6 ms·

Appian delivers rare IPO to Washington DC area’s tech scene

59 points by mji 9y ago

rdtsc 9y ago
Well technically it is in Northern Virginia but saying "Washington, DC" sounds cooler I think. I've been guilty of that too, can't blame them. "Virginia startup IPO" doesn't have the same ring to it.
- sutterbomb 9y ago
  The lede says "Washington Area" and "Reston-based", so not exactly misleading. DC Metro area is commonly known to include NOVA and Maryland ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - francisofascii 9y ago
    Somewhat related, the DC/NOVA/Maryland divide is a struggle for software engineers trying to decide where to set down roots, but still have job flexibility. Because DC and Reston are an hour apart.
    - dccoolgai 9y ago
      Nah. Silver line. I'm on jt right now. 35 mins to Foggy bottom.
      - zumu 9y ago
        This might be fine for 20 somethings, but for the older folks with families looking for homes, I don't think Foggy Bottom or the surrounding area offer any realistic real estate. Correct me if I'm wrong.
        dccoolgai 9y ago
        I meant that yoh can live in Reston with (more) reasonable housing costs (1600ish for a 3br 2bath townhouse 10 mins walk from metro) and take Silver Line to work in the city... you could also do it the other way if you are a 20ish who wants to live in DC and work in NOVA.
        francisofascii 9y ago
        my friend did it the other way, bought a place near the Chinatown metro. He figures it is better to live near the hub rather than on one of the spokes.
        dccoolgai 9y ago
        True, but it's all tradeoffs. While not the murderhouse that SF/SV real estate is, it's still a little pricey in the middle of the Red line. You can get 3-4x the house if you go 25-ish minutes out on one of the "spokes" and still get to the hub pretty quickly. Even spoke-to-spoke isn't out of the question if you can stomach the extra 30 minutes or so.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - Retric 9y ago
      If you want real flexibility as a consultant or something. I recommend living in the Crystal City/Arlington area until you have kids. You got easy access to DC/Pentagon, but you can go as west as Dulles Airport, north to Bathesda, or even slightly south on 95 because of the opposite commute. There are even some jobs in the area.
- mikeash 9y ago
  I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's pretty common in the US to have cities where the principle city is just a small portion of the whole metro area, and it's common to refer to the whole area by the name of the city. Los Angeles is another prominent example. I live in NoVA and whenever people ask me where I live, I say "DC" and then clarify if they're interested in detail.
dlevine 9y ago
Appian was the first company I worked for out of college. It's good to see that they have done well, but it has been a long road for them. After starting as a technical consulting firm and growing quickly for the first few years (they survived the dotcom crash by making inroads into the government and military markets), they decided to make a transition from consulting to software. This ultimately seems to have been a good move, but it took them almost 10 years to figure out and fully execute (the transition started around 2002-2003, and they didn't really hit their stride until about 2011). I have to give Matt Calkins a lot of credit for pulling it off.
- elmar 9y ago
  Long road on the flip side Matthew Calkins managed to get to the IPO with 54.7% of the company stock. http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=11493592#D363139DS1_HTM_TOC363139_15 http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=1149...
- Edmond 9y ago
  I used to work for Pega, the leader in the BPM software space, Pega is over 30 years old and they only recently figured out how to really hit their strides. I believe they hired someone from SalesForce to help them position the company for growth, in the past 6 years the company's valuation has gone from ~$500M to $4.5B. Looks like the industry has figured out how to make itself valuable even if the products are sub-par. Incidentally, like Matt Calkins, Alan Trefler the Founder and CEO also owns more than half the company.
throwaway112345 9y ago
I worked at Appian within the past five years for an internship. I'm less aware of their success business side, but their software seemed to be falling apart. Multiple hundred line classes were copied and pasted around, logging and exceptions were pretty much ignored, vital parts of their stack were deep within deprecated libraries and frameworks with no way out. It did not feel like they valued quality, and a bunch of people felt flat out incompetent. That said, they've done super well for themselves. It sort of blows away this thought of successful startups being full of the best and trying to build the best product. I'm curious what will happen to them down the line.
- qweqwe0654 9y ago
  Engineering quality != business value
- jcadam 9y ago
  I applied for a job there back when I lived in NOVA. Didn't get past the HR phone pre-screen. Maybe I should be glad :)
- Edmond 9y ago
  BPM software is excellent for selling to CIO/C-Suites types, they tend to have a vocabulary that uses business jargon instead of technical jargon which is attractive to business people. The actual product capability matters little after that.
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  Protip: While we care intensely about "high quality" software, we define it as "well-designed" or "well-abstracted" or "loosely couple" and all kinds of things that matter when you look at source code, customers care about: 1) does it solve my problem? 2) is it reliable enough? ("enough" depends on use case) 3) can I afford it? (not just cash but maybe TCO) Edit: And this applies to most of the "hot startups" too. Ask anyone who has been at a major company through the growth years and ask how "good" their software was. Every single one will share horror stories about late nights, tight deadlines, horrible hacks, and "omg let's rewrite this whole thing!" arguments. As things grow and stability becomes a priority (often customer-driven), things change for the better for the software.
jondubois 9y ago
I worked for a big finance conglomerate as a contractor and were were using an Appian service for doing authentication... We didn't really need it but it was part of the project requirements. It seems like one of these companies that makes money by latching themselves onto the systems of large, inefficient corporations that don't trust their own engineers to do the work (even though they are capable). At that company we were also forced to use Amazon Lambda for a lot of API work; it slowed us down a lot but the business demanded it.
- naravara 9y ago
  >It seems like one of these companies that makes money by latching themselves onto the systems of large, inefficient corporations that don't trust their own engineers to do the work (even though they are capable). Opportunity costs are a thing. Even if their engineers are capable and willing, it may not be the most productive use of their time. Also, having worked for and consulted for many large, inefficient corporations outside the technology sector, Homemade software solutions have almost always been complete trash. The UX is generally extremely frustrating and they’re buggy as hell. These things are always done as a side-project and don’t have the kinds of resources or project management expertise applied to them to get them done properly. Whether that’s engineerings’ fault or managements’ fault is immaterial as the result is always the same. Why not send the software work outside and let your company focus on what your company is good at?
xadhominemx 9y ago
Question for Appian users: is what they do differentiated and/or sticky? It seems like there are a bunch of companies out there that do the low-code BPM app thing.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
As a "DC Area" startup founder, I wonder if we'll see any impact on the startup ecosystem as a result. I mean that's kind of the point of a startup ecosystem right? Having a few big exits spawn a bunch of other startups? Given that I have never seen any of the people from this company at any of the places serious startup people seem to gather I'd say probably not.
- dccoolgai 9y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what do you consider "places where serious startup people gather?". I tend to go to the monthly JS meetups (which mostly seemed to have moved to IronYard for the time being, thanks to their generosity) when I have time...I've seen some other things like the monthly-ish series that ISL organizes, but those always smelled to me like it would be less "deep" so I never went. I went to a Hacker News meetup once actually (I think it was at Vapiano in ChT), and met a few nice folks but I don't think that ever happened again. Overall, I'd say DC/Metro is a place with a pretty solid balance of interesting problems to solve, people with money who are willing to contribute to their solutions, talent and "runway efficiency". I don't know if the Appian IPO really changes any of that, per se, but I think the region is pretty good for startups - especially if you're willing to think outside the box with respect to how you get your funding / pitch your idea.

59 points by mji 9y ago

Well technically it is in Northern Virginia but saying "Washington, DC" sounds cooler I think. I've been guilty of that too, can't blame them. "Virginia startup IPO" doesn't have the same ring to it.

sutterbomb 9y ago
The lede says "Washington Area" and "Reston-based", so not exactly misleading. DC Metro area is commonly known to include NOVA and Maryland ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- francisofascii 9y ago
  Somewhat related, the DC/NOVA/Maryland divide is a struggle for software engineers trying to decide where to set down roots, but still have job flexibility. Because DC and Reston are an hour apart.
  - dccoolgai 9y ago
    Nah. Silver line. I'm on jt right now. 35 mins to Foggy bottom.
    - zumu 9y ago
      This might be fine for 20 somethings, but for the older folks with families looking for homes, I don't think Foggy Bottom or the surrounding area offer any realistic real estate. Correct me if I'm wrong.
      - dccoolgai 9y ago
        I meant that yoh can live in Reston with (more) reasonable housing costs (1600ish for a 3br 2bath townhouse 10 mins walk from metro) and take Silver Line to work in the city... you could also do it the other way if you are a 20ish who wants to live in DC and work in NOVA.
        francisofascii 9y ago
        my friend did it the other way, bought a place near the Chinatown metro. He figures it is better to live near the hub rather than on one of the spokes.
        dccoolgai 9y ago
        True, but it's all tradeoffs. While not the murderhouse that SF/SV real estate is, it's still a little pricey in the middle of the Red line. You can get 3-4x the house if you go 25-ish minutes out on one of the "spokes" and still get to the hub pretty quickly. Even spoke-to-spoke isn't out of the question if you can stomach the extra 30 minutes or so.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - Retric 9y ago
    If you want real flexibility as a consultant or something. I recommend living in the Crystal City/Arlington area until you have kids. You got easy access to DC/Pentagon, but you can go as west as Dulles Airport, north to Bathesda, or even slightly south on 95 because of the opposite commute. There are even some jobs in the area.
mikeash 9y ago
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's pretty common in the US to have cities where the principle city is just a small portion of the whole metro area, and it's common to refer to the whole area by the name of the city. Los Angeles is another prominent example. I live in NoVA and whenever people ask me where I live, I say "DC" and then clarify if they're interested in detail.

dlevine 9y ago

Appian was the first company I worked for out of college. It's good to see that they have done well, but it has been a long road for them. After starting as a technical consulting firm and growing quickly for the first few years (they survived the dotcom crash by making inroads into the government and military markets), they decided to make a transition from consulting to software. This ultimately seems to have been a good move, but it took them almost 10 years to figure out and fully execute (the transition started around 2002-2003, and they didn't really hit their stride until about 2011). I have to give Matt Calkins a lot of credit for pulling it off.

elmar 9y ago
Long road on the flip side Matthew Calkins managed to get to the IPO with 54.7% of the company stock. http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=11493592#D363139DS1_HTM_TOC363139_15 http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/filing.ashx?filingid=1149...
Edmond 9y ago
I used to work for Pega, the leader in the BPM software space, Pega is over 30 years old and they only recently figured out how to really hit their strides. I believe they hired someone from SalesForce to help them position the company for growth, in the past 6 years the company's valuation has gone from ~$500M to $4.5B. Looks like the industry has figured out how to make itself valuable even if the products are sub-par. Incidentally, like Matt Calkins, Alan Trefler the Founder and CEO also owns more than half the company.

throwaway112345 9y ago

I worked at Appian within the past five years for an internship. I'm less aware of their success business side, but their software seemed to be falling apart. Multiple hundred line classes were copied and pasted around, logging and exceptions were pretty much ignored, vital parts of their stack were deep within deprecated libraries and frameworks with no way out. It did not feel like they valued quality, and a bunch of people felt flat out incompetent. That said, they've done super well for themselves. It sort of blows away this thought of successful startups being full of the best and trying to build the best product. I'm curious what will happen to them down the line.

qweqwe0654 9y ago
Engineering quality != business value
jcadam 9y ago
I applied for a job there back when I lived in NOVA. Didn't get past the HR phone pre-screen. Maybe I should be glad :)
Edmond 9y ago
BPM software is excellent for selling to CIO/C-Suites types, they tend to have a vocabulary that uses business jargon instead of technical jargon which is attractive to business people. The actual product capability matters little after that.
caseysoftware 9y ago
Protip: While we care intensely about "high quality" software, we define it as "well-designed" or "well-abstracted" or "loosely couple" and all kinds of things that matter when you look at source code, customers care about: 1) does it solve my problem? 2) is it reliable enough? ("enough" depends on use case) 3) can I afford it? (not just cash but maybe TCO) Edit: And this applies to most of the "hot startups" too. Ask anyone who has been at a major company through the growth years and ask how "good" their software was. Every single one will share horror stories about late nights, tight deadlines, horrible hacks, and "omg let's rewrite this whole thing!" arguments. As things grow and stability becomes a priority (often customer-driven), things change for the better for the software.

jondubois 9y ago

I worked for a big finance conglomerate as a contractor and were were using an Appian service for doing authentication... We didn't really need it but it was part of the project requirements. It seems like one of these companies that makes money by latching themselves onto the systems of large, inefficient corporations that don't trust their own engineers to do the work (even though they are capable). At that company we were also forced to use Amazon Lambda for a lot of API work; it slowed us down a lot but the business demanded it.

naravara 9y ago
>It seems like one of these companies that makes money by latching themselves onto the systems of large, inefficient corporations that don't trust their own engineers to do the work (even though they are capable). Opportunity costs are a thing. Even if their engineers are capable and willing, it may not be the most productive use of their time. Also, having worked for and consulted for many large, inefficient corporations outside the technology sector, Homemade software solutions have almost always been complete trash. The UX is generally extremely frustrating and they’re buggy as hell. These things are always done as a side-project and don’t have the kinds of resources or project management expertise applied to them to get them done properly. Whether that’s engineerings’ fault or managements’ fault is immaterial as the result is always the same. Why not send the software work outside and let your company focus on what your company is good at?

xadhominemx 9y ago

Question for Appian users: is what they do differentiated and/or sticky? It seems like there are a bunch of companies out there that do the low-code BPM app thing.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago

As a "DC Area" startup founder, I wonder if we'll see any impact on the startup ecosystem as a result. I mean that's kind of the point of a startup ecosystem right? Having a few big exits spawn a bunch of other startups? Given that I have never seen any of the people from this company at any of the places serious startup people seem to gather I'd say probably not.

dccoolgai 9y ago
Just out of curiosity, what do you consider "places where serious startup people gather?". I tend to go to the monthly JS meetups (which mostly seemed to have moved to IronYard for the time being, thanks to their generosity) when I have time...I've seen some other things like the monthly-ish series that ISL organizes, but those always smelled to me like it would be less "deep" so I never went. I went to a Hacker News meetup once actually (I think it was at Vapiano in ChT), and met a few nice folks but I don't think that ever happened again. Overall, I'd say DC/Metro is a place with a pretty solid balance of interesting problems to solve, people with money who are willing to contribute to their solutions, talent and "runway efficiency". I don't know if the Appian IPO really changes any of that, per se, but I think the region is pretty good for startups - especially if you're willing to think outside the box with respect to how you get your funding / pitch your idea.