assume that things would go in your favor. Ever since that event, the one thing that I tell other people involved in a startup is to always have a backup plan. Even in what seems to be the most certain situations, things happen, and you have to adjust and move on. It's a dilemma because you want to throw every ounce of your energy into a direction, and developing a backup plan can take away from that. It may seem like wasted time, but when things go wrong, nothing could be more important.
Like any re-start process, the re-start of DecisionPoint was far from smooth and easy. We had lost quite a few key employees, and those of us that were left were wondering what we should do and where we should go. I was one of those people, and it was a difficult time for me. As I said before, when the acquisition fell through, I sank into a pretty deep depression. Part of it was the shock of what happened, and the other part of it was that we didn't have a backup plan, so we all felt lost and confused. Another part of the equation was that my son was seven, my daughter was four, and my wife was doing day care part time out of our home. It was definitely not a time for career uncertainty for me. There was a lot of pressure all the way around, and it felt like the world was on my shoulders.
One of the only positive things that happened to me during the failed acquisition was an offer that was made. When the acquiring company backed out of the acquisition, they offered Sequent a lump sum of money if I left DecisionPoint, and joined the company that attempted to acquire us. It was the first time that a price tag was put on my head, and it was very flattering. However, there was no way I would accept an offer like that. First of all, I was bitter and how the acquisition process went, and felt that we had been screwed by specific individuals in the acquiring company. There was no way I was going to join that company only to keep working with those individuals. Second of all, I didn't want to get back into yet another big company. I left Sequent to start DecisionPoint, and going back to work for a big company with a lot of
politics and bureacracy was not my idea of my next career move. Obviously, there were a lot of people that tried to push me to take the deal. They stood to make a lot of money from it. However, I was the only one that had to deal with the long term consequences of joining that company. Everyone else got to walk away while I would be tied to that company for a long period of time. I must say that to the credit of Sequent and the CFO at Sequent, they did not push me to join the company that did not acquire us. Sequent stood to benefit the most from me joining that company, but at all levels within Sequent, there was support for me no matter what was decided. It was much appreciated, and helped me a lot in the decision making process.
The first part of the re-start process was logical, but involved more pain than I had ever experienced before. The entire DecisionPoint team was going to meet with the CFO at Sequent along with one of our angel investors to figure out how we would re-start DecisionPoint. I had heard rumors about how tough our angel investor could be, but I had never experienced it. He had a ton of respect for me and what I was doing, so we were always on pretty good terms from a relationship perspective. Also, we had to dust off our old plans and put together some assemblance of a plan of how we would start again. From an engineering perspective, this was pretty easy. We had a lot of options and a lot of things to get done. Plus, we still had customers that needed to be serviced, and there were plenty of things they wanted improved in the product. The sales and marketing plan was not as easy. When you shut down your entire sales and marketing operations for a couple of months, restarting them is difficult. We had to figure out how we wanted to move forward from a sales standpoint, and somehow manage to get back in touch with prospective customers that we had put on hold due to the acquisition process.
At this point, our CEO was no longer with us, so we didn't have a lot of leadership to drive the process. Additionally, the person he had brought on board to be the VP of Marketing decided that he wanted to go back to his marketing consulting business. The VP of Sales that the CEO brought on board decided he was going to stay and see what we could do and where we could go. He was really leading the effort to re-establish the sales and marketing plan. I was very glad for this because I had no idea what we should be doing in that area, and I had my hands full keeping an engineering team motivated and working on our next direction. The VP of Sales came up with a pretty standard plan for our industry. He was going to re-establish a global sales force to start selling the product, we would start contacting prospective customers that we put on hold, and our marketing plans would be designed to support the sales process. We wouldn't be doing anything bold and new in marketing until we closed a few more customer deals.
On the day of the re-start meeting, everyone gathered in a room at Sequent. This included everyone no matter what their role was in the company. We reviewed the engineering plans with the CFO of Sequent and our angel investor, and it all went pretty smoothly. It was pretty obvious what we needed to do, so I simply stated the obvious, and came away unscathed. Unfortunately, I could not say the same thing about our VP of Sales. He put up exactly one slide about how he was going to build out global sales teams and start to sell DecisionPoint again. There were not a lot of details behind how this would happen or how we would determine what sales people to hire, when, how, etc. Our angel investor did not like his lack of details or planning at all and was furious. In front of everyone, he looked at the VP of Sales and said "
From a re-start standpoint, we were still ok. We still had one sales person on board, a couple of customers, and an engineering plan that we were working on. We still weren't quite sure how we were going to move forward from a long term perspective, but that wasn't on our mind right away. We had immediate priorities that we had to deal with. In many ways, this was a good thing. We all wanted to get through the mechanics of re-starting DecisionPoint and get back to doing the things that we loved to do. There was uncertainty all the way around, but with everything else we had to be focused on, we didn't really worry about the uncertainty very much.
Shortly after the re-start process happened, we had a surprising event that none of us had expected. I can't recall all of the details, but somehow we had gotten in touch with a management team that specialized in taking over struggling companies and getting them re-started. The management team's focus was in the healthcare arena, but they started to take a deep interest in us and what we could do. The management team included a CEO, CFO, and VP of HR. They were all very talented, and even though they didn't know a lot about our industry, they really helped to get us organized and moving again. The intent was for them to come in, invest in DecisionPoint, and then assume their roles within the company. This was very much like an acquisition process in that they still needed to take a look at what we did, what the market was like, and whether they thought we could be salvaged. I must admit that I fell in love with this team immediately. My first acquisition experience was awful, so I was naturally skeptical this time around. However, even though this management team was very much going through an acquisition-like process, they immediately started to help us move forward. For example, the VP of HR helped us to attract, interview, and in some cases hire people. Everything they did helped us take steps in the right direction so that no matter what happened, DecisionPoint would somehow survive. I still remember these people by name, and have very positive thoughts when I think of them.
We got pretty far along the acquisition process, but like the first acquisition, this one fell through. The CEO that came in to help us had decided that in order to guarantee our success, he wanted to setup an exclusive relationship with the company that had attempted to acquire us, but backed out of it. The goal was that we would be the only endorsed data warehouse solution for that company's products. I think that I knew, deep down, that this would never happen. Having been through the acquisition process with that company, and having them turn their back on us to build something themselves was still at the forefront of my mind. I just couldn't see how they would agree to give us exclusivity. However, our acting CEO was a very sharp guy, and I figured if anyone could pull it off, he could.
After a lot of deliberation and debate the company that backed out of acquiring us decided they would not give us an exclusive relationship. Rather than drag on for months to make a decision, this decision came within a couple of weeks. However, without that exclusive agreement, there was no way the management team was going to stay with DecisionPoint and move us forward. I understood their position, and given what they had already done for us, I had no hard feelings about their decision. I was dissappointed because I thought they could really help us move forward, but it just wasn't in the cards. There were a couple of very positive events that did come out of the process, though. The CFO of the management team decided he wanted to stay on board with DecisionPoint. Additionally, he had brought in a very sharp financial controller and customer service manager to join the team. It was fresh blood in the organization, and breathed a new life into DecisionPoint. Us "old timers" were pleased with the new hires, and it showed us that Sequent was still committed to seeing us give it a go.
No comments:
Post a Comment