Sramana Mitra: Talk about thewe. You said you were three co-founders. Tell me how you guys came together, how you met, how you decided to get together? And secondly, what was the idea around which you came together originally? What happened then? What was the state of the union? What was the state of the market? And what did you see as the opportunity to latch on to at that time?
Kristjan Vilosius: Great question. I’ll first start with the co-founding team. Both of my co-founders, Priit, our CTO, and Hannes have been leading our customer facing teams for many years. I’d known both Priit and Hannes for 15-20 years as friends, although Priit and Hannes didn’t know each other very well. I kind of kept them separate.
I met Priit through computer games during the high school and university days. We were both active gamers. We formed this friendship of going on quests and missions together and conquering stuff, which strengthened our bond. We continued playing over the years as well.
I met my other co-founder, Hannes, also during the high school and early university days. We did a soft rock band together. So that’s another thing that joins people together. If you form a band, tour around the country for a couple of years, and have those stage experiences together, you form a very strong friendship.
Sramana Mitra: Are you singer or an instrumentalist?
Kristjan Vilosius: Well, I’m probably better at playing the instruments than singing. But back then I was a singer.
Sramana Mitra: Okay. What instrument do you play?
Kristjan Vilosius:
At some point, Hannes sold his businesses, Priit quit his job at Skype, and they’re looking for the next challenge. The timing was right for the three of us to jump into this opportunity.
Now coming to your second question about the big idea and the opportunity itself, I first need to briefly explain what Katana is. Katana is a cloud inventory software for small and medium sized businesses globally. We at Katana make sure that companies can efficiently and effortlessly order, store, use, make, and sell physical goods. Katana software combines purchasing, manufacturing, order fulfillment, and warehousing.
We work with brands and companies from various industries, from cosmetics to food and beverage, apparel to furniture. Katana is at the center of their ERP tech stack. We act as a system of records for all those small and medium sized businesses that that sell physical goods. You could think of Katana as a modern ERP.
Sramana Mitra: That was the original idea as well?
Kristjan Vilosius: That was the original idea as well. This is a funny story about it. If you look at tech companies, very often there are points in their journey where they make pivots, where the original idea changes. Now, in Estonia, Katana is known as the boring startup company, or today it’s a boring growth company, in the sense that we’ve never had a pivot. The business plan that we put in place in the early days is the same that we have followed throughout the years. It’s boring in a lovely way. Especially in the current market environment, we see that we have acted as an example of a certain level of stability for team members. It’s turned into a competitive advantage for us, especially when it comes to attracting talent.
Sramana Mitra: The most successful B-to-B companies fall in that category of boring companies. They have fine product-market fits, they have to find a repeatable sales process and execute on it for years and years. That’s how successful B-to-B companies get built. So, you are in the right category.
Kristjan Vilosius: Indeed. ERPs are notoriously expensive to build. It’s a very deep moat to get into the market because they are very feature rich.
