CBInsights recently published a deep dive of Google’s current strategy.  At 90% share of the search market, Google dominates today – but what about tomorrow?  This piece does a great job of describing Google’s current strategies based on published materials, execs speeches, earnings calls, and public filings.  The post includes: Alphabet’s structure and background Google’s […]

Private equity EV/Revenue multiples have increased 70% since 2000. They averaged 10.3x for the first three quarters of 2018 versus 6.6x in 2000. AS a result of these higher valuation expectations, the traditional private equity playbook of acquire, cost restructuring, and flip based on financial engineering are being disrupted by growth equity PE players like Vista who demonstrated the success of this model through the acquisition and sale of Marketo. Vista acquired a struggling Marketo in 2016 for $1.75B, improved it, and sold to Adobe a little more than two years later for $4.75B.

A post about how Vista Equity’s $1.79 billion purchase of Marketo turned into a $4.75 billion exit to Adobe in a little more than two years. They didn’t use the tradition tech private equity playbook.

Charles Lambdin recently published a piece on Medium titled “Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending”. In the post Charles talks about his frustrations with the current state of Agile practice. Some notable lines include:

“Agile is dead.” People keep saying that. But then they say, “We’re just kidding.” They tell you they meant the way you do Agile is dead. And stupid. But “real” Agile isn’t dead. It’s just that everyone does Agile wrong. So I guess real Agile is, you know, Agile in theory. Even I have done this. And you know what? I’m sick of doing it.
Here’s a quiz for you. How does the first line of the Agile Manifesto begin? No peaking. Don’t know? That’s fine. It doesn’t matter. It says, “We are uncovering better ways of developing software….” Stop. Notice it says, “developing software.” It does not say, “leaning out your org,” “paying down transformation debt,” “cutting it out with this command-and-control crap,” “focusing on outcomes and getting better at discovery work,” “fixing your medieval budgeting system,” or any of the other far more value-adding things people have tried to glom onto it. But the thing is, when people say that Agile pertains to the whole org, it’s revisionist history. It’s dishonest.

The story of the infamous Shed at Dulwich is a great example of how Internet marketing techniques can scam the unsuspecting public. The Shed at Dulwich was a fake restaurant created by Oobah Butler to prove the gullibility of today’s Internet user. I have been involved in technology marketing and sales for almost 20 years.  […]

Product Managers and Product Owners face a constant challenge of balancing priorities. New features or technical debt elimination? The priorities between feature creation and technical debt elimination change as a product moves through its’ evolution.. This post talks about technical debt and some best practices to help teams manage it.

The Software Equity Group has published their 3Q18 SaaS M&A Update.  SEG regularly publishes comprehensive free research on the state of M&A in the tech space.  It is invaluable resource in tracing the key trends and development in the market.  A few of the key findings include: Aggregate software industry M&A deal volume (including SaaS, […]