seen during 1Q12 when most CIOs felt optimistic about the US economy and were increasing their spending. Despite the deteriorating sentiment, all four surveys indicate that the budgets for cloud computing projects in general and SaaS applications in particular are expected to remain untouched, and may even increase, as corporations continue to…
Customer Centricity Requires CMOs to Drive Data and Channel Integration
In a post last March I wrote about how Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are starting to drive the corporate application agenda. I had concluded that as corporations become more customer-centric, they are looking for, or starting to use, a new generation of data-driven applications to help them extract insights about their customer behaviors so that they can improve their interactions with customers and prospects regardless of the communication channel. Technologies such as big data, mobile, social and cloud are at the core of these new applications that are being aggressively embraced by CMOs. Since I wrote that post I continued…
Analyzing Pacific Crest’s SaaS Survey Results
A few weeks ago I delivered a webinar on SaaS metrics, paying particular attention on the metrics that characterize breakout SaaS companies, and have continued to comment on the quarterly performance of Trident Capital’s SaaS portfolio, most recently here. In the webinar I had stated that breakout SaaS companies: Focus on the right prospects and [...]
Impressions and Thoughts from a Visit to Greece and Spain
Much has been written about Greece’s repeat elections taking place today, the country’s ongoing financial problems and potential exit from the Euro, as well as the worsening European economies (last week Spain asked for bailout money, Cyprus is next in line to ask, and many believe that Italy will follow). I recently spent a few [...]
1Q12 was an In-Line Quarter for Trident Capital’s SaaS Portfolio
Before I comment on the 1Q12 performance of our SaaS portfolio I wanted to mention that this week Sand Hill will publish an updated and expanded blog I wrote on Insight as a Service. Next week (5/15), in collaboration with Zuora, I will be delivering a webinar on SaaS metrics. This is an interim report [...]
When 100% Growth Is Not Enough for Startups
A couple of weeks ago I passed on the opportunity to invest in a SaaS application company that has been growing around 100% YoY for the past couple of years and can now be considered a solid expansion story. While the company’s overall story was good, it was not great. As I have been talking [...]
CMOs are Starting to Drive the Next-Gen Application Agenda
A couple of weeks ago my partners and I hosted a meeting of our SaaS advisory board. This is one of our firm’s four advisory boards. I had written about the role of these boards and the value our firm and portfolio companies derive from our advisors’ insights, feedback and help. Our SaaS advisory board includes executives from SaaS application vendors, CIOs and CTOs of companies that are heavy users of SaaS applications, and leading SaaS consultants. One of the most interesting insights that came out of our meeting was that the Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are starting to drive…
Insight as a Service (Part 3)
A few days ago I presented a webinar on Insight as a Service. In the presentation I tried to provide further details on the concept which I first introduced here and later elaborated here. I am including the webinar presentation (click on the slide below) and the notes because they elaborate further on Insight as a Service and provide some examples.
