Hi Steve:
Thanks for the history. Honest and accurate, albeit from a different perspective than mine. I"d like to add a couple of mildly interesting notes. I apologize to all who are more interested in current events; please skip to the next message.
One was that we also talked to Davidow. I can remember it clearly; his team sat three abreast, him in the middle, the bald bean counter/lawyer on his left, the young turk techno-weenie with the loud tie on his right. He liked our story, but wanted to cut the funding and get the product out quicker (9 mos instead of 18 mos). He also suggested we merge with the VNTV guy (we called him 'the Other'; I think it was just Sippl? at the time). We were uncomfortable with the change to the business plan, and probably wanted to remain independent (doesn"t everyone)? Anyway, we were that close to be one entity...
Another interesting note: we SERIOUSLY considered SFA at the start. We brought in one fellow who had even started his own SFA business in the late '80s and failed. We wrote functional specs, and marketing overviews, on such an SFA product. We talked to potential customers. Our conclusion: sales organizations were not ready for such a product, and sales people were not ready for the structure imposed by such a product.
My cut on the Information Workbench/Proactive history is a little different, which may just reflect competitive bias. My cut was that they stumbled early because they followed Davidow's model of 'spend less, don't do a lot, get it out earlier', which failed early on against us and Scopus. In fact, they were out well ahead of us, even though we actually started earlier. But when we finally came out, we got some good wins and customers. However, they recovered nicely in the following years, and bringing in new management bought them new life.
The point Steve makes about us stumbling on customization is exactly true. We deluded ourselves into thinking we could provide 100% of the functionality that customers needed, and really skimped on customization tools. I'm ashamed to admit that our first screen customization tool was written in Hypercard, and ONLY RAN ON THE MAC! We got absolutely hammered, and had to go back and write a complete set of customization tools. Lesson for those out there (as stated previously on this thread): you may have 80-90% of what customer A needs, but that remaining 10-20% of what you DON"T have is different for each and every customer.
Mildly interesting history; somewhat trivial in light of today's tremendous activity and SEBL's continued red hot run. Just one shot at SEBL: <war chant starts> VNTV, SCOP, and CLFY were forged in an atmosphere of incredible competitiveness which resulted in great achievements. Each of these companies still retains much of this spirit and competitiveness. If Tom thinks that marching into support is going to be like competing with AURM and BROC, God bless him. <end of war chant>. However, a warning to SEBL investors (I'm speaking to the normal individual investor): be extremely careful. When the 'pop goes the Seibel' happens, YOU are the ones that will wake up in the morning with the 50%+ losses, after the momentum guys are long gone. Set your target, and pull the trigger. Don't be greedy, and don't angst about selling too soon.
Above all, do your own research (i.e. look at some numbers, people!) and make your own decisions. Good luck. |
