Pierre Valade is the co-founder and former CEO of Sunrise. He recounts the timeline of leaving Foursquare and returning to Europe to build Sunrise.
Disclosure
Valade: Some Sunrise investors wanted to reject Microsoft's $100M offer
“Yeah, so this, so some of them thought that we should go for more, but I also think investors who really respect entrepreneurs, And, ah, and I think those investor that we worked with respect the entrepreneur decision at the end of the day.”
Disclosure
Valade: Sunrise sold to Microsoft because the team couldn't monetize it
“I think we didn't know exactly how we could take it from a great product to a great business. I think we've done a good job building a great product. We didn't really know how we could make money. Or turn it into, and turn this into a successful business. And …”
Insight
Valade: Product teams must invent features users don't request
“We can think about building and stuff that, that people Don't even expect in their calendar. So on that type of things, we don't really expect them to come back to us and say, you know, I wish I could do X, Y, and Z, because no one even thinks that's even poss…”
Opinion
Valade: Smartwatches are the most critical platform for calendar apps
“Watch is probably the device that, you know, you associate the most with time, right? The watch is like device where you will look and see what time is it. And so we thought about this as like, oh, this is really interesting because it's probably the device th…”
Disclosure
Valade raised Sunrise's seed round with a live product, no deck
“So the funny, so I didn't do any business plan for that. I just say, we have a product out there. Try the product. It speaks for itself. So I was really almost kind of like arrogant about the fact that I didn't want to do slides. I was like, you know, we just …”
Insight
Pierre Valade: Startup CEOs carry unique pressure as ultimate decision-makers
“When you're the CEO of the company, you're the guy who's making the last decision, right? Like, no one can just everyone can blame you for everything, and you can't blame anyone, right?”