‘Take 5’ with the Founder: CEO/Founder of ProcessMaker, Brian Reale

Brian Reale, CEO and Founder of ProcessMaker, a popular workflow tool that improves information flow between data and systems, was kind enough to participate in our popular “Take 5 with the Founder’ series this month. ProcessMaker’s mission is to simplify your workflow and their clients range from major universities and banks to government agencies. It is truly a global company, with offices in North America, Latin America, and Europe, and a network of over 35 partners that extends across five continents.

Learn more about ProcessMaker:

What is the most rewarding part of running your own business? 

The most rewarding part of running your own business is being so close to every part of the business from engineering to sales to support. There is never a problem where I can just leave the office early and think that it is not my problem. At the same time, this means that it is really easy to work hard and make a difference almost every day. 

What advice would you give yourself before founding ProcessMaker? 

In retrospect I probably would have not jumped right into founding my second company (or my first company for that matter). I think that I could have probably benefited from working in a few other companies before setting out on my own. Being part of something started by someone else provides a perspective that is equally important as starting something oneself. 

What advantage does ProcessMaker have over its competitors? 

ProcessMaker takes a much simpler and more intuitive approach to Business Process Management than our competitors do. Our customers consistently tell us that ProcessMaker is more intuitive and much easier to understand than other BPM & Workflow software. The problem with BPM Software is that the boundaries are not very well defined. As a result it is very easy to get ugly products that are filled with feature and scope creep. The result is not pretty from a usability perspective. ProcessMaker, on the other hand, focuses on usability and simplicity first. 

Do you see ProcessMaker as an underdog? 

Yes. If you still see yourself as a startup, then by definition you still see yourself as an underdog. The good thing about seeing yourself as the underdog is that it keeps you focused on working harder than everyone else. ProcessMaker has decided to grow organically from the get go. We raised less than $200k of initial seed capital when we started the business more than 15 years ago. Since then we have never spent time looking for investors. Instead, our philosophy has always been about building great products and services that customers wanted to buy and making sure that our income was always greater than our expenses. Most of our competitors have grown based on VC financing. They seem happy to throw money around to fuel their unprofitable growth. We prefer to be the underdog focused on smart, profitable growth. 

Why did you choose to enter this particular business? 

I love thinking about how complex operations can work or “flow” better. My very first job after college was working in a donations warehouse in a Refugee Camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After about 4 weeks on the job, I had completely changed the distribution system by inventing an artificial currency, setting up a reverse auction system, and insisting on full inventory turnover on a weekly basis. Like I said, I like to make things flow better. One way or another – ProcessMaker was bound to happen. 

Now for the Lightning Round! 

Coffee or tea? 

Tea with Milk. 

PC or MAC? 

Mac 

Early bird or night owl? 

Night owl 

Bagels or muffins? 

Bagels 

Classic or modern? 

Modern 

Detailed or abstract? 

detailed 

Washing dishes or doing laundry? 

Neither 

Saver or spender? 

Saver 

Hardwood or carpet? 

Hardwood

ProcessMaker is available in both Open Source and Enterprise versions at Bitnami! You can start creating seamless workflows with little or no programming experience in just a few clicks with our cloud images, Virtual Machines, and local installers. You can even launch a one-hour demo absolutely free- give it a try now!

'Take 5' with Code Dx Founder Ken Prole

Ken Prole, CTO at Code Dx, sat down with our team to discuss the passion and inspiration behind his popular software assurance and analytics tool. The goal behind Code Dx was to deliver a product that would solve real problems for real people. Ken and his team identified the problems that many developers confront with application quality and security testing such as difficult installation, expensive tools, and having to use multiple tools which makes it hard to compare results.

Learn more about Code Dx and Ken’s journey that led to a successful company in our latest ‘Take 5’ with the Founder:

What advice would you offer to any soon-to-be startup founders out there?

You need to understand your user’s pain points and needs very well. This means getting out of the office and talking with people. Listen carefully to how things are being done today and what challenges your solution can solve for them – this creates your value proposition. Then implement that solution, incrementally, starting with the MVP (Minimal Viable Product), always working closely with users for feedback. Don’t be afraid to pivot and change direction as you get more feedback. Your early customers are critical for turning your idea into a product that actually solves someone’s needs. Also look for mentors. Reach out to people who have had success growing a startup. They’ll likely be more open than you think to help and might even join your Board of Advisors, which is another important tip for success.

What was your original source of inspiration when you started Code Dx?

We saw a bunch of tools appearing to help developers detect quality and security issues, but there was nothing to bring all those results together and various studies by NIST and NSA were showing that a collection of tools gives you much better coverage. DHS Science & Technology Directorate shared the same vision and were instrumental in funding our initial research and development through their Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

What problem will your product solve? + How does it matter in the market?

Code Dx is a software vulnerability management tool. It helps developers, software testers and security analysts find software vulnerabilities, prioritize them and assign them for remediation before the attackers can exploit them. For developers, we embed Code Dx right into your IDE so you can find the vulnerabilities early in the SDLC. As a result you write better quality code so your software doesn’t crash or perform poorly, as well as more secure code, so that vulnerabilities are detected before the bad guys find them. There are plenty of software scanning tools out there already, but we developed Code Dx to respond to specific challenges those tools present. The challenges we heard most often from people getting started in application quality and security testing were that (1) tools are too expensive and licensing restricts its usage by line-of-code or number of projects; (2) tools are difficult to install, configure, and interpret the results; (3) no single tool finds everything and when using multiple tools it is very difficult to compare results. We solved these problems with Code Dx and feel it is helping the overall quality and security tool market since now people can more easily consume the results of multiple tools.

What is your one-line pitch?

Code Dx finds, prioritizes, and visualizes software vulnerabilities – fast and affordably.

Describe the experience of your first customers?

Finally getting a product into the hands of real users solving real problems is what it’s all about. Seeing how our first customers used Code Dx was enlightening to us. We saw how our vision actually helped users do things they couldn’t before. It helped validate that Code Dx was a product that fulfilled someone’s needs. We also learned what frustrated users with our early versions, and used that feedback to make Code Dx even better. That’s what we continue to do today. So try out Code Dx and let us know what you think!

Now for the lightning round!
Coffee or tea?
Coffee in morning, tea in afternoon.

PC or MAC?
PC and Android for me. I feel like more and more colleagues are switching to MAC, but I haven’t been able to make the switch yet.

Early bird or night owl?
Kids have made me an early bird, but I can still do the night owl thing when needed.

Bagels or muffins?
Bagels, especially on Bagel Friday.

Classic or modern?
Modern

Detailed or abstract?
Abstract.

Washing dishes or doing laundry?
Washing dishes. Laundry is such a process.

Saver or spender?
Saver.

Hardwood or carpet?
Hardwood

Pancakes or waffles?
Waffles

Asking questions or answering questions?
Asking questions as the answer.

Javascript or C?
Anything but going back to C programming.