Listen to this articleprooV was created with a clear objective in mind – to simplify the way new technology is evaluated and adopted. Based on a market-network model, prooV puts the latest technologies, digital and social trends to use in an ecosystem tailor-made for PoC success.
Below is our interview with Toby Olshanetsky, CEO and co-founder at prooV:
Q: You’ve recently announced your global launch along with a $7 million USD Series A funding; could you tell us something more?
A: Yes, we started working on prooV two years ago, but actually went live in beta four months ago. We officially launched on September 8, sharing news of our Series A funding round from Mangrove Capital Partners and OurCrowd. A few days later, we showcased our platform at the TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco conference.
This show was the perfect fit for us because we are on a mission to disrupt the market by democratising the software vendor industry, and starting a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) revolution. How? By creating a pilot-as-a-service platform which levels the playing field for independent software vendors, regardless of their size, resources or geography.
The revolution is happening already and we’re thrilled at the market’s reaction so far from both enterprises and vendors. Just four months in and we already have nearly 70 enterprises signed up to the platform, from a vast array of industries, including a large number of Fortune 100s. On the vendor side, we have hundreds of startups involved from all across the globe offering a range of services such as cyber-security, crash prevention and data storage. The user-friendly, global nature of the platform means that innovative, boundary-pushing partnerships can form irrespective of location. It’s dramatic, it’s disruptive, and it’s a win-win for both parties.
Q: What’s prooV’s story?
A: Like so many good business stories, prooV comes from our personal pain. prooV’s CTO Alexey Sapozhnikov and I are both serial entrepreneurs and we’ve been building enterprise software together for over 20 years. We were wasting so much time chasing CTOs and CIOs, trying to convince them to open testing environments so we could run PoCs. It was frustrating to us that exciting, time-sensitive opportunities were being missed because of lengthy, inefficient, broken PoC cycles. We were also disheartened by the inefficiencies; the hefty travel expenses, the manpower, the precious time involved. We wanted to come up with a solution that solved these PoC pains from end-to-end, addressing the root of the problems, while taking advantage of latest technologies. After conducting comprehensive research which involved interviewing CEOs and CTOs from multinational enterprises as well as startups — prooV was born.
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Q: ProoV offers a radical new approach to testing, tracking and analyzing vendor solutions; what are the main benefits of using it?
A: For enterprises, prooV offers unique insight into the latest, cutting-edge software so they can find the solution that best suits their needs. The way prooV is built means that companies can simulate real-time, secure production environments for customers, test-driving software before they need to even think about issuing a purchasing order. Not only that, enterprises can analyze real-time predictive analytics based on performance and scalability, and can also evaluate several vendors at once. The simple one-time setup and connection to prooV requires no IT and allows enterprises to connect and evaluate several vendors at once, which in turn enables hundreds of PoC opportunities without hassleing the IT department hundreds of times. This process means the time that CTOs and CIOs can save on managing vendor pitches and requests is significant, as is the time saved checking the validity and suitability of vendors, as all are pre-screened. prooV organizes innovation so it can flourish, not be bogged down by bureaucracy.
Software vendors using prooV can now showcase their solutions to a much wider, more engaged global audience in a faster, simpler way. Rather than chasing busy potential clients, they can search for and apply to join open PoC pilots posted by committed CTOs and CIOs. Once accepted, and in a matter of days, they receive access to dedicated testing platforms and full PoC packages that include all the necessities, such as the enterprise’s APIs, Data, Servers, etc. All this with minimal resources and at a fraction of the usual cost.
For both sides, prooV speeds up the PoC process and improves communication lines, which reduce pain, tedium, complexity, time and resources for all.
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Q: How does prooV’s Pilot-as-a-Service platform work?
A: prooV is the first company to create a Pilot-as-a-Service (PaaS) platform, enabling global enterprises and software vendors to connect and easily run PoCs through remote, secure testing environments.
prooV enables enterprises and startups to communicate directly in order to improve technology and scale new solutions quickly. The prooV Pilot-as-a-service approach reimagines the PoC process from beginning to end, making it easier for enterprises and vendors alike to share new solutions, test, track, analyze and report.
The beauty of prooV is in its simplicity. Enterprises visit the platform and open a profile page where they post new PoC projects. After this, prooV opens a secure cloud-based testing environment for each PoC pilot. Companies receive requests from pre-screened vendors asking to join the PoC. Enterprises can also use the platform to proactively search for interesting, innovative new startups and invite them to join. Once invitations have been accepted, enterprises can give selected vendors access to their dedicated testing environment.
During this pilot phase, enterprises monitor, analyze and compare the performance of the different software solutions, using prooV’s predictive analytics dashboard, in order to choose the one that best fits their needs. This completely removes the hassle of having to set up a resource-heavy, expensive testing lab themselves, and allows them to easily and visually compare solutions fairly and predictably, apples-to-apples.
The process for the startup or software vendor is similar. They go to the prooV platform and open a profile page to present their company and their solution to the world. Then they can search for a relevant PoC opportunity, or proactively suggest a PoC to any enterprise on the platform. After applying to join a PoC and being accepted by the enterprise, the vendor has access to the client’s unique testing environment, and also gains a direct line of communication with the enterprise’s relevant decision maker. At this point, it’s “all systems go” to run the PoC.
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Q: How would you convince the reader to start using prooV’s platform?
A: If you’re sick of being bogged down by the bureaucracy of running PoCs and want to spend less time, money and hassle on them, you need prooV. If you want to genuinely work in an agile, iterative way, you need prooV. It is the only technology in the world that has successfully simplified the entire process so both parties – whether vendors or enterprises – can concentrate on what’s really important in order to thrive and survive in today’s market — innovation.
As our name purposely suggests, if you’re an enterprise, the tech needs to ‘prooV’ itself to you before you decide to go on any resource-consuming journeys of implementation. If you’re a vendor and you want to get your software solution out quickly and easily to a global audience, then prooV can facilitate that process for you.
We’ve designed prooV with the end user’s pain points in mind, and from the feedback so far, it is truly making a difference in its arena. I encourage anyone reading this, who deals with PoCs, to try it out and see for yourselves – just go to proov.io.
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