I have to strongly disagree with the premise of this article, and I lose it right here : "Once you have shareholders, your primary focus becomes fulfilling their expectations. Either they want revenue or they want growth."
The truth is more like "once you have outside investors" they want you to do what you say you will do. I'm reminded of Kevin O'Leary (Mr Wonderful on Shark Tank) who says to folks "I like money, and the money I invest needs to make me more money." That doesn't matter if you're public or private, you've asked someone for money, they gave it to you, now you have to do what you said you would do.
You can contrast that with private company with no outside investors, and that kind of company (of which there are some notable ones like Fry's Electronics) where you have no external promises to make.
Ruxit was birthed out of the implosion of CompuWare[1], which is fine and I love to see good technology escape the demise of its containing company, but I don't think the fact that CompuWare had been a public company was actual the reason for its demise, no it was that the mainframe space[2] was going south fast and that was what they did.
Compuware has been acquired for all its divisions, including Mainframe and APM businesses [1]. As they address different markets, the APM business Dynatrace has been spun out and is run under Dynatrace LLC. Ruxit is now obviously a part of Dynatrace. References to Compuware on Ruxit sites are mainly around due to legal reasons. Eventually they will fade out.
The experience we made with Ruxit also made us welcome the opportunity to work with Dynatrace as private company again. This made me see the recent changes as opportunity that I as intrapreneural founder, who founded also the original Dynatrace, wouldn’t want to miss in my career.
For me I have always seen getting an MVP is the "I want to make money approach" where the MDP is the "I want to change the world approach."
Although, this obviously creates issues with investors, it seems the best companies are those that try to invent something new, as opposed to the next photo sharing app.
Unfortunately, many times this leads to the companies demise. Focusing on inventing as opposed to money can create a disconnect between company and users. That being said, I hope Ruxit can make it. I am impressed, and now that they have customers it seems the MDP strategy probably paid off!
Dell went private for this reason, I think this is great that companies realize that there are a number of ways to contribute to economy while creating meaningful progress.
It seems that current IPO/VC based culture is similar to fast food culture of a ton of sugar, carb and fat that cannibalizes stability for quick energy/endorphin hit.
Dell basically delisted itself by buying out public shareholders with private equity money, which was primarily debt financed. This is far from the MDP concept mentioned, but simply a pure LBO play. I don't see banks financing "disruption".
I like the concept behind MDP, but not the term. Mostly this is because "disruptive" has become so hackneyed in the industry that its use has negative value to me.
Compuware acquired dynaTrace software in 2011. Thoma Bravo (risk capital) bought dynaTrace department from Compuware in late 2014. Ruxit is a new beta product, a SaaS APM competitor to NewRelic and AppDynamics.
Thoma Bravo acquired Compuware (not just dynaTrace). The copyright notice at dynatrace.com reads "2015 COMPUWARE CORPORATION" so it seems the business is still in operation. Ruxit is "a division of Dynatrace LLC", a company registered three months ago. It's unclear from the blog post what is its relationship with Compuware, if any (and what does the "we became a public company" refer to).
Maybe I'm misreading this, but they didn't really become a private company, right? They just convinced their board to give them some money and not meddle with the process for a few years.
How do you exit your investors if you don't do an IPO or sell?
Most investors have to exit in a time frame for legal reasons and they are not in for the profit per share anyways, I can only see an LBO by the founders.
The truth is more like "once you have outside investors" they want you to do what you say you will do. I'm reminded of Kevin O'Leary (Mr Wonderful on Shark Tank) who says to folks "I like money, and the money I invest needs to make me more money." That doesn't matter if you're public or private, you've asked someone for money, they gave it to you, now you have to do what you said you would do.
You can contrast that with private company with no outside investors, and that kind of company (of which there are some notable ones like Fry's Electronics) where you have no external promises to make.
Ruxit was birthed out of the implosion of CompuWare[1], which is fine and I love to see good technology escape the demise of its containing company, but I don't think the fact that CompuWare had been a public company was actual the reason for its demise, no it was that the mainframe space[2] was going south fast and that was what they did.
[1] The creation of Ruxit : http://intellyx.com/2014/10/10/the-rebirth-of-application-pe...
[2] "Nominal" history of CompuWare : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compuware