Q1. How did you get into your line of work?
Marketing has been my passion since I worked at Intel and Apple in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, I have stayed in the hi-tech field working at both start-ups and large companies. Three years ago, a past colleague from my Silicon Valley days, presented me with a great opportunity to help market products for his start-up company working with dietary supplements based on resveratrol. After reading the research on resveratrol from Harvard Medical School, I was excited by both the product and the opportunity. I have worked at Vinomis Laboratories for almost three years now and when my colleague stepped down for health reasons, I was named CEO.
In 2009, while searching for multiple ways to use technology to run the business efficiently, I found Bill.com. Because we are a virtual company that is spread across the country, Bill.com was a perfect match for us. Bill.com enables us to run a company where we literally do not own a filing cabinet. We are completely paperless.
Q2. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
The most important lesson I learned was to continue exploring and learning because things are constantly changing. It is crucial to keep your skill sets and knowledge up-to-date. I also have learned it is all about the people. Businesses need to pay as much attention to the people as they do to the operations side.
Q3. What keeps you up at night?
Because of today’s noisy and fast-paced marketing environment, finding cost effective ways to scale up the business is the biggest challenge. I am constantly brainstorming ideas on how we can create buzz and acquire new customers economically.
Q4. How has Bill.com helped your business chase its dreams?
Bill.com has dramatically reduced the amount of time that we spend doing unproductive things. Because we don’t spend time on the nuts and bolts, we can focus on growing our business, and strategies for customer acquisition. I know from experience that it is easy to get caught up on tedious, time-consuming tasks, but with Bill.com we are able to keep our vendors and our bookkeeper happy at very low cost and with very little time. The best part of Bill.com is using it as our online filing system for anything related to the business. In addition to the obvious documents (bills and statements), we use Bill.com to file all our correspondence, contracts, bank and merchant account statements, and even our tax returns.
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Note: 4 Questions is a regular feature on the Bill.com blog where we ask the same 4 questions of a different Bill.com customer. Given the tremendous passion and can-do attitude of small and mid-sized businesses, we believe these same 4 Questions will result not in repeat answers, but in interesting insight into many different journeys. Want to be profiled? Tweet @billcom or email us and let us know!
Hi Barry,
Couldn't agree more. I was VP Controller for Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp 70-74 and so on in Silicon Valley. We are great believers in Bill.com and the remote business model. Nice going.
Henry Montgomery
hmontgomery@montpac.com
Posted by: Henry Montgomery | October 12, 2011 at 12:02 AM