Q&A with Michael Choupak, CEO, Unison
StartUp Beat: What is your primary value proposition for users?
Michael Choupak: Unison simplifies and improves business communication. It puts email, IM, telephone calls and voicemail in one desktop app, so staff can talk to each other and store communications more efficiently. By eliminating the time people waste due to old systems like Microsoft Outlook and separate telephones, Unison can increase a company’s productivity by 15 percent. In cost terms, Unison is up to 85 percent cheaper to buy and deploy than traditional servers such as Microsoft Exchange. All business communications can run on one server. For SMBs that don’t have the IT budget to roll out massively complicated unified communications systems, engineered to handle many thousands of users, this is really a no-brainer. You can be up and running in a few hours, connecting all of your employees, and ultimately achieving the end goals everyone wants—increasing employee efficiency and improving overall business operations.
StartUp Beat: When was the company founded, and how did the idea come about?
Michael Choupak: The company was founded in 2006, but is the product of years of testing and refining through our work with multiple companies in the email and telecoms industries. Like the product, the idea of the company was also based on simplicity—to make business communication truly unified, and to break through the cluttered market with truly innovative technology. Increasing productivity, particularly in small and mid-sized companies, is something that is invaluable to business, and my background suited me well to help take this issue head on.
StartUp Beat: Who do you see as your competition?
Michael Choupak: Our chief competitor has a large marketing budget, its fingers in a lot of pies and more recognizable name: Microsoft. We see customers remaining with them due to general inertia and a fear of change. However, it also has technology that is not appropriate for the SMB market. A giant like Microsoft, which has been updating its business communications technology for upwards of 20 years now, has not been able to overhaul Exchange and Outlook to meet the challenges businesses face today. Due to the fact that every new version must be built to support to some degree with the old version, we have a great opportunity with our fresh approach to unified communications, which is modern and built from the ground up.Other competitors in the market are emerging, though they don’t offer the complete package that Unison does. For example, Google Apps and Zimbra are gaining popularity in the groupware market, while Lotus v8 offers a software-solution similar to Microsoft unified communications.
StartUp Beat: How are you differentiating yourself from Microsoft?
Michael Choupak: As discussed earlier, we differentiate ourselves from Microsoft in terms of overall functionality (we have more features and better integration), manageability (one server to manage opposed to several) and cost (85 percent less). Essentially, Microsoft is at an inflection point where their three monopolies—Exchange, Outlook and Office—are threatened. Unison is one product that will begin to crumble this empire.StartUp Beat: Can you describe the underlying technology behind your product, and how it works for users?
Michael Choupak: The Unison solution has two parts: Unison Server and Unison Desktop. On the server side, the software runs on a single Linux server. At this level, you have your PBX telephone, email, calendars, contacts and IM all being stored on the same box. This includes one admin control panel for easy manageability on the back end. On the desktop side, we have our own native client that runs on either Windows or Linux. The client was designed to be familiar to people used to common clients such as Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird, to minimize the confusion of switching to a new system. However, while looking similar, it also provides important extra features and simpler usability. Some other exciting features are click-to-call right on your desktop, receiving real-time presence updates on your contacts including if someone is on the phone and for how long, as well as intelligent search features.
StartUp Beat: What is your business model—how do you make money?
Michael Choupak: Unison has created a business model that allows for revenue in a few ways. First, we offer support that ranges from $2,000 for 10 support “incidents” (calls or e-mails), or $12,000 for unlimited support to make sure your platform is running optimally. Secondly, above 20 users (which is the limit to which users can utilize Unison for no cost), we sell the commercial version for an extremely affordable price of $50 per user/per year, or $36,000 for a perpetual license and unlimited seats. There are also plans for software add-ons and additional services. However, we have some other plans in the works that are sure to shake the foundation of traditional giants like Microsoft, so make sure to stay tuned in the coming months. Regular updates are available on Unison.com and our blog: http://blog.unison.com/.
StartUp Beat: The SMB market has been a hard one to crack for many companies. How are you reaching new SMB customers?
Michael Choupak: You are certainly right that this market poses some challenges, namely that there is confusion over which communications products are truly unified, and how to measure ROI on IT investments. However, Unison provides such simplicity that it’s been an easy sell to IT directors and CEOs of SMBs. Our main path to market is via resellers, who can make more money selling Unison than they can selling Microsoft technology, and who have an existing client base of SMB customers.
StartUp Beat: What is your “sweet spot” in the SMB market, in terms of size of company, by employees or revenue?
Michael Choupak: The sweet spot that Unison reaches is currently companies with 20-1,000 employees, though we have tested up to 2,000 users on a single server. We have seen that it’s especially difficult for massive corporations to overhaul their communications systems due to the complexity of housing hundreds of thousands of users on them. However, for the 69 million SMBs in the world that are eager for a simpler, more cost-efficient alternative, this is the perfect product.StartUp Beat: How many employees and offices do you have?
Michael Choupak: We have approximately 60 employees in three offices (New York, Boston, and St. Petersburg, Russia), and are growing. With Unison, we are at the cusp of something very big, and expect rapid expansion. Unison – www.unison.comA successful serial entrepreneur, Michael Choupak is the founder of several companies in the messaging and telephony space, including Intermedia, the world’s leading business email software-as-a-service provider, and StanaCard, a major provider of international calling services. As Unison Technologies founder and CEO, he leads the company in its mission to be the leader in unified messaging software.
