
They Acquire, Acquire, Acquire While We Build, Build, Build - sridharvembu
https://www.zoho.com/general/blog/they-acquire-acquire-acquire-while-we-build-build-build.html
======
aviv
Why is it so difficult to find information about Zoho's management team? 1600
employees and I can't find the name of a single person on their website.

EDIT: why downvote this? I'm truly curious. I was a happy customer until not
long ago, Zoho's products are great, I just never understood why they don't
have a Team/Management page. Unless I'm missing it somehow?

~~~
sridharvembu
(CEO here) There is no particular reason. Perhaps part of the reason is that
we don't have an org chart the conventional way many companies do. If you look
through our posts and our press releases, the people who run our products are
mentioned. LinkedIn has a lot of our people too.

This public presentation I made 3 years ago on our history:
[https://docs.zoho.com/show/published.do?rid=s0uyx6d6a7e9c859...](https://docs.zoho.com/show/published.do?rid=s0uyx6d6a7e9c859c420f8666ec057db3a922)

~~~
taktix
I'm glad Zoho is getting some love on HN. The article makes a lot of great
points.

Unfortunately I'm going to be a wet blanket: I've signed up on Zoho a bunch of
times over the years but never stayed because of the Zoho design, or lack
thereof. The text is too small, the fonts and icons are ugly or amateurish
looking, and its not mobile friendly.

Look, I want you guys to win. I can't stand Salesforce. I'd rather use Zoho
products than Google products, but _please_ give some attention to your UX/UI.

Thanks for listening!

~~~
sridharvembu
We are listening. We take all the criticism to heart. We are focused on UX and
quality. You will see a transformation.

------
jpdoctor
> _and for that, let’s give credit where it is due: it is not Benioff, it is
> Bernanke._

[applause]

The only caveat I'd add: Japan has shown that monetary policy can stay bad for
a looong time. While I personally think Zoho's chosen path is certainly more
solid, monetary stupidity can last a lot longer than anyone believes it
should.

~~~
cynicalkane
The Zoho blog wants Bernanke to do the same thing Japan has done for the last
two decades: kill the economy with tight monetary policy. They're blaming
Bernanke for high stock prices. Because the whole economy should depend on
what one blog poster thinks of a handful of stock prices.

~~~
dxhdr
Right, because clearly the economy is doing great right now. Robust growth
across the board, especially in the middle class. I actually don't think we're
printing fast enough, rates are still positive afterall. Bernanke could afford
to be a bit looser.

Well, you're right, tight monetary policy would kill the economy, very
briefly. It would force liquidation of debt. Companies that need to go
bankrupt would go bankrupt. And we could finally begin to rebuild on solid
footing. As it is we're headed for decades of slowly declining standard of
living because we're delaying the necessary reallocation of capital by just
flooding the market with money. It's not going to solve anything, it's just
prolonging the pain.

~~~
dualogy
> Well, you're right, tight monetary policy would kill the economy, very
> briefly. It would force liquidation of debt.

Indeed! Now think that the USD and its debts is not just America's home
currency, but the world's "reserves", even "savings" for a rainy day.

So I'd strongly doubt the "briefly" part when the whole world is forced into a
"liquidation" (you mean settling?) of debt.

Who can untangle the planetary debt webs? No flavour of monetary policy can do
that, whether it's coming from US soil or global institutions. Can it ever be
repaid in " _real_ terms"? If it is clear that it cannot, the best they can do
is to allow for _nominal_ "debt-service performance". The banks demand it,
simply because the depositors, pension funds, insurances, billions of people
implicitly expect "at the very least that".

So you print. Doesn't matter whether the figure-head is Bernanke or Greenspan
or Volcker or Yoda. Doesn't matter what Zoho's CEO thinks of this or
ZeroHedge. Knowing the "hard place" that needs to be avoided, we cling to the
"rock" for as long as possible. That is, as long as the entire planet happily
soaks up all the fresh shiny USD coming out of the presses.

------
philipdlang
I've never read such a bitter blog post from a company blog.

~~~
drewcoo
I read it as an attempt to get press on the coattails of his competitors and
the stance as intending to seem "scrappy". Color me an optimist but I don't
think the intent was to spew bile.

~~~
enra
I feel that when you have 1600 employees, you're not that scrappy or nimble.
It's not like David or Goliath anymore.

~~~
sridharvembu
We respectfully disagree. Our Zoho Leads iPhone app was launched in under 3
months from concept to shipment, and it was done by 2 people and it is
selling! We have a substantial degree of autonomy in the company (possible
because we are private) which keeps us nimble.

On David vs Goliath, Microsoft, Google & Salesforce are just 3 of the
companies we compete with.

------
dataisfun
Zoho's products are mediocre. But I suppose it makes sense in the context of
going for the strip mall approach to cloud software. Offer a ton of services
and hope to hook the user and upsell.

The main problem I find with their service is the design is atrocious.

~~~
sridharvembu
We simply enjoy writing software, and as long as customers keep feeding us, we
hope to continue doing it. As for design, have you checked out any of our
recent offerings? Would you want to offer a point-by-point critique of our
design? I can be reached at svembu at zoho ...

------
darrellsilver
Neat article, but deeply undermined by zoho's mediocre execution in their crm
product. The data model and search are solid, but the ui is wildly buggy (the
back button doesn't work!) and the API is slow, missing features and poorly
documented.

It's one thing to build, build, build. It's another to build well, build well,
build well.

~~~
sridharvembu
Your point is fair - there is no point in building if we don't build well. We
are focused on it - and it does take a while for software to mature and become
world-class, particularly complex applications with huge data models (lots of
tables). As Joel Spolsky said (paraphrasing) it takes 10 years to get software
truly right. We will take your criticsm to heart.

~~~
darrellsilver
That's an elegant response, I gotta say. But here's a post on your forums
about the back button not working from _5 years_ ago:
[https://forums.zoho.com/topic/back-
button](https://forums.zoho.com/topic/back-button)

I chose Zoho for our team, and as we grow am fielding more and more complaints
about these kinds of issues. What am I supposed to tell them?

~~~
sridharvembu
I would apologize to your team, and I would circulate this thread internally
first. Second, I would review why we got this wrong. We went through a major
redesign in CRM after that forum post, and the user experience got much better
(our CRM sales jumped as a result). I acknowledge we still have work to do,
and we will take your criticism to heart.

~~~
clicks
Small nitpick: You probably mean to say "I _will_ apologize to your team" not
"I _would_ apologize to your team".

The word 'would' is used when expressing something in a conditional mood,
often times in light of some possible future occurrence. E.g. "I _would_ try
harder if only I were getting graded for this assignment" or "I _would_ lose
my mind if anything happened to my children".

The more you know. :)

------
Goopplesoft
Why is deep integration important? (serious question, I'm not sure). I like
Heroku before, I still like Heroku. I'm glad that the website tells me nothing
about Saleforce and doesn't require me to make a Salesforce login. As you say
integration causes all sorts of headaches and integration does little to
improve the business model beyond brand recognition (which is why I'm assuming
they do the slight logos changes). Whats the benefit of fully integrating a
already successful and recognized platform?

~~~
sridharvembu
Generally the math of the acquisition is that there is "synergy" (i.e 1+1 much
greater than 2 kind of logic). Generally when a big price is paid in an
acquisition, the intent is that the acquirer would be able to recoup their
investment through such synergies, leveraging the acquired company's
technology, leveraging the acquirer's own reach and distribution channels to
sell more of the acquired product and so on.

------
2pasc
The truth is that the ZOHO founder is right (acquisition price is a joke,
Salesforce product is clunky, Salesforce multiple is crazy). And yet, clear
market leaders in high growth markets command premium prices (Amazon has a
crazy PE multiple for example). But ask Netflix or Apple. When you screw up
one or two quarters, market reacts fast.

~~~
fdr
Meh. Many well-established companies in a lick of trouble run _negative_ P/E
ratios for years...as in, the firm is losing money. There may be arguments for
or against a given share price, but anything coming strictly from very high
P/E values basically shifts the discussion to "what's the forward P/E?"

And of course small companies (and startups) lose money all the time, and
that's expected while they're gaining momentum.

Firms that have very high P/Es (OpenTable and LinkedIn also come to mind)
somehow have convinced investors that it's rational for them to spend every
scrap of money on growth on a relatively massive scale, as so that the "P"
part of the equation approaches zero. It seems then the discussion shifts to
what the 'forward' P/E is, aka a prediction about the future where growth has
stalled and the business is established and printing money without an obvious
place to allocate it sensibly...like Google, or Apple. The theory then being
it'd go to dividends, but that doesn't seem to be what has happened, because
the business tries to justify holding onto the capital _just in case_ it's
needed to grow even more.

FWIW...I don't know anything about this stuff and plow just about everything
into Vanguard. I have no interest in beating the market, I just want to track
"the economy" so I can meet my needs when I can't work anymore. So, grains of
salt and all that, but when I think about what a hyperbolic plot does it
always mystifies me why people care so much about P/E when either term is
close to zero.

~~~
2pasc
What I mean is that because Salesforce: 1/ hits their sales target 2/ grows
reasonably fast 3/ is the leader in SaaS for many large investors (like
vanguard) Salesforce has very high valuation, which allow them to acquire
Company, raise money in very good conditions and keep growing. In Salesforce
case, most of their products are very bad by Silicon Valley/standard standard,
and yet, the Company is worth a lot of money.

As much as Salesforce is criticizing Oracle, Salesforce is behaving just like
Oracle - with a cooler CEO (who is himself a former Oracle guy).

------
weavie
This is the only post on the front page today that's not about government
spying.. Well done.

------
selvan
Are n't many famous products (Android, Maps, Docs etc) of google are acquired
rather than built?. What you think might work for you, may not work for
others. Every organization have to figure out what will work best for their
customers, by themselves.

------
chris_wot
Look at how EMC does it. Almost no software companies they bought have really
flourished. Smarts, Infra, Voyence, nLayers, Configuresoft and Fastscale are
to name just a few. All are on the way out, or are so ridiculously unsuccesful
compared to when they were nimble and smaller.

If you get acquired by a monolith, then don't expect the acquisition to
succeed. It will most likely fail.

------
senthilnayagam
Could not post this story for couple of Days, mailed to PG, thanks for
unblocking/banning :)

------
tmzt
Is there a free webmail product at the start of the funnel? An online office
suite?

------
btom
I loved this blog ... no offense on his words, its true

------
curiousdannii
Yay, something that's not about the NSA!

------
hackermann
Zoho's strategy is this

1)Let others innovate, we will copy - Always copy the market leader. Anything
that can be copied and built by using Java/MySQL and other free software, they
will attempt and flood the market. Let others innovate - Zoho has no
patent/discovery to be proud of. They always wait for someone to start first,
then piggyback on them. The breadcrumbs that are left by the master is more
than enough for the puppy

2) Hire Cheap, Be cheap - Zoho hires school students and give them the
ludicrous jobs - Help desk ticket assignment, routine jobs like build
management etc. Less than 20% of the total school students hired are working
in developmental activities. If you see Zoho's linked-in and facebook pages,
they are advertising for fresh Engineers to join them. So what about the
school students, CEO?

3)Pay Meager - Zoho's salary is very less compared to other product companies
around, but marginally better than the consulting/services company. That way
their cash reserves are huge. I assume around $50 million goes into cash
reserves every year.

4) Zoho is controlled by Sridhar's family. All other founders have either been
chucked out or been demoted. Such a frustration lead to the creation of
freshdesk.com

~~~
lkozma
You seem to have an axe to grind - almost all the points you mention (assuming
they are true) can describe a well managed company, if you skip the negative
spin.

~~~
flyinRyan
well managed company? What he described is very nearly rent seeking. If a
company is never innovating and always simply copying what everyone else does
then that means that, 1) they will always be cheaper than their competitors
and 2) if they ever completely win their market they will be stuck with the
last iteration because they can't afford to innovate.

People like to say a race for the bottom is good for consumers but it isn't. A
race for the bottom is only good for people playing arbitrage games who know
to get out before the bottom is reached.

~~~
sridharvembu
If your thesis is correct, the optimal strategy for us would be to sell when
the prices are very high (like they are now) i.e collect the next 50 years of
"rent" right now, because it is so readily available. Instead, we continually
and steadily improve the product (while clearly acknowledging that we have
much work to do). Don't you think that is an awful rent seeking strategy?

~~~
flyinRyan
It's amusing that you're defensive on this subject. Someone accused you of
something, then another commenter said the _described strategy_ was actually
that of a well managed company. I explained the described strategy was very
nearly rent seeking. So even though the thread started about your company, it
became more general and that's when I stepped in.

I wasn't talking about your company specifically because I don't even know
what you do. But the fact that you're defensive enough to take _my_ comment as
an attack makes me wonder if the OP was actually close to the mark. :)

~~~
sridharvembu
No I didn't think you accused us of that. I merely responded what we would do
as a rent seeker :)

As for the original accusations, "develop a thick skin" is my attitude, so you
saw I never bothered to respond.

~~~
flyinRyan
Fair enough.

