Pulsonix Poised to Take More EDA Market Share

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Matties: And how does total cost compare to other tools on the market?

Stephens: This is one of our strengths. The way it works is that we have three base systems that you could buy, plus a few cost options for specialist functionality, such as high speed design, chip on board design or connection to a corporate database. For engineers creating basic designs, it means they won’t be buying features that they will never use. All three of our base systems have the same functionality but are only differentiated by their pin capacity.

Matties: It's a very scalable enterprise.

Stephens: Exactly that, but not too many modules.

Williams: We've kept the whole pricing structure and model simple. You can add more advanced tools if you need them, but the basic system comes with features like Part Variants, MCAD STEP import/export and constraints rules that you need. They're all built in as part of the standard product.

Matties: Is there anything you’d like to add regarding your users?

Stephens: A real strength for us is that we listen to our customers. Anyone can say that, but the proof is evident in customer testimonials and recommendations. We have many collaborations where the tool is customized to refine the customers’ specific process.

Matties: You say you listen to them; what is the mechanism for that?

Williams: We have active user groups and encourage everyday feedback through our sales and service channels. This is very important. The customer always feels they are being listened to. We run the company quite flat so everybody in the company talks to users at any point in time. We visit customers, and we're on the ground with them, so we understand their issues. Recently, I've been in California talking to users. I talked to a number of different users and prospects there, and that was after a trip to Indianapolis where I was with a big military customer, so I'm in touch with users all the time and getting their feedback.

Matties: You mentioned military. Is there a market segment strength that you are stronger in?

Williams: It is particularly suited to users who want to craft a board, so it’s many different industries really. We're strong in medical, RF analog, and control boards. These boards tend to be more crafted with precise placement, rule sets and track patterns. For the price, we are very good at the way we do rules detailing for items such as individual thermal spoke rules on pads and vias, and rules on areas or regions. The rules can be quite intricate and detailed but very easy to apply.

Matties: For customers, you talked about a service. How does the service work?

Williams: It depends on the level of involvement required. Initially the customer usually phones our technical desk or uses e-mail, and then depending on the severity of the problem or the type of question that they're asking, is how we respond. If it's a simple question, they'll phone, we'll answer it and they continue designing. If it's a problem that they've found, then they send us data, and we'll respond to it that way, or they can contact our distribution network. If it's a problem that we have to investigate, we might even log onto their machine, use one of the remote viewer-type programs, and analyze their system that way. If need be, we'll get one of our programmers to do that. It's instant service and it's a level of service proportional to the problem and how it's being investigated. The most important point is that the customer is serviced efficiently with minimal down time.

Matties: What's been the greatest challenge in bringing this product to market?

Williams: The two recessions we've had were the biggest challenge. For a start-up company to launch into a recession was really difficult. It took us a while to get through that, although we had the right product so progress was just slower than we had anticipated at the time.

Stephens: But the sales were positive during the recession. They were always increasing, so that was encouraging.

Williams: As a new company with a new product in a market we already knew very well, everybody was telling us they were interested but at the same time, they had limited funding for new tools. Once the first recession ended, our sales accelerated faster than we had hoped. It made us a very efficient company and highly customer focused.

Matties: Thanks for spending time to do this today.

Williams: Thank you.

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