METACARD ACQUIRED BY RUN REV!!!

[Chipp Walters]

Hi Dan!

> > 1) Companies aren't in the mad acquistion mode in this economy -- and I
> > doubt this will turn around very soon;
> >
> That's not how I read things right now, Chipp. Oracle is
> certainly in acquisition mode. Always is. They're trying a
> hostile takeover of PeopleSoft as we speak. There seems to me to
> be a LOT of consolidation and acquisition going on at the moment.

Yes, you are correct about Oracle. But, as you know, Oracle is purchasing
Peoplesoft as a preemptive measure, not as part of a tool collecting
strategy. Oracle wants Peoplesoft's customers. Also, Oracle (as you know)
would probably be the last company to purchase RR based upon the disaster
they had with OMO. What I'm talking about is the nonsensical 'rollup'
strategy which was so popular in the dotcom boom days, where the goal was to
grow a company by purchasing many other companies (business sense or not).
Because of the inflated stock prices, the market cap of these companies was
*HUGE* (I remember here in Austin, Vignette corp had a larger market cap
than Disney!). This huge valuation enabled companies to acquire other
companies, regardless of business fit, for a simple stock swap...it's how
AOL got so big. This isn't happening any more. I doubt we'll ever see this
type of mass acquisition again in our lifetime.
>
> > 2) Scotland is far far away;
> >
> Not in a networked world.

Perhaps, but in the fast moving networked world of VC's and Enterprise
Corporations, Scotland is probably not on the radar. Many years ago, I
bought a medium sized company in Tokyo. My Board fought the acquisition the
whole way -- partly based on the fact the company was outside the legal
juristiction of the US. Unless RR is actively pursuing a merger strategy,
they may go unnoticed for quite some time...


> 1. Failure to own your core technology is often fatal, either
> because investors won't give you money or because you bet your
> company on someone else's business plan. Those of us who choose
> to use RR (or MC for that matter) as a development platform run a
> HUGE risk and we shouldn't minimize that risk. If Oracle or
> Macromedia or Microsoft or anyone else came along and dangled
> enough dollars in front of the RR owners, they would be forced to
> sell; their shareholders wouldn't allow them to do any less.
> Similarly, if we choose to use not RR but, say, Python (still my
> favorite development language, suffering from all-but-nonexistent
> IDE), we still face a risk. The risk is arguably smaller because
> there are a lot of people who can maintain Python and keep it
> going. But there is always a risk that the core team will decide
> to retire and abandon the project. Its continuation then is tenuous.

Dan, most excellent point! This is and should be a huge concern for those of
us out there using RR technology as a basis for our products. And,
subsequently one of the main reasons I decided to invest in RR. In fact, I
encourage others to do the same, because being a shareholder does give you a
level of access to the management team. Not that I'm involved in any
decision making, but it's nice to know where things are heading ;-)

>
> 2. When big companies acquire small ones for their technology,
> they most often botch it up or bury it. OracleCard, which is what
> Oracle turned PLUS into, was a fantastic, dynamite product. But
> its price tag was necessarily low, profit margins modest, and
> demand for it anemic. Eventually, Oracle cut it loose. I spent a
> lot of time developing OracleCard apps and writing about it. All
> that time went down the toilet except for what I learned that
> turns out to be useful elsewhere.

Yes, agreed. My hope is that such a deal would involve creating some support
for legacy users. In fact, I would hope RR makes some sort of public
statement about the future of the technology 'just in case.'

>
>
> Besides, no *serious* programmer has only one tool in his or her
> kit because no one tool is a panacea.
>

Yep, that's the *best* insurance!