Yesterday salesforce.com announced its intentions to acquire social performance management vendor Rypple and launch a new HCM (Human Capital Management) unit led by John Wookey.
A reference manager walks into a bar. The bartender rolls his eyes and says, "Let me guess, five of everything?" The manager says, "That was yesterday, now I need 20".
It's been more than 11 years since I co-founded Eloqua, today one of the leading global marketing software companies, as a naïve 26 year old consultant. I've been out of the company since 2007, now run under the capable stewardship of Joe Payne, so I have had some time to reflect on it. There is a lot to that story which I may get into in future posts, but I want to focus on the early mission and insights that the three co-founders had back then, and how those remained invariant even as the product and target market changed considerably.