When Software Goes to the Graveyard
Sometimes you read news about a competitor that provokes mixed emotions. I just heard that a competitor of the company I work for was recently acquired. The company Gurock will be no more. It was founded by several QA folks who, over the past 12 years, built a good company, strong products, and enviable customer loyalty.
I feel bad for them and their customers, because it looks like they've been purchased by a "software portfolio" companies. One of those firms who buys up large numbers of disparate products, cuts their R&D budget, cuts their costs, and turns a profit from the existing (and likely dwindling) customer base. Now I have no knowledge of this deal and I may be way off base, but it reads like the slow death of Gurock's products - think MicroFocus acquiring Borland/Segue and Compuware. I've seen countless companies disappear this way over the years.
Maybe I should be happy because it's one less competitor for Inflectra and the Gurock team have hopefully done well out of it. But on the other hand, this is too often a trend in our industry: promising companies have to either take VC funding to expand, or get gobbled up as part of a large software catalog firm. What we need is an equivalent of the German Mittelstand for small / medium sized software firms...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand
President @ Zaiten Software Services, serial entrepreneur, startup advisor, mentor, R&D turnaround specialist.
8 年Unfortunately it's often also benevolent acquisitions that lead to the graveyard too. When large firms buy small there's often great energy spent on the acquisition and unintended neglect post acquisition, causing the innovation to wither and the technology to fall behind. Cultural mismatch loses top talent. Integration with acquirer ecosystem loses innovation focus. Clients who loved the speed and responsiveness get turned off by big, slow acquirer. And so forth ... numerous potential pitfalls. The road does not always lead to the graveyard of course - often acquisirions work out well - but acquisition implosion is frequent enough that any acquiring firm needs to be highly aware of the dangers and remain constantly vigilant and proactive to combat them. One model I have seen work well is to let the acquiree retain its identity and culture and brand, in a separate building or campus, with negotiation of business goals but otherwise independence. Not easy to execute but potent when done well.