Editor’s note: Scott Weiss is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the former co-founder and CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007. He works with companies like Lyft, Dwolla, Platfora, App.net and Quirky. Follow him on his blog or on Twitter @W_ScottWeiss.
There is a perfect storm of three distinct disruptive forces that has the potential to topple nearly every major enterprise software incumbent. And the traditional approach of dealing with technology shifts — through acquisition — looks like it’s headed toward failure. As such, there is an unprecedented opportunity to create many new multi-billion-dollar enterprise franchises that are on the right side of these forces and are willing to go the distance in the face of ridiculously high acquisition offers.
Let’s examine these forces individually.
Software as a service (SaaS): Seemingly a little long in the tooth as a disruptor, SaaS has finally gone mainstream in the Global 2000. The primary disruptive force of this technology is the speed of innovation. The feedback loop is especially powerful: As opposed to using focus groups and surveys to figure out how users are interacting with the product, SaaS companies can see what their customers are doing real-time by capturing and analyzing every click. They quickly extend their products through a “cell division” that continuously builds out and A/B tests the features that are getting the most engagement. On-premise and client (PC) software-based product cycles can’t possibly compete here as new releases are typically pushed 10 times faster at 45-60 days vs. 18-24 months.
There’s always one version/code base so it’s much easier to support, patch bugs, and roll out new features to all customers at once. The old joke of “How did God create the world in seven days? He didn’t have an installed base!” certainly applies – but SaaS also demands entirely new skills sets associated with running a 24×7 services business. Dev/Ops, customer care centers, network operations and delivering uptime via failover, mirroring and hot backups are all new and essential. It’s easy to see how the early SaaS pioneers gained so much ground with this innovation but even they are unprepared and poorly architected to take advantage of the additional disruptors that have hit more recently…
Cloud infrastructure: As I detailed in a prior post, “The Building is the New Server,” the humongous Internet powers, Facebook and Google, are literally breaking new ground in re-imagining the design, components and cost of running a hyper-scale data center. The cloud infrastructure they are pioneering has the primary disruptive force of massively driving down cost. Facebook, for instance, is experimenting on the bleeding edge of solving the new cost bottlenecks of power and cooling. I recently read that it actually rained inside one of their datacenters.
The cloud service providers (CSPs) are following their lead using commodity components, open source software, data center design and testing software defined storage and networking products to enjoy the same, devastating cost curve. The corporate datacenters (aka “private clouds”) will slowly disappear as Global 2000 companies migrate to these irresistible new cost curves. Don’t be fooled that security and reliability concerns will keep large enterprises away — as the CEO of IronPort, I watched in horror as large enterprises started pointing their treasured Mail Exchange (MX) records to cloud services like Postini – a much superior and vastly cheaper cloud based architecture versus our perimeter appliances. And email is the most sensitive and mission critical of applications…
Mobile: About two years ago, all of our consumer companies went through an “Oh shit!” moment with mobile. One year mobile was 10 percent of traffic and the next year, when everyone was expecting ~20 percent, it was 30 percent on its way to 50 percent. Facebook, for instance, famously bought Instagram for $1 billion and then continued their pursuit of talent to redesign for mobile. The new mobile operating systems and devices are proliferating an entirely new interaction and design paradigm that has the primary disruptive force of a reimagined user interface.
The innovative use of touch/gestures (e.g. pull down, swipe, pinch etc.) pioneered by the consumer applications will become de rigor for enterprise, as well. Although it’s still early, the mobile sensors (e.g. GPS, accelerometer, video etc.) will also become integral and spawn new innovations in the enterprise as they have enabled new consumer franchises like Lyft and Instagram.
The No. 1 problem facing so many of the startups I talk to is hiring the design talent (e.g. mobile app, front-end engineering and user interface) to take advantage of this trend. In addition to being in ridiculously high demand, most of these people are “arteests” who eschew just cash and stock as incentives because they want to work for a purpose and in an environment where design is an overarching priority/core competency – not something that is grafted on afterwards. These environments are hard to find.
So exactly why won’t these big incumbents make it to the other side? There are just too many things changing at once. Beyond the technology changes, there are structural impediments as well. The incumbent sales forces have become farmers instead of hunters. They still sell on relationships (e.g. A round of golf, anyone?) and bundling/discounting instead of product attributes. They sell to the CIO instead of the line of business buyer who is making the decision. The quotas and incentives are too different. The accounting systems don’t speak recurring billing and revenue. Ugh – it’s just too much change.
A handful of exits have been priced based on a NTM revenue average of 11X vs. around 4X for the rest of SaaS companies. Examples include Workday, Splunk, ServiceNow, Marketo and Tableau. Not to mention the SuccessFactors deal (done at 11X) has officially kicked off the next wave of consolidation. On the private side, companies like New Relic, AppDynamics and ZenDesk have seen private transaction multiples of between 9X and 11X.
There is outright panic going on right now at the large incumbents as they pay ridiculous premiums for the early SaaS companies. And so why won’t these acquisitions pan out? Most of the early SaaS companies weren’t architected to take advantage of the cloud infrastructure cost advantages and most completely missed the boat on mobile. It’s hard enough for new, cool enterprise startups to hire the necessary design talent, but the large incumbents really have no hope.
Next Up
As I’ve said, there is a perfect storm of three distinct disruptive forces brewing which has the potential to erupt into a new multi-billion-dollar wave of enterprise franchises. In particular, there will be at least 30 new enterprise franchises that will go the distance and resist high acquisition offers, as they either supply or ride this trio of disruptors to dominance.
Among others, the new suppliers are companies like Cumulus Networks, Okta, New Relic and Nimble Storage. The “riders” are awesome trifecta companies like Box, Evernote, Base, Expensify and Tidemark.
Where will these 30 New Franchises come from? A double investment cycle in SaaS, as the large incumbents buy the early SaaS pioneers and fumble them, will pave the way. Like Lenny from “Of Mice and Men,” they will smother these companies with too much negative attention, mismatched sales forces and misunderstood business models. Following a short vesting period, the product and management talent — who are used to working at a completely different pace — will ultimately leave the incumbent, resulting in a bevy of entrepreneurs that roll out to start even more of these franchises.
I can’t wait to meet them!