It was in 2008 that Egnyte launched its cloud-based file sharing service, with a focus on small and medium-size businesses. And since, the growth has been rapid. "I wanted to solve a big problem," said Vineet. "Ease of use was cumbersome for existing approaches."
OK, so what to do with the $10 million? It may seem like a nice thing but it actually has its challenges (hey, as Notorious B.I.G. once said -- "mo money mo problems").
First of all, it is extremely tough to find high-quality engineers. "A job ad may get us a few good leads," said Vineet.
Basically, he spends a lot of time recruiting aggressively -- even in other countries. For example, Egnyte has engineers in Idaho, Dallas, Poland and Norway. "You need to have immense flexiblity," said Vineet.
Next, as Egnyte continues to grow, it needs to invest heavily in infrastructure (keep in mind that it already stores five billion files). Data centers are not cheap. And as the company moves into foreign markets, the capital expenditures will spike.
Finally, Egnyte wants to find ways to raise its visibility. No doubt, there is much noise in the marketplace and it can be tough to brand a technical service.
So far, Egnyte has focused on getting customers via online search, especially through Google (Nasdaq:GOOG). But brand advertising can be a tough thing for scrappy startups. After all, the expenditures can often seem wasteful and ineffective. But to take a company to the next level, it is often essential to shell-out big bucks on such things.
So as you can see, it doesn't take much to spend $10 million.
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