5 ms·

Start the REvolution without me...

23 points by bensummers 17y ago

swombat 17y ago
Well, that sure sounds like a funding deal that fucked up majorly. The entire founding team, board, and most of the company was fired right after doing a funding round and bringing in a new CEO and COO? What kind of fucked up VC did that? http://www.nbvp.com/ http://www.nbvp.com/, that's who. Now, I don't know if this story is true, but if it is, it should serve as a huge flashing neon warning sign to any other entrepreneurs to stay well away from North Bridge Venture Partners.
tptacek 17y ago
Someone want to give the rest of us the Cliff's Notes on what this company did and what this person did for that company?
- noodle 17y ago
  executive summary, based on my reading: this person was on one of the core developer evangelist groups to push R out into the hands of the early adopters and get people using it. the company got funded and they immediately fired this group, despite promises they wouldn't, and shifted the company's focus towards the enterprise level.
  - swombat 17y ago
    I don't think Thomas was asking for a summary of the article. He was asking for a summary of the stuff that's not being mentioned in the article, all the surrounding circumstances that can turn this from a sour grapes story to a full-on funding scandal.
    - noodle 17y ago
      fair enough, although thats not how i read it. don't know how many neutral parties with sufficient knowledge there are that would be willing to talk about things not mentioned, though.
- davidw 17y ago
  As a bit of background on Danese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danese_Cooper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danese_Cooper She's also a member of the Apache Software Foundation.
grellas 17y ago
A clear risk of any funding involving a control shift but especially so when dealing with second- or third-tier VCs who are in it only for the money and have no reputation to protect. I have seen this happen as well with acquisitions in which the founders are assured that they will be able to earn out their main reward over time only to be terminated shortly after the closing. Legal protections (usually, for founders only and not for other employees) are available in both cases to help limit the damage but a surprisingly large number of founders are willing to forego them when they are assured in ever so reassuring tones that they can "trust" the party that will have control. Unfortunately, trust doesn't work in most such cases.
- swombat 17y ago
  Well, based on this article, NBVP definitely does not have any reputation left to protect...
NEPatriot 17y ago
They have more lawyers... with bigger stacks of papers. Unless it's in writing in these things assume the worst is coming.
NEPatriot 17y ago
Well it's nice to see they score 2/5 on: http://www.thefunded.com/funds/show/North+Bridge+Venture+Partners http://www.thefunded.com/funds/show/North+Bridge+Venture+Par...
staunch 17y ago
> "We built a small team to work on "Community Engineering"... > "We set up an Advisory Board designed to advise REvolution management about decisions relating to REvo and Open Source..." Honestly, this sounds fluffy feel-good bureaucratic big-company bullshit to me, the kind of thing that has no place in a startup. Maybe the new CEO is a really smart guy...
- earl 17y ago
  Um... yes and no. In general, I'm with you -- that's sort of a very open job description and it's hard to figure out what the responsibilities are. OTOH: R is an open source project. Maintaining good relations with the many people who contribute to R is pretty key to a company in this space. Also important is talking people into using R instead of the many (SAS, SPSS, Stata, Eviews, Matlab, gauss) alternatives. Pushing themselves as open source plus extras seems to be their business model. There seems like there should be somebody around who talks to the communities of developers and users.
trevelyan 17y ago
Second round of funding at almost 8-digits for an open source software company that is losing money? If I was running the business I'd have done exactly what the investors did: cull anything non-core, focus on creating revenue, and bring in someone with experience building a business (looks like they brought in the founder of SPSS). If the people who think they've been screwed here really believe in the value of what they're doing, they have a great opportunity to simply fork the project. Lots of people would kill for this type of PR! If they're not willing to do this because they are incapable of bringing a business to profitability or need funding, they should hardly be complaining about the actions of their investors.

23 points by bensummers 17y ago

Well, that sure sounds like a funding deal that fucked up majorly. The entire founding team, board, and most of the company was fired right after doing a funding round and bringing in a new CEO and COO? What kind of fucked up VC did that? http://www.nbvp.com/ http://www.nbvp.com/, that's who. Now, I don't know if this story is true, but if it is, it should serve as a huge flashing neon warning sign to any other entrepreneurs to stay well away from North Bridge Venture Partners.

tptacek 17y ago

Someone want to give the rest of us the Cliff's Notes on what this company did and what this person did for that company?

noodle 17y ago
executive summary, based on my reading: this person was on one of the core developer evangelist groups to push R out into the hands of the early adopters and get people using it. the company got funded and they immediately fired this group, despite promises they wouldn't, and shifted the company's focus towards the enterprise level.
- swombat 17y ago
  I don't think Thomas was asking for a summary of the article. He was asking for a summary of the stuff that's not being mentioned in the article, all the surrounding circumstances that can turn this from a sour grapes story to a full-on funding scandal.
  - noodle 17y ago
    fair enough, although thats not how i read it. don't know how many neutral parties with sufficient knowledge there are that would be willing to talk about things not mentioned, though.
davidw 17y ago
As a bit of background on Danese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danese_Cooper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danese_Cooper She's also a member of the Apache Software Foundation.

grellas 17y ago

A clear risk of any funding involving a control shift but especially so when dealing with second- or third-tier VCs who are in it only for the money and have no reputation to protect. I have seen this happen as well with acquisitions in which the founders are assured that they will be able to earn out their main reward over time only to be terminated shortly after the closing. Legal protections (usually, for founders only and not for other employees) are available in both cases to help limit the damage but a surprisingly large number of founders are willing to forego them when they are assured in ever so reassuring tones that they can "trust" the party that will have control. Unfortunately, trust doesn't work in most such cases.

swombat 17y ago
Well, based on this article, NBVP definitely does not have any reputation left to protect...

NEPatriot 17y ago

They have more lawyers... with bigger stacks of papers. Unless it's in writing in these things assume the worst is coming.

NEPatriot 17y ago

Well it's nice to see they score 2/5 on: http://www.thefunded.com/funds/show/North+Bridge+Venture+Partners http://www.thefunded.com/funds/show/North+Bridge+Venture+Par...

staunch 17y ago

> "We built a small team to work on "Community Engineering"... > "We set up an Advisory Board designed to advise REvolution management about decisions relating to REvo and Open Source..." Honestly, this sounds fluffy feel-good bureaucratic big-company bullshit to me, the kind of thing that has no place in a startup. Maybe the new CEO is a really smart guy...

earl 17y ago
Um... yes and no. In general, I'm with you -- that's sort of a very open job description and it's hard to figure out what the responsibilities are. OTOH: R is an open source project. Maintaining good relations with the many people who contribute to R is pretty key to a company in this space. Also important is talking people into using R instead of the many (SAS, SPSS, Stata, Eviews, Matlab, gauss) alternatives. Pushing themselves as open source plus extras seems to be their business model. There seems like there should be somebody around who talks to the communities of developers and users.

trevelyan 17y ago

Second round of funding at almost 8-digits for an open source software company that is losing money? If I was running the business I'd have done exactly what the investors did: cull anything non-core, focus on creating revenue, and bring in someone with experience building a business (looks like they brought in the founder of SPSS). If the people who think they've been screwed here really believe in the value of what they're doing, they have a great opportunity to simply fork the project. Lots of people would kill for this type of PR! If they're not willing to do this because they are incapable of bringing a business to profitability or need funding, they should hardly be complaining about the actions of their investors.