TriVenture was acquiring new accounts and gaining traction, but the business plan we started with did not sync with the reality in the marketplace.  To do an on-premise deployment of Microsoft CRM, we had to pitch a six-figure price tag with at least a six-month implementation schedule.  This was not competitive, especially when the new-to-market guys a Salesforce.com showed up with a better pitch: $1,000 down, and we’ll have your CRM up and running by the end of the day.  That $1,000 compared to our $150,000.  That one day compared with our six months.  We were having our ass handed to us and we knew it.

So our owners took bold action and double-downed again.  We opened our first data center in the Westin Building in downtown Seattle.  We went to Microsoft and bought perpetual CRM licenses with the idea that we would resell these.  Now, we could compete with Salesforce.com; we could light a CRM implementation in a matter of hours.  We only charged $1,000 upfront, even if the customer was using $50,000 in software.  We required customers to sign a 36-month agreement and we amortized the cost of the software over the length of the agreement.  We typically broke even on a customer within six months and then the profitability and stability of recurring revenue just got better and better.

Within two years, our company was a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Microsoft paid for us to attend their conferences.  In, Microsoft entered the market with its own hosted CRM platform to compete directly with Salesforce.com.  We knew with that decision that our days were numbered and sold the company to Fine Solutions in 2011 followed by a two-year earn-out position where we continued to provide leadership and transition support.