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LogMeIn

LogMeIn – World’s Largest SaaS Company Making Work-From-Home Easier for Companies.

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Today every company and firm has opted for the work from home scenario. And looking at the current circumstances, it may be a lasting trend for most of the companies. Though this is a new way of working, a company named LogMeIn has been the promoter of work-from-home even before the pandemic had hit the world. The company has been providing its remote work tools even before the Covid-19 pandemic. LogMeIn is an eighteen years old company providing software as a service and cloud-based remote-work tools for its clients worldwide. It offers its services to almost every size company, such as they can communicate and collaborate from anywhere to achieve their business goals, using any internet-connected devices.
LogMeIn deals in three major categories, i.e., Unified Communications & Collaboration services, Identity & Access Management services, and Customer engagement & support services.

About The Company

LogMeIn is a software company founded in 2003 in Budapest, Hungary. The company provides cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) remote work tools to its customers. The company headquarters is based in Boston, Massachusetts, and about 4000 people are working for the company globally. As of 2019, LogMeIn made revenues worth US$1.262 billion.
LogMeIn is a privately held company, and GoTo, LastPass, Rescue, Central are some of its popular products. The company promotes a remote-centric workplace through its variety of software, helping companies be more productive and enabling flexible hours.
GoToConnect, GoToMeeting, GoToRoom, GoToWebinar, GoToTraining, LogMeIn Central, LogMeIn Pro, GoToMyPC, and Grasshopper are some of the company’s most loved software helping its customers better connect and work remotely securely. Comcast, Dyson, Facebook, Johnson&Johnson, SalesForce and TheNorthFace are some of its major clients.

LogMeIn
image source: bizj.us

The Founding of LogMeIn

LogMeIn was founded as 3 am Labs in 2003 in Budapest. Later, in 2006, the name of the company was changed to LogMeIn. As soon as the company was founded, it started its growth through acquisitions. It first acquired Hamachi VPN product. In 2009 the company had its first IPO on NASDAQ. The company started to merge cloud computing with its products in 2011 and acquired Pachube. The merger resulted in the launch of IoT services under the brand name Xively.
In 2012, LogMeIn acquired Bold Software, and in 2014, it overtook the operations of Ionia Corp and Meldium. The company launched one of its revolutionary products, Rescue Lens, in 2015. The software provided video assistance to the customers on iOS and Android devices. The same year, LogMeIn also acquired the password management software LastPass for a sum of $110 Million. It also had a merger with Citrix that to acquire the rights of GoTo Family in 2016. In the following years, the company acquired names like Nanorep (2017) and Jive Communications (2018).
In August 2020, Francisco Partners and Elliott Management Corporation acquired LogMeIn. This also led to the delisting of the company from NASDAQ, and it became a private company.

The CEO At LogMeIn

William R (Bill) Wagner is the current CEO of LogMeIn. He has got a B.A. degree in History from Lafayette College, as well as an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of Business. In 1998, Wanger joined AT&T as the Marketing Director. He then started to work as the Chief Marketing Officer at Fiberlink Communications. In 2006 Wanger joined Vocus as the Chief Marketing Officer and later became the Chief Operating Officer of the same company. In April 2013, he became the President and Chief Operating Officer of LogMeIn and then was promoted to CEO in 2015. Wanger is also a member of the board of directors of companies like ChurnZero, Akamai Technologies, and BUILD Boston.

DocuSign

DocuSign – An US-based Software Company Famous For Its e-Signature Service.

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DocuSign is a famous American company that is based in San Francisco, California. The company provides DocuSign Agreement Cloud that allows various organizations to manage electronic agreements. And, as a part of its cloud service, DocuSign also offers e-Signature so that the users can sign electronically on different devices. The company was founded in 2003 by three founders, Court Lorenzini, Tom Gonser, and Eric Ranft.

About DocuSign

DocuSign provides worldwide services and its products are used in more than 180 countries by 1 million customers approximately. US ESIGN Act and the European Union’s eIDAS regulation both approves the digital signature produced by DocuSign. The CEO of the company is Daniel Springer. DocuSign became a public traded company in 2018 when it filed its first IPO. Former CEO Keith Krach was the largest individual shareholder of the company at the time of IPO. Other major shareholders are Sigma Partners, Ignition Partners, and Frazier Technology Ventures.

Founding Story

In 2003, Tom Gonser came up with the idea of DocuSign when he was working for NetUpdate. Tom founded NetUpdate in 1998 and he served as the CEO of the company back then. Throughout the journey of NetUpdate, the company has acquired several companies and among these companies, DocuTouch was a start-up. This company was a Seattle-based start-up that provided e-Signature services.

DocuTouch received $4 million in funds from Timberline Venture Partners, Bill Kallman, and Jeff Tung. When NetUpdate acquired DocuTouch, Timberline invested another $1 million in the company. The company also held various patents for web-based digital signatures and collaboration. Tom Gonser wanted to establish the e-Signature start-up as a different company and hence with the support of Court Lorenzini, they purchased the assets of DocuTouch from NetUpdate and started DocuSign. After establishing the company, Gonser left NetUpdate to focus full-time on his new start-up.

DocuSign
Image source: cloudinary.com

History of Company

After buying out DocuSign from NetUpdate, the company began its sale in 2005. zipLogix was one of the first customers of the company as it integrated the DocuSign e-Signature to its real estate virtual forms. The e-Signature of DocuSign became a very convenient service especially for court-based events like mock trials and encrypted audit logs. When the company was founded, Court Lorenzini became the CEO of the company but he stepped down in 2007 both as CEO and Chairman of the Board. He took his role as Executive Vice President of Business Development.

Matthew Schiltz replaced Lorenzini in early 2007 and he served as the CEO of the company until 2010. Till this time, the headquarters of the company was based in Seattle but when Steven King became the new CEO of the company it was shifted to San Francisco. In June 2010, DocuSign expanded its services to phone-based authentication including for both iPhone and iPad. It named the e-Signature service as e-Signature Transaction Management. The growth of the company truly escalated during this period as DocuSign alone was responsible for 73 percent of the total SaaS-based e-Signature market.

Recent Years

The massive growth of the company attracted many new investors including Scale Venture Partners that led a funding round and raised $27 million. In 2011, the company opened a new office in San Francisco that today has become the headquarters of the company. It also opened a new office in London in the same year. In 2012, DocuSign signed a deal with PayPal to carry out transactions with DocuSign Payment. After this joint partnership with PayPal, the company also entered into joint ventures with Google Drive and Salesforce.com.

In mid-2012, a report in Business Insider showed that the majority of the Fortune 500 companies have signed up for using DocuSign. In the last couple of years, DocuSign has acquired two companies, Spring CM and Seal Software. In 2016, the company ranked 3 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list. The company hired a new CEO in 2017, Daniel Springer.

Daniel Springer – CEO of DocuSign

Daniel Springer has 30 years of experience in leadership and innovation across the SaaS industry. Before joining DocuSign, Daniel served as the Chairman and CEO of Responsys and prior to that, he worked at several other companies including Modem Media, Telleo, NextCard, and McKinsey & Company.

Constellation Software

Constellation Software – A Multinational Conglomerate That Acquires And Builds Software Companies.

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Constellation Software is a Canadian-based diversified software company. The headquarters of the company is based in Toronto, Ontario. In 1996, a former venture capitalist, Mark Leonard founded Constellation Software Inc. The main idea of the company is to buy exceptional and good businesses in their respective verticals based on a few criteria. After the acquisition, CSI studies the history of the company to help it grow and become the number one player in the market. It helps the good businesses become exceptional and the exceptional businesses have consistent growth and profitability.

About Constellation Software

Founded in 1996, CSI is a public traded company and is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The company went public in 2006 and it is also a constituent of the S&P/TSX 60. Currently, CSI has 6 operating segments and the company server globally with 16,000 employees. The annual revenue of the company is over $3 billion. CSI acquires companies in various fields ranging from software businesses to construction companies.

Acquisition Criteria of CSI

The companies that are selling their business units or the entire company to CSI can be due to various reasons. Maybe the companies find a new interest in a different sector or reasons of health, estate planning, etc. But, the main idea of CSI is to hold the status of an exceptional company and run it following its past. And, in case of a good company that CSI acquires it tries to understand the factors which have hindered it from becoming an exceptional company.

Constellation Software
Image source: globenewswire.com

Business Strategy

The main target of the company is to acquire as many good and exceptional companies as possible and hold them back for a long time. CSI was founded in 1996 and since then it has acquired around 500 companies. CSI focuses on a lot of sectors for acquiring the top market players from each sector. It has its main interest in vertical market software companies that create industry-focused software. Depending on the history of the company, past growth, profitability, and acquisitions, CSI takes a decision. It also buys companies that haven’t made significant growth but show huge potential.

The business strategy of CSI has proved to be very impactful for the growth of the company. The value of its stocks has increased to 30 folds since it filed IPO. Most of the acquisitions of CSI are small, i.e., ranging below $5 million. One of the biggest acquisitions in the history of CSI was acquiring Acceo Solutions in January 2018. The deal was closed at $250 million. In recent years, CSI experiences very tough competition in acquiring companies. The main competitors in the market are private equity and hedge funds. CSI generates most of its revenue from the US (52%) followed by Europe and Canada.

Operations Of Constellation Software

There are six operating segments of CSI. The first segment is Volaris Group which focuses on buying software businesses in various sectors (finance, education, agriculture, etc). The second is Harris Computer Systems which mainly focuses on serving the public sectors and it includes utilities, education, and healthcare. The third one is for the hospitality and construction sector and it is called Jonas Software. Under this segment, CSI has 70 companies. The fourth segment is Vela Software which focuses on the industrial sector and especially on oil and gas manufacturing companies. Perseus Operating Group is the fifth segment and it focuses on pulp and paper business and real estate. Last but not least is the Total Specific Solutions which focuses on the UK and Europe-based software companies.

About Mark Leonard – Constellation Software

Mark Leonard is a billionaire and an entrepreneur who started CSI in 1995. He is currently President and Chairman of the Board in CSI. Mark went to the University of Guelph and the University of Western Ontario. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Mark worked as a bounder, mason, wind energy researcher, and some other jobs.

BMC Software

BMC Software – An American Software Company Founded By Former Shell Oil Employees.

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BMC Software is an American company and it is one of the leading developers and providers of independent system software. The company’s headquarters is based in Houston, Texas, and has several offices both in the state and overseas. BMC Software operates worldwide and some major markets include Tel Aviv, Israel, Germany, France, Indian, and Singapore.

The company mainly offers Software as a Service (SaaS) and on-premise software and services. It has a great impact on today’s cloud computing and IT management and automation sector. BMC Software is a privately held company and it generates annual revenue of more than $2 billion. It has around 6,000 employees and made many significant acquisitions between 1994 and 2000.

The Founding Story of BMC Software

The three founders of BMC Software are Scott Boulette, John Moores, and Dan Cloer. All three co-founders were former employees of Shell Oil when they started working on this new project. They kept the name of the company after the initials of their surname. Moore got the idea of developing a new software when he worked as a programmer with Shell Oil. During those days, the software that dominated the market and business was mainly written for IBM mainframes. Moores wanted to develop a more efficient version of this software that would compress data streams and speed up the compression process.

He was successful in building the software and he named it 3270 Optimizer. This was the first product of BMC Software and to make this a huge success, Moores hired the best software developers and paid them generous packages. But this is also one of the reasons why profit margin was very low for the company. But, Moores brought in a very powerful team and within few years with innovative marketing methods, it started catching the interest of many venture capitalists.

BMC Software
Image source: wikimedia.org

Growth and Expansion

In 1982, a venture capitalist called Jacqueline Morby took interest in the company and gave Moores some direction on how to increase the profit. After four years, BMC started making 20 percent profit of the annual revenue and 30 percent of its total customers were international clients. In 1988, BMC Software announced its IPO and it was listed on NASDAQ. The business became very profitable and by the next year, the sale jumped from $93 million to $139.5 million.

During this time, BMC Software hopped into an acquiring spree and started with Trimar Software Systems Ltd and Trimar Software International Ltd. In 1991, the company acquired Integrity Solutions followed by Patrol Software in 1994. In 1996, it acquired two companies, namely, HawkNet and PEER Networks but the price was not revealed. In 1997, it acquired Data tools and in 1998 bought Boole & Babbage and BGS Systems. It acquired New Dimension Software in 1999 and Optisystems in 2000.

Privatization

In 2013, BMC Software announced that it was selling the company to a group of major private equity investments groups. The deal was closed at $6.9 billion. In September 2013, the process was finally complete and BMC became a privately held company. In 2018, BMC was acquired by a global investment firm, KKR & Co Inc.

John Moores – The Mastermind Behind BMC Software

John Moores is a famous American entrepreneur and philanthropist who is well-known as the founder of BMC Software. He went to Texas A&M University but dropped out and became a programmer at IBM. Later he went to the University of Houston and completed his bachelor’s degree in economics. Apart from co-founding BMC Software, he was also the lead venture capital financier for Peregrine Systems. After Moores founded BMC Software in 1980 he was the CEO of the company till 1987.

Ayman Sayed – CEO

In 2019, Ayman Sayed became the new president and CEO of the company. Before joining BMC Software, Ayman served as the president and CPO at a Fortune 500 company called CA Technologies. He also has prior work experience at Cisco Systems where he was given the position of senior vice president.

Xero

Xero – A New Zealand-based Cloud Software Platform For SMEs.

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Xero is a cloud-based software platform that was founded in 2006. It provides Software as a Service (SaaS) and it is a public company listed in the Australian Securities Exchange. Rod Drury is the founder of the company and Steve Vamos is the present CEO. Xero mainly develops accounting software and it is based in Wellington, New Zealand. Apart from the headquarters in Wellington, the company has two other offices in New Zealand. Xero’s products are sold by subscription and are used in more than 180 countries.

About The Company

In 2006, Rod Drury along with Hamish Edwards founded Xero. When they founded the company, it was originally called Accounting 2.0. With time company has grown beyond New Zealand and it has established offices in Australia, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Africa. In 2017, Xero crossed the mark of having 1 million customers worldwide. It has also landed more than one million subscribers in Australia and New Zealand. From 2006 till 2018, Rod Drury acted as the CEO of the company and he was placed by Steve Vamos in early 2018.

Xero
Image source: wikimedia.org

Origin Of Xero

Before founding the company, Rod Drury explored a lot of other opportunities in the entrepreneurial ground. He tried bespoke software development in Microsoft Access and SQL Server but it was sold off in 1999. Then he started a documentation management startup followed by building an RDBMS for Microsoft Exchange and selling it to Quest Software. Selling the software gave Rod capital for starting Xero. He was also one of the board members of Trade Me that was sold for half a billion US dollars. With the total capital he raised, he was ready to launch Xero.

Xero As a Public Company

The idea of opening a business for cloud-based accounting software clicked in Rod’s mind when he was working at Arthur Young (now part of Ernst & Young). So, eventually, he started planning and raising money to launch the company. In 2007, Xero became a public company and got listed on the New Zealand Exchange (NZD) with a $15 million IPO. For the first few years, the company mainly focused on expanding and strengthening its presence in the New Zealand market and then entered the Australian market and went public there in 2012. In 2018, the company removed its name from NZD and was only listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. After one year, Xero became the third most valuable publicly traded company from New Zealand.

Fundings

In 2009, Xero received funding of $23 million and it was led by Craig Winkler, founder of MYOB. In 2010, it raised $4 million from Valar Ventures, and again in 2012 raised $16.6 million from the same firm. Xero raised $49 million in late 2012 and the major investors were Peter Thiel and Matrix Capital. In May 2013, the valuation of the company became $1.4 billion on the NZE. In October 2013, the two main investors invested another $180 million and with this, the total funding received by company became $230 million. In 2015, a new investor, Accel provided funding of $100 million to Xero. The company bagged the award of the best hybrid deal by Finance Asia in 2018.

After Xero became a public company it acquired a series of businesses. In 2011, Company acquired Paycycle, an Australian online payroll provider, and next year it acquired Spotlight Workpapers. In 2018, Xero established a joint venture with the US payroll platform, Gusto and acquired a data capture solution company called Hubdoc. The company acquired an Australian startup called Waddle that does invoice financing. This year, Xero acquired two companies till now which are Planday and Tickstar AB.

About The Founder

Rod Drury is a famous entrepreneur based in New Zealand. He became famous after founding Xero where he also continued as the CEO till 2018. Rod went to Victoria University of Wellington and started his career with Arthur Young, an accounting firm. Apart from founding Xero, Rod has also co-founded Context Connect and AfterMail.

New Relic

New Relic – A Cloud-Based Software Company Specializing In Application Performance Management.

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In the 21st century, cloud computing has become a real catch in the IT industry. With large data to store securely and transfer between different employees in a company, cloud storage has become quintessential. Many existing businesses have expanded their solution range to provide cloud storage as a service and startups exclusively providing cloud-based software have also been established. New Relic is one such startup that develops and delivers cloud-based software. Lew Cirne established New Relic in 2008 which is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, United States.

About The Company

New Relic is a cloud-based software company that develops a range of innovative software to help different companies help their performance. With the help of New Relic software, a company can track the performance of its service, website, and application. This helps the companies to understand the problem and fix it more efficiently to create a better user experience. Apart from the real-time monitoring of the web and application data, the software also provides support for custom-built plugins. New Relic appointed its new CEO this year, Bill Staples who replaced Lew Cirne, the founder and former CEO of the company.

New Relic
Image source: solutionsreview.com

Success In The Second Attempt

In 2008, Lew Cirne founded the software company New Relic and he named it so after an anagram of his name. Lew Cirne, from a very young age, had an entrepreneurship niche and wanted to start his company. While he was in high school, he planned and attempted to start a company to productize a game but unfortunately, it wasn’t successful. Later, when he went to college at Dartmouth, he successfully landed a job at Apple. But, the fever of entrepreneurship still bugged him and he left Apple after three years.

Lew thought it will be better for him to join a small company and learn about the length and breadth of an early-stage startup. So, he joined a company called Hummingbird which then was a team of 300 members. Being part of a small company allowed him to explore other divisions of the business apart from engineering. After a couple of years, Lew successfully founded Wily but it wasn’t a full stop. On the search for new technology, Cirne ended up starting another successful startup, New Relic.

History of New Relic

After founding New Relic in 2008, the company hosted its first round of funding five years after and raised $80 million. Some of the major investors included Benchmark Capital, Allen & Company, Insight Venture Partners, Trinity Venture, Tenaya Capital, etc. After this funding round, the valuation of New Relic became $750 million. After receiving this fund, the company invested in launching Android and iOS native mobile apps for its software analytics platform. Next year, New Relic landed another $100 million funding from BlackRock Inc, Passport Capital, and Wellington Management. In late 2014, New Relic became a public company.

Last year, the company hired Bill Staples as the new Chief Product Officer whose responsibility of leading the product management team, engineering, and driving the company’s platform strategy. After Bill Staples joined the New Relic team, restructuring of the costing model took place which resulted in some layoffs. Only after a year of joining the company, Bill Staples got promoted to CEO and took the place of Lew Cirne.

About The Founder

Lew Cirne is a Canadian-American technologist and entrepreneur who is famous for founding Wily Technologies and New Relic. He majored in Computer Science from Dartmouth College and joined Apple straight after graduating. Being in Silicon Valley, his dream to become an entrepreneur was triggered. He realized he can barely teach himself any entrepreneurial skills by being part of such a massive company. So, he joined a small company called Hummingbird Communications and after two years founded Wily. He is one of those entrepreneurs who broke the myth that startups are not for post-thirty people.

Bill Staples – CEO of New Relic

Before joining New Relic as the CPO in 2020, Bill Staples had working experience in Adobe and worked for 17 years at Microsoft. In both companies, Bill led teams of a huge number of employees to create transformative products and implement innovative strategies.