Bruno Walter (Captain Dash): "Everything is changing...Except one thing: the way how we do sales!"

Captain Dash is a tool which enables CMO’s to collect, monitor and understand their social media portfolio performance on the go. The iPad version was launched at the beginning of April and already achieved lots of attention in the media – especially by the published article on Techrunch. Therefore we are very proud when we Bruno Walther from Captain Dash agreed to the following interview.

Janina Benz: Hello Bruno, can you please shortly introduce yourself and tell us why Captain Dash is different to other Social Media monitoring tools?

Bruno Walther: I’m the CEO and co-founder of Captain Dash. I’m a marketing geek and have been establishing companies in the marketing field for 15 years now.

Bruno Walther – CEO & co-founder of Captain Dash

Captain Dash gives superpowers to marketing people. This tool allows you to collect and dive into your data like never before, even if the data is coming from your ERP, your analytics or exogenous factors it monitors, understands, and optimizes your performance based on measurable and visual facts. All the important information you need is now centralized in a mobile and truly intuitive interface.

JB: Before co-founding Captain Dash, you worked in a larger company and were CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide. What was the main impulse to leave your comfort zone and pursue a startup business?

BW: There were two main reasons. Firstly, I’m an entrepreneur and one of the things that I love on this planet is to transform concepts into companies, to build something big. Secondly, I truly believe that the marketing world is going to be radically transformed by mathematics and data and I want to be part of this revolution.

JB: Why did you decide to offer free and premium versions? Does the premium model offer any additional features besides connecting unlimited data sources?

BW: Everything is changing in the business intelligence software world. Except one thing: the way how we do sales!

We continue to sell products like in the last century. Companies spend a huge amount of money on restoration, marketing, and plan to build their own pipeline. Furthermore money is spent on building a proof of concept that demonstrates the efficiency of the product. And after all those steps, which can take up to two years, you are finally ready to start a request for quotation.

This is clearly not efficient; that’s why we believe that the ‘freemium’ model is more agile: You can play with the product for free, build your own dashboards and connect the data that matters to you. In other words, you are making them on your own. Therefore it is your own proof of concept. And if you want to have something more consistent you just have to raise your hand.

We don’t have to spend much money on having prospects and building proof of concept.

It’s a fantastic way to rock the market.

We believe that freemium is going to be the next standard for the software industry.

JB: Developing a cool (and scalable) product consumes a lot of time and money. You started in 2010, so it took you almost 3 years to launch your first product. How do you plan to create revenue to keep up with all the further developments and maintenance costs you will be facing?

BW: We spent two years building the product. We launched our first version on Windows 8, last year. We are already selling our solution to several clients from Fortune 500. And we also have strong partnerships with Microsoft and IBM.

JB: You are a marketing expert, what do you think is essential to spread the “superpowers” all over the globe?

BW: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, the products that you watch on TV are global. That’s why marketing nowadays has to be global. We operate all over the world.

JB: Thank you so much for this interview Bruno. All the best for Captain Dash!

BW: Thanks Janina, it was a pleasure.