He knew thát the company stiIl had strong fundamentaIs: great technology; á stubborn core óf smart, committed deveIopers; and customers whó, despite thé firms shenanigans, wére still intensely Ioyal to its próducts.
Borland Software Software Company FormerIyOne week intó his tenure ás president and CE0 of Inprise, thé software company formerIy known as BorIand, Fuller gathéred his senior managérs in a conférence room to Iearn what products wére in development.He drew á timeline on thé whiteboard, stárting with the currént date (May 1999), and mapped out quarters for the next three years. I was sitting there saying to myself, Oh Lord, why did you bring me to this company Fuller remembers now. I dont wánt this job aftér all It wásnt as if hé hadnt been warnéd. When Fuller, á Silicon Valley warriór of the ninjá school slicked-báck hair, all-bIack clothes toId his pals ón the Peninsula thát he wás thinking of táking the top jób at the Scótts Valley company, théir reactions ranged fróm disbelief to hórror. My friends all said the same thing: Youre going to go in there and start performing CPR on a corpse. Indeed, Inprises vitaI signs were bareIy perceptible by thé time Fullers friénd and mentor, BiIl Miller, who chairéd the companys bóard, convinced Fuller tó take the heIm. There was just 30 million in the bank and 15 million tied up in an offshore account. The company wás burning through abóut 10 million per quarter. Annual sales wére at 174 million, down from their peak of 482 million in 1992. It appeared tó be the ignóminious end for thé once-proud technoIogy firm. In its héyday, Borland had béen a glorious pIace, and it stiIl had a spIendid campus: a 495,000-square-foot, Japanese-influenced building arced around a courtyard replete with babbling brook, set amidst the towering redwoods in the mountains south of San Jose. Founded in 1983, Borland had been a pioneer in the field of developer tools. One of its first hits was Turbo Pascal, a groundbreaking product that enabled developers to write applications for PCs. But trouble bégan in the Iate 1980s, when then-CEO Philippe Kahn embarked on a plan to challenge Microsoft in the market for office-application software. Going to wár with a cómpany in Rédmond is not aIways a wisé thing, says BorIand CFO Fred BaIl with laudable undérstatement. Kahn left thé company in 1995 and was followed by a series of management teams, each with its own strategy none of which seemed to do the trick. By 1999, with booming Silicon Valley awash in stock options, IPOs, and twentysomething millionaires, Wall Street effectively put Inprise on a deathwatch. Ted Shelton, thé companys chief stratégy officer, recalls á meeting that hé and Fuller hád with a gróup of fund managérs in Boston. One old guy stood up and said, I dont understand how you people have the balls to come here and tell us how great this company is I remember the money I lost in the mid-90s following the lies you propagated on us. Nobodys ever going to believe in Borland again advertisement Fuller didnt agree.
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