Archive for March, 2009
 After last year’s successful event, we are announcing the Second Talend Awards!
The goal of the Talend Awards is to recognize Talend users that have achieved a high return on investment or an exceptional performance on a project.
To participate, submissions must be received by March 31st, 2009 at midnight GMT. We will announce the Talend Awards results in April 2009.
A jury, composed of members from Talend’s technical and marketing divisions and senior management, will designate the winners in each category. The participants will answer a questionnaire indicating which Talend products they are using, the technical environment of the project, what makes the solution special (challenge faced, features used, goals, etc.) and the gains they have experienced.
This year, users of all Talend products can compete: Talend Open Studio, Talend Open Profiler, Talend On Demand, Talend Integration Suite and Talend Data Quality.
In addition to the visibility users will gain from participating at the Talend Awards, they can also, if their project is selected:
Become a Talend Ambassador
Talend Ambassadors are recognized by the Talend Community as expert users of Talend technologies. In addition they receive special perks (roadmap consultations, “get together” opportunities, Talend promotional merchandise, etc.)
Win the latest iPod Touch!
The winning entry in each category will receive an Apple iPod Touch, donated by Talend. In addition, up to two runner-ups may also be selected and will each win an iPod Shuffle.
To participate in the Second Talend Awards, submit your entry now!
Yves
This is the fifth and last post of a series about Talend’s recent Round C Fundraising.
Previous Post: Fundraising in November – Inking the Deal
There’s a risk even after you’ve signed a term sheet, but it’s minimized. It’s not a major hurdle, like valuation, but there are a lot of details to negotiate and again, it’s all about context. Q4 was a major quarter for us in terms of business and put us in a good position to reinforce our market position and viability.
The economy continued to deteriorate. The National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the U.S. was officially in the recession which, in hindsight, actually started in December 2007. Canada also announced that it was entering a recession. And the International Labour Organization said that as many as 51 million jobs worldwide could be lost this year because of the global economic crisis.
Then Bernie Madoff became the #1 news story, charged with masterminding what may be the largest investor fraud scheme ever carried out by a single person, posting liabilities of approximately $50 billion.
That was perhaps the last straw. Low-cost, high-performing, reliable, open source solutions looked very good to the investment community. Companies badly need to integrate data, but they don’t need expensive proprietary tools; especially when there’s an alternative like Talend.
We finalized our negotiations and planned the announcement for late January. The rest, as you know, is history.
This concludes my thoughts on the recent fundraising. I want to extend warm thanks and a huge vote of confidence to everyone – to Fabrice; to all employees; to the external partners who worked with me throughout this process. And thanks also to all the VCs I met with. It’s been an incredible experience.
You’ll be hearing from me on other topics very soon.
Bertrand
Brian Gentile, Jaspersoft’s CEO, recently published a post stating his opinion that the Open Core Business Model is the “Best Opportunity for Community and Commercial Success.”
The concept of Open Core was created by Andrew Lampitt—then Director of Business Development & Strategic Alliances for Jaspersoft—in an attempt to more precisely define the concepts offered by Marten Mickos at a conference in 2007 where he stated “Open Source models are hybrid” (page 16). Andrew focused particularly on #6 (“some enterprise features are for a fee”).
Andrew proposed the following definition of the Open Core business model:
- Core is GPL: if you embed the GPL in closed source, you pay a fee
- Technical support of GPL product may be offered for a fee (up for debate as to whether it must be offered)
- Annual commercial subscription includes: indemnity, technical support, and additional features and/or platform support. (Additional commercial features having viewable or closed source, becoming GPL after timebomb period are both up for debate).
- Professional services and training are for a fee.
This was derived from the Dual Licensing Model, but with some modifications, because Andrew believed that “some dual license strategies have gotten a bad rap, perhaps because of the confusion they cause or the approaches vendors take. I propose to rename this #6 dual license strategy as ‘open-core licensing,’ to remove confusion and promote a great business model for open source communities, paying customers, and vendors alike.”
In the heated debate which followed the invention of the term—where some purists considered this model as similar to proprietary software—Brian recalls that “Most major software categories where open source has positively disrupted have required successful commercial open source companies to eventually use a model similar to open core, in order to continue growing. Think JBoss, Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Novell/openSUSE), SugarCRM, Hyperic, Talend and, of course, Jaspersoft.”
I totally agree with Brian—pure open source models (Eclipse, Mozilla, etc.) will continue to offer new products and to enhance final user experience. I don’t see why we would challenge this approach, but I also don’t see why we wouldn’t have a right to adopt quite a different one. Brian wrote: “To truly disrupt software categories where proprietary vendors dominate (and to deliver large new leaps in customer value), the open core model currently stands alone in its opportunity to deliver community progress and commercial success” because it offers the best hybrid approach between a 100% free model and a 100% paying model, simultaneously assuring the profitable growth of the vendor and the success of the clients. It is, of course, the model we adopted when we launched our company. And the support of our investors proves its validity.
Bertrand
This is the fourth post of a series about Talend’s recent Round C Fundraising.
Previous Post: Fundraising in October – Leveraging the Market
This was the final dash to the finish line and we were negotiating in what we thought of at the time as the worst of the financial crisis. The investment community was now aware that this wasn’t a short-term problem, but a global issue that wasn’t going to go away in the near-future.
For example, in September we had around 30 VCs interested. In October, that went down to 20. By November, we were talking to a dozen. Think of it as a funnel effect and we were entering the neck. So we were fairly well along in the process and had good traction. We selected a VC and started the final round of negotiations.
Our choice was complex because all the VCs in final consideration were very high-level – really top-tier. The various term sheets were very close and we were able to base our final selection on the quality of the VC. Clearly for me it was a privilege to have negotiated with all these people, but especially 3 or 4. They know who they are.
Globally, things weren’t picking up. U.S. unemployment hit its highest level in 14 years. The Bank of England announced that Britain’s economy would shrink sharply in 2009 and that inflation could be less than 1 percent. The German economy – Europe’s largest – contracted by 0.5% in Q3 putting it in recession for the first time in 5 years. Japan also fell into recession, with France close behind.
Bertrand
Next post: Fundraising in December – Finishing Up
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