2013 Top Company winner: Confio Software

Gigi Sukin //November 13, 2013//

2013 Top Company winner: Confio Software

Gigi Sukin //November 13, 2013//

SOFTWARE

CONFIO SOFTWARE

“There’s this general philosophy right now among many entrepreneurs that business is an art; it’s the idea model – stumbling across something that’s not repeatable. I disagree. I’d say it’s a science,” said Matt Larson, Confio’s CEO and founder. “What we set out to do is turn out products that are used everywhere, that become ubiquitous.”

What Confio’s products address are “Big Pains in Big Markets.”

Methodically acknowledging fundamental pain-points experienced by companies across multiple verticals, Confio has fashioned three product lines: IT Collaboration and Database Performance, Database Virtualization and Database Storage.

“Even if we only did a good job at that, we could grow to be a big company,” Larson said.

These product lines and Larson’s concentration on large-scale markets have driven Confio’s growth by 70 percent year-over-year and have earned the company recognition on both the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and the Inc. 500 | 5000 lists.

Its award-winning products have earned it a place in more than 1,000 companies, including 42 percent of the Fortune 50.

“We want to hit 95 percent of companies or more,” the CEO said.

To achieve this goal, Larson sticks to hiring “A-players – smart people who challenge ideas.”

With a firm foot in the Boulder tech scene, Larson says, “There is a big labor pool of very talented people that you can pull in.”

And the top team attempts to keep up with best practices at other stellar technology companies, experimenting with new business models and methods. A recent instance of the research, discovery and implementation process involved Larson noting “high-quality content” on many CEOs high-priority lists.

“We dug into that and asked, ‘What’s really going on here?’” he said. “What very few companies have is a quality feedback loop for the white papers, webinars, etc. they put on their sites. You need a mechanism that tells you if no one cared. With some sort of tracking tool, you can tie compensation to how many leads are generated.”

Rather than sharing concerns for Confio’s future, Larson said he is “confident in his model. When you’re addressing really big markets, you don’t rely on one or two customers, but thousands.”

On Oct. 7, SolarWinds, an IT management firm serving more than 150,000 global customers, announced it acquired Confio for $103 million.