Wayne-based PipelineDeals takes on Salesforce.com

Tom Paine
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PtpelineDeals co-founder  Nick Bertolino

Some startups try to launch like rockets, either successfully reaching orbit quickly or rapidly crashing to the ground. Others start off more slowly, bootstrapping their way to gradual incremental growth before reaching an inflection point where they gain more scale.

An example of the latter is Wayne-based PipelineDeals, founded in 2006 by two GSI Commerce alums, including South Philly native and Drexel/Carnegie Mellon grad Nick Bertolino. Playing the role of disruptor, Pipeline Deals is taking on competitors such as Saleforce.com, SugarCRM and Zoho starting from the low end, offering a SaaS
app targeted more at the lengthier BtoB professional sales cycle than the routine order taker at $15 per user per month. Built on Rails and using MySQL, with hosting on Amazon Web Services, PipelineDeals has emphasized relative simplicity and specific focus in comparison to the broader functionality of larger CRM vendors.

Although I didn't get specific revenue numbers from a conversation with Bertolino, the company seems to be growing. Headcount is currently about 10, split pretty evenly between offices in Wayne (were Bertolino is located and technology development is centered) and Seattle; Bertolino expects they will add 2 or 3 more in the coming months. Although PipelineDeals started off mostly with single users or small groups as customers, it is seeing more demand from larger customers despite limited dedicated sales resources. Most of its marketing is inbound to this point as the company has focuded its resources on development and customer support. Bertolino says larger customers started reaching out to them, and now they have about 20 accounts with 100 or more users with the largest account having about 400 seats.

Expansion into larger accounts will inevitably pressure PiplineDeals to add more functionality, but Bertolino says the company is holding the line on that. PipelineDeal offers an open source API, and close integration with Google Apps and Google Calendar. They recently added integration with MailChimp and increased customized field capabilities. On the mobile front, an iOS app is on the way soon.

To this point, PipelineDeals has been bootstrapped without outside financing, Bertolino tells me.



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