Interview with
Bob Potter
Ben Bradley recently questioned Bob
Potter about head to head competition, flexibility and the impact
of alliances on a growing company. Potter is currently the CEO of
Kalido (www.kalido.com), a provider of adaptive data warehousing
software for enterprises. Customers include Unilever, Royal Dutch/Shell
Group, Labatt Breweries of Canada and Owens Corning. Kalido partners
with well-established market leaders for credibility and validation.
Potter has a long-standing track
record of growing and establishing enterprise software companies
such as IONA Technologies, Object Design Incorporated and Unigraphics
as market leaders. He has held leadership positions in both publicly
traded companies as well as venture-backed start-ups, serving as
a critical member of each company's international growth and leadership.
BRADLEY: What was your biggest mistake?
Potter: My past experience didn't allow me to understand the value
of partnering with giant companies. When I worked at Unigraphics
we slugged it out with like-size companies in the CAD/CAM space
such as Computervision and Intergraph and finally prevailed as a
survivor. The company eventually became a $1B division of EDS. When
I was at Object Design we battled other startups in the object-oriented
database market and became the number one provider, never having
to compete against the likes of giants such as Oracle and IBM. So
when I joined IONA Technologies, which was already the most successful
CORBA vendor, I approached new markets – particularly the
emerging application server and B2B integration sectors –
the same way I had before. I applied those same principles of direct
competition without seeking out the partnerships with larger companies
that could have helped us better succeed, and we got slaughtered.
BRADLEY: How did you fix this mistake?
Potter: We didn't have a chance to fix it at IONA. I tried too
late. As a result, BEA and IBM captured the J2EE application server
space, while TIBCO, IBM, and WebMethods ate up the integration space.
IONA was forced to retreat back to our CORBA roots and related high
performance middleware. Today, the company is doing fine again,
but is a much smaller company compared to what it was in 2000/01.
BRADLEY: What would you do differently now that you know
better?
Potter: Seek out larger companies that understand your competitive
advantage. Partner early and earnestly with them in such a way that
creates a real win for the bigger company. At Kalido, the DNA was
already receptive for such a strategy when I got here. These days,
Global 2000 corporations aren’t eager to risk buying from
small best-of-breed software companies whose software solutions
aren’t validated by customers and partners. We at Kalido have
brilliant software technology aimed specifically at that market,
but we needed credibility and validation from established players.
As soon as I arrived, our senior management team put a strategy
in place to go to market with bigger technology companies and established
systems integrators. It has taken us two years to get the formula
right, but we're finally seeing it pay off. This is really hard
work. It's easy to get out a nice partner press release, but it
it’s far more difficult to make the partnership truly sing.
It’s painful to get companies with different products, business
models and goals to work together well every day to the benefit
of the customer.
BRADLEY: What was your biggest, most successful gamble?
Potter: We needed credibility as a new innovative enterprise data
warehouse software company. I called the CEOs of Business Objects
and Ascential Software and asked them to partner with my company.
As it turns out, I knew them from my IONA days, and they knew about
Kalido before I joined, so were amenable to my phone call. They
met with our executive team and after proper due diligence agreed
to sign significant partner agreements with us. They both involve
joint development, joint marketing and sales teaming. Both companies
were involved in acquisitions at the time, and they are both behemoths
in the Business Intelligence and Data Integration space and getting
bigger. To their credit and the credit of my team, we worked hard
to get the right partnership agreements and plans in place. In order
to ensure success with these partners, I needed to be faithful and
not go do similar deals with their competitors. At the same time,
however, we needed to ensure that Kalido’s software worked
with software from Cognos and Informatica. I couldn't discriminate
against them when it came to product integration because our customers
wanted us to play nice with these companies, particularly if they
had standardized on their software. This was a huge gamble for us.
If our partnerships did not work out we would look foolish, would
have wasted a lot of time and money, and lost an opportunity. We
have and are all working hard to make these partnerships return
results.
BRADLEY: What advice would you give others about growing
their businesses?
Potter: Don't go it alone unless you absolutely have to! Every
business has a compelling value proposition – otherwise you
wouldn’t have gone into business in the first place. Develop,
nurture and grow partnerships with companies that are already well-established
to help tell your story.
For Kalido in the enterprise software business, we're now focused
on systems integrators, like Atos Origin and SAIC. These are huge
companies that have a lot more clout than we do with executive decision
makers in Global 2000 companies. Based on our strong technology
and partnerships, we're now crafting very specific business messages
and value propositions to show senior business people how they can
get consolidated business views of business performance in an ever
changing environment. Our business benefits are so incredible no
one believes us. But if you are a partner of a well established
systems integrator, and you let them tell the story, the customer
wants to hear more and wants to see the solution in action. Also,
we do almost all our lead generation with these systems integrators,
Business Objects and Ascential. Not only do we get more combined
marketing wood behind the arrow, but we get recognizable names singing
our praises. Oh, and one last thing: Don't underestimate how much
harder it is to do these things in coordination with your partners
rather than doing it by yourself. These partnerships take a lot
of sweat to get right. To be successful, partnering should never
be an afterthought of your marketing & sales strategy, but rather
a core element of it.
LOOKING FOR PARTNERS?
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