Ep 221: Interview with Rob LoCascio, founder of LivePerson
Listen: http://www.startupsense.net/blog/rob-locascio
Rob LoCascio is one of our more successful entrepreneurs on the podcast because he’s already taken his company LivePerson public but more interestingly is that he did it back in 2000 at the peak of the dot-com bubble. Rob was the solo-founder of LivePerson which is the world’s largest messaging platform for some of the biggest brands and companies we know and love such as Microsoft, IBM, Intuit, Adobe, Ted Baker, Virgin Atlantic, United Way and hundreds more. LivePerson raised $40 million from their IPO and at the time Rob still owned 20% of the company (he still owns 10% today). LivePerson has 1,100 employees spread across 12 global offices and now gets 50% of their revenue from outside the U.S. LivePerson currently has a market cap of $775 million.
In this interview I had a great time chatting with Rob about his journey of taking LivePerson from startup to IPO to now being a public company for 17 years. I asked him what it’s like to be a public company CEO, what does LivePerson do, who are their clients, how are clients leverage their products and services, how has LivePersonadapted to new technologies over time, how hard was it getting through the dot-com bubble (early 2000's), why do they have so many global offices, what are the difficulties growing a global company and managing so many people/offices, what are some of his favorite customer success stories, how do they typically acquire their biggest customers, how long is the sales cycle, what have been the biggest challenges for him and the company over the past 20 years, what are some of his favorite memories and milestones, how do you recruit great people, how much do you invest back into product innovation and much more.
