Feeling Software – Building a Successful B2B Software Company
Feeling Software is a software company that started in 2005. It was founded by two brothers, Christian and Guillaume Laforte from Saguenay, Quebec. Both have strong backgrounds in 3D graphics software development; Guillaume worked for Alias (now owned by Autodesk), Electronic Arts and Ubisoft, and Christian worked for ATI Research, Sanyo Electric and Alias.
In 2001, Christian was a member of the team at Alias that won a technical Academy Award for his work on Maya. Joshua Koopferstock, Director of Marketing points out that Feeling Software is probably one of the few offices in Montreal with a real Oscar.
Currently, Feeling Software specializes in 3D security software, but that wasn’t always the case. We spoke to Joshua to learn more about the company.
NextMontreal: Feeling Software wasn’t always in the security space, how did that come about and what were they doing before?
Joshua: Feeling Software moved into the security space 3 years ago. Up to then, our background had been entirely in 3D graphics and computer vision. After attending some physical security-related conferences, it became apparent that the software being used for the protection of large infrastructure had not benefitted from the major advancements in graphics that many other industries had over the past decade (gaming, film, simulation). This became a real problem for facilities such as airports, universities, and prisons who had put in IP networks and were constantly adding more and more security equipment, with no way to visualize and understand what any of this equipment was doing or where it was. Simple investigations and reports would take a security operator days to complete. Trying to locate one specific security camera out of a thousand during an emergency was generally considered a lost cause.
NextMontreal: How is the company funded?
Joshua: The company is primarily funded by its own profits from many custom software development projects over the years, including customers such as Google, Sony, Adobe, and the Canadian Space Agency. We took a small private investment last year, and will raise another round again this year, primarily to further our marketing and sales efforts.
NextMontreal: Who is the ideal customer for Feeling Software?
Joshua: Today, our primary product, Omnipresence 3D, is a Command & Control platform for security. It connects video systems, access control systems, GIS and mapping, radar, gunshot detection, and numerous other security and safety subsystems into a single common operating picture. Our ideal customer is a large security-critical facility with several security systems which they’d like to be able to access via a single visual interface. Airports, military facilities, and city-wide public safety projects are the areas where we are seeing the most success.
NextMontreal: How big is the company today?
Joshua: Today we have 16 employees and interns, growing to 20 by the summer.
Feeling Software is hiring: Senior Developer, Quality Assurance (QA) Tester, and Sales Engineer: http://www.feelingsoftware.com/about-us/hiring.html?hl=en_US. We also regularly recruit software development interns.
NextMontreal: What’s the competition like?
Joshua: The industry we’re in is still in its infancy, but it’s global and growing. The nature of the business, where projects are large and generally have a strong element of customization to them, suits a flexible company like ours with a background in custom development while making it difficult for larger players, used to selling off-the-shelf software and hardware, to compete. Security and safety systems in large facilities and cities are continually getting larger and more complex, a problem we are in the perfect place to tackle head on.
NextMontreal: What’s the sales process like? It must take a long time? Any tips for companies focused on heavy-duty B2B sales?
Joshua: The sales process requires the buy-in at least of the IT and security departments, and sometimes many others as well (GIS, public safety, operations). From a sales side, the process requires some patience, but there is also a real feeling of accomplishment once you’ve brought together an entire organization around one idea. Delivering a great product and getting paid feels nice too.
NextMontreal: What stage is Feeling Software at now? Have you achieved product-market fit and are focused on scaling market share? Still heavy in development?
Joshua: Both, and that’s the way we intend to keep it. Feeling Software is an R&D-driven company, and this is not something we plan to change, even as we are growing our sales and marketing efforts.
NextMontreal: What are some of the top lessons learned as a startup? Do you still consider Feeling Software a startup?
Joshua: As most readers here know, working in a startup is possibly the most intense education you can get. There are many lessons every day, but here’s one that comes to mind. When hiring in a small company (maybe in a large one too) you have two options: 1. Define a job clearly and find the person who has that specific skill set, or 2. Define the role vaguely, and hire someone who will always find a way to make themselves useful. Anything in between those two is likely to result in frustration as well as lost time and money.
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