Mindflash CEO Talks about Software as a Service
Written by Corinne Garcia Thursday, July 07 2011
Snapshot: Donna Wells
In 2010, Silicon Valley veteran Donna Wells was hired as president and CEO of Mindflash, a company that was on the brink of launching a revolutionary web-based training application. With experience working with companies like Intuit, Expedia, and Mint.com, she brought to the table a wealth of knowledge of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products, which at that time were relatively new. Mindflash launched in September 2010. Here, Wells discusses the launch, the product, and her experiences in Silicon Valley.
Womenetics: How was the idea for Mindflash conceived?
Donna Wells: Mindflash had a legacy product, which was terrific for the time in which it was created, but relatively expensive and difficult to use compared to SaaS offerings, which were starting to emerge in other industries. With the technological shift from server- to web-hosted software of the last four to five years, it became evident that the time and cost required to improve the legacy product wasn’t practical. The management team and investors did a bold thing in taking action. They came up with a vision for a cloud-based product and started to form the team to bring that to market.
Womenetics: Can you explain how Mindflash works?
Wells: Mindflash solves a problem that virtually every business faces. Every business has documents that they use for training, for things like new employee orientation, sales force training, new product training, etc. That content usually gets delivered live, or, God forbid, sent out as an attachment in an email. In most cases, that process is so long and time consuming that the content is out of date before it’s delivered. And with live and certainly email-delivered training, there’s little to no way to know that the training’s been taken or understood.
Mindflash allows anyone to upload existing content (think PowerPoint, video, audio, and Word files) and then combine and organize it into an intuitive training course using our iMovie-like dashboard, add quizzes, and invite trainees to participate. From there, we handle everything from sending the invitation and reminder emails, to generating real-time reports on who passed (and didn’t pass) the course. So trainers save time and money and can use their time to help just the folks who need it, all for an affordable monthly subscription. No IT or engineering resources required.
Womenetics: How did the management team recruit you as CEO?
Wells: The investors first approached me in 2009, and when I tried the product, I had the same positive visceral reaction that I’ve had to the most successful products I’ve had the opportunity to work with in the past – which is wild to think about, as that version of the product was light years behind where we are now.
At that time the company was a couple of quarters away from launching the product and expected it to grow under a purely SaaS model, which was/is still unusual for a B2B offering. I had some experience in doing that, and they wanted me to apply what I’d done before to get the product to market and then build and lead a team that could continuously assess and improve that product and an entirely web-based business funnel over time.
Womenetics: It looks like the experience you’ve had is pretty extensive…
Wells: It’s hard to say anyone has extensive experience in this space; software-as-a-service products are relatively new. I had the opportunity to do fun things with Expedia and Mint.com. What’s interesting to me now is the rapid consumerization of business software, with success stories like Dropbox and Survey Monkey, companies that are bringing that easy-to-try, easy-to-buy model to the B2B market.
Womenetics: From the launch up until now, has the company evolved as you thought it would?
Wells: It has largely evolved as we thought it would. For example, we absolutely knew a year ago that we would go to market with a minimum viable product; we weren’t even charging for the product at launch. It launched at end of September 2010, and we didn’t build the code to charge for it until November.
The company and I are huge believers that you get better information from one month in market with real customers than you do in a usability lab for six months. We have listening posts set up at every point in the customer experience – email contact, phone contact, live chat, A/B tests within the product, a public customer service portal, etc. – so we have a very clear idea of what’s going on with the evolution of the product. We knew that whatever direction the product would take, it would be directed by user feedback, and we’ve done exactly that.
Womenetics: Would you say that Mindflash has revolutionized training?
Wells: We absolutely intend for Mindflash to revolutionize knowledge sharing and training and have been transparent in our intention to be very disruptive in our marketplace. Pre-existing solutions have been very expensive and cumbersome. Mindflash is the opposite, delivering more training with less time, effort, and expense. It gives professional trainers virtually instant feedback from their trainees and a clear view of what’s working and not working in their training’s design. Our users tell us that’s revolutionary.
Another revolution we’re already seeing is in the transformative power from putting an effective training tool in the hands of the subject matter experts at any level of the organization. For instance, let’s say you had a senior software engineer or salesperson who was really experienced in a certain language/sales technique. Traditionally someone from HQ would have to sit with him or her and try to translate what they know into a document or set of screen shots, which – much later – might be offered to train other engineers/salespeople. But, too often, that results in companies offering Fortran/Flip camera training in 2011– it’s too late.
With Mindflash, subject matter experts (in this example, our engineers or salespeople) can create a training course themselves, in minutes. They can easily upload the documents they have, use one of our question templates to develop a quiz, and we handle the rest. Believe me, the participation and engagement by trainees is much higher when they know they’re getting training from an expert peer. And that sort of crowd-sourced content gives a company the opportunity to create a corporate knowledge base that includes the majority of the training that occurs (informally) as opposed one limited to covering just the company’s formal top-down training. It’s what the industry has called “rapid elearning” for years. We’re putting that idea on steroids.
Womenetics: Since you launched, have there been any copycats out there?
Wells: You see this in every web-based business. One of the great things about working in Silicon Valley now is it’s so inexpensive to bring a great idea to market, but that’s also increased the speed with which copycat businesses can follow you. What protects your lead is the design of your product, which is incredibly difficult to get right. Think of all the bad software/web experiences you have in a day. Ease of use always wins, which means that companies that have the right people and processes to actively and critically listen to their customers and deliver a great experience, not just in the beginning but forever, have the only – but a defendable – competitive advantage.
Womenetics: After working for many other established companies, was it risky to work for a new launch?
Wells: There’s always an element of risk in taking that leap of entrepreneurial faith. I always do a fair amount of due diligence and research, but at end of the day you have to go with your gut instinct and hope you get it right.
Womenetics: What prepared you for your new role as CEO?
Wells: For five to six years before Mindflash, I was leading marketing departments within businesses that were web- and ecommerce-based. In those business models, marketing leaders have to take on more of a general manager role. Because there’s now near-perfect transparency from end-to-end – from what you pay to advertise to attract a prospect all the way through to what your customers’ in-product experience was, to their complaints/comments to customer service – web marketers today are involved cross-functionally in ways they aren’t in other business models. They need to partner with product, engineering, customer service, finance, and business partners/affiliates much more deeply than in a direct sales or distribution model to be successful. When this CEO opportunity came up, it was a pretty smooth transition. All the administrative, tax, and regulatory aspects were new, but frankly I try to spend as little time as possible on those and similar, low-value-add activities.
Womenetics: How would you describe your leadership style?
Wells: I’m very goal- and metric-oriented, so it’s always important for me to have quantitative and qualitative goals clearly stated for the company and especially for the team I’m directly leading. I run the executive staff as a team with shared goals. We all equally own responsibilities to meet revenue, user numbers, and expense targets. We then set departmental goals, and I let my vice presidents determine whether or how to best cascade those goals within their own teams.
I also strive to be very transparent and clear on why I’m doing what I’m doing. If I’m asking for data or a change in direction, I try to articulate my thinking behind that. I know it can be frustrating to be asked to change strategy without knowing why it’s necessary. So I try to over communicate, to increase the odds that the thousands of decisions that individual employees make independently in any given week are made using the clearest possible understanding of the business’s total needs.
Womenetics: What mistakes have you made in the business world that you’ve learned from?
Wells: The biggest mistakes I’ve made throughout my career have involved either hiring or firing decisions. I’m happy to say it hasn’t happened too often, but hiring badly has a waterfall effect on the whole team. As does firing, or not firing, soon enough, once issues are apparent. I would love to act more quickly on hiring/firing, and I don’t know any entrepreneurs that wouldn’t tell you the same. The most important decisions you make in a given year concern those you choose to bring in and how you determine a bad hire and make a graceful exit as soon as possible.
Womenetics: Would you say Silicon Valley is male dominated?
Wells: I wouldn’t say it’s male dominated as much as I’d say it’s very engineer dominated. If most engineers were women, then you’d be asking me why the valley is so female dominated. It’s so much less expensive and faster to bring a tech idea to market, so there are many more engineer founders versus financial or sales types than in the past. As the percentage of engineers becomes increasingly female, we’ll be much more balanced and diverse.
Womenetics: How do you make time for your family?
Wells: I try to get time off and travel with my husband and two daughters whenever possible. Being able to spend dedicated time with them is biggest luxury I’ve got outside of the office.
Womenetics: What do you do to unwind?
Wells: We’re actually just kicking off an annual folly, playing softball with my husband and our closest friends. We have a neighborhood league with teams. It’s like Little League for us for the bulk of the summer. The kids and my mother find it to be hugely amusing. It’s not pretty, but it’s a ton of fun!
Corinne Garcia is a freelance writer and editor living with her husband and two young boys in Bozeman, Mont. She has also written for Women’s Adventure, Christian Science Monitor, Northwest Travel, Pregnancy, Fit Pregnancy, and Fit Parent.
