
Appian delivers rare IPO to Washington DC area’s tech scene - mji
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-business/wp/2017/05/25/appian-delivers-rare-ipo-to-washingtons-tech-scene/
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throwaway112345
I worked at Appian within the past five years for an internship. I'm less
aware of their success business side, but their software seemed to be falling
apart. Multiple hundred line classes were copied and pasted around, logging
and exceptions were pretty much ignored, vital parts of their stack were deep
within deprecated libraries and frameworks with no way out. It did not feel
like they valued quality, and a bunch of people felt flat out incompetent.

That said, they've done super well for themselves. It sort of blows away this
thought of successful startups being full of the best and trying to build the
best product. I'm curious what will happen to them down the line.

~~~
caseysoftware
Protip:

While _we_ care intensely about "high quality" software, we define it as
"well-designed" or "well-abstracted" or "loosely couple" and all kinds of
things that matter when you look at source code, customers care about:

1) does it solve my problem?

2) is it reliable enough? ("enough" depends on use case)

3) can I afford it? (not just cash but maybe TCO)

Edit: And this applies to most of the "hot startups" too. Ask anyone who has
been at a major company through the growth years and ask how "good" their
software was. Every single one will share horror stories about late nights,
tight deadlines, horrible hacks, and "omg let's rewrite this whole thing!"
arguments.

As things grow and stability becomes a priority (often customer-driven),
things change for the better for the software.

~~~
vdnkh
Customers also care about:

4) How quickly can you fix it?

5) How quickly can you deliver this feature?

~~~
rmk
In my experience these two asks usually come from the early adopters and savvy
customers, who are generally outnumbered by the (newer) customers who just
want something that works and fits within a pre-allocated budget category.

One notable exception of late has been security fixes. A lot more enterprises
have become more aware of the need to patch their systems quickly in response
to CVEs etc.

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jondubois
I worked for a big finance conglomerate as a contractor and were were using an
Appian service for doing authentication... We didn't really need it but it was
part of the project requirements.

It seems like one of these companies that makes money by latching themselves
onto the systems of large, inefficient corporations that don't trust their own
engineers to do the work (even though they are capable).

At that company we were also forced to use Amazon Lambda for a lot of API
work; it slowed us down a lot but the business demanded it.

~~~
naravara
>It seems like one of these companies that makes money by latching themselves
onto the systems of large, inefficient corporations that don't trust their own
engineers to do the work (even though they are capable).

Opportunity costs are a thing. Even if their engineers are capable and
willing, it may not be the most productive use of their time.

Also, having worked for and consulted for many large, inefficient corporations
outside the technology sector, Homemade software solutions have almost always
been complete trash. The UX is generally extremely frustrating and they’re
buggy as hell.

These things are always done as a side-project and don’t have the kinds of
resources or project management expertise applied to them to get them done
properly. Whether that’s engineerings’ fault or managements’ fault is
immaterial as the result is always the same. Why not send the software work
outside and let your company focus on what your company is good at?

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dlevine
Appian was the first company I worked for out of college. It's good to see
that they have done well, but it has been a long road for them.

After starting as a technical consulting firm and growing quickly for the
first few years (they survived the dotcom crash by making inroads into the
government and military markets), they decided to make a transition from
consulting to software.

This ultimately seems to have been a good move, but it took them almost 10
years to figure out and fully execute (the transition started around
2002-2003, and they didn't really hit their stride until about 2011). I have
to give Matt Calkins a lot of credit for pulling it off.

~~~
elmar
Long road on the flip side Matthew Calkins managed to get to the IPO with
54.7% of the company stock.

[http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=1149...](http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=11493592#D363139DS1_HTM_TOC363139_15)

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AndrewKemendo
As a "DC Area" startup founder, I wonder if we'll see any impact on the
startup ecosystem as a result. I mean that's kind of the point of a startup
ecosystem right? Having a few big exits spawn a bunch of other startups?

Given that I have never seen any of the people from this company at any of the
places serious startup people seem to gather I'd say probably not.

~~~
dccoolgai
Just out of curiosity, what do you consider "places where serious startup
people gather?". I tend to go to the monthly JS meetups (which mostly seemed
to have moved to IronYard for the time being, thanks to their generosity) when
I have time...I've seen some other things like the monthly-ish series that ISL
organizes, but those always smelled to me like it would be less "deep" so I
never went. I went to a Hacker News meetup once actually (I think it was at
Vapiano in ChT), and met a few nice folks but I don't think that ever happened
again.

Overall, I'd say DC/Metro is a place with a pretty solid balance of
interesting problems to solve, people with money who are willing to contribute
to their solutions, talent and "runway efficiency". I don't know if the Appian
IPO really changes any of that, per se, but I think the region is pretty good
for startups - especially if you're willing to think outside the box with
respect to how you get your funding / pitch your idea.

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rdtsc
Well technically it is in Northern Virginia but saying "Washington, DC" sounds
cooler I think. I've been guilty of that too, can't blame them. "Virginia
startup IPO" doesn't have the same ring to it.

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sutterbomb
The lede says "Washington Area" and "Reston-based", so not exactly misleading.
DC Metro area is commonly known to include NOVA and Maryland ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
francisofascii
Somewhat related, the DC/NOVA/Maryland divide is a struggle for software
engineers trying to decide where to set down roots, but still have job
flexibility. Because DC and Reston are an hour apart.

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dccoolgai
Nah. Silver line. I'm on jt right now. 35 mins to Foggy bottom.

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zumu
This might be fine for 20 somethings, but for the older folks with families
looking for homes, I don't think Foggy Bottom or the surrounding area offer
any realistic real estate. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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dccoolgai
I meant that yoh can live in Reston with (more) reasonable housing costs
(1600ish for a 3br 2bath townhouse 10 mins walk from metro) and take Silver
Line to work in the city... you could also do it the other way if you are a
20ish who wants to live in DC and work in NOVA.

~~~
francisofascii
my friend did it the other way, bought a place near the Chinatown metro. He
figures it is better to live near the hub rather than on one of the spokes.

~~~
dccoolgai
True, but it's all tradeoffs. While not the murderhouse that SF/SV real estate
is, it's still a little pricey in the middle of the Red line. You can get 3-4x
the house if you go 25-ish minutes out on one of the "spokes" and still get to
the hub pretty quickly. Even spoke-to-spoke isn't out of the question if you
can stomach the extra 30 minutes or so.

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xadhominemx
Question for Appian users: is what they do differentiated and/or sticky? It
seems like there are a bunch of companies out there that do the low-code BPM
app thing.

