From my perspective, a lot has happened in the past week since my last post.  Yesterday, I finished with the second “Board meeting” this week.  The first meeting was centered around fleshing out the DevCo operating organization, from development through marketing and sales.  We also discussed budgets and expenses.  Throughout a lot of these meetings you hear terms about “R&D spend,” “revenue/expense models,”  “growth strategies,” and several others.  I just sit and listen to the discussions that ensue around these various “terms.”  There was also some discussion about the team that would take on marketing and manage sales.  There’s a couple of terms you may recognize… although they may be strange in the “Delphi” context ;-).

 

The second meeting was far more interesting.  In this meeting we began to present and articulate the overall DevCo growth strategy.  It was actually rather interesting to watch the DevCo board throughout this presentation.  The first part was simply laying out ideas to further invigorate the Delphi, C++Builder, JBuilder, and Interbase markets.  While these were showing solid growth numbers, the board seemed a little apprehensive. 

They were saying, “That looks good, but to really attract the type of investor you’d like, we need to see some growth strategies.  You need to be solid and confident as you present these to the investors.” 

We, the DevCo leadership, smiled. 

Michael then said, “It’s coming.  You’ll see it on the next slide.”  

That was when Tod began looking ahead in the copy of the presentation and exclaimed with excitement in his voice, “How do you get to that number?!”

As we proceeded to present the ideas, the board began to perk up.  They shifted in their chairs, leaned forward and immediately the tone of the meeting began to brighten.  Suddenly, ideas on how to better organize and present these ideas began to take shape as the board started to provide even more feedback.

One board member said, “One of my buddies heads up company XXXX, and you guys should really talk with him for some advice.”

Then other board members chimed in and said things like, “You should also look at company XXXX since they did something very similar in the XXXX space!”

It continued like this throughout the rest of the meeting.  Once the formal part of the meeting was over, we had some lunch served since the meeting was over the lunch hour.   As we were sitting down to eat, Tod comes over to Michael and myself and says, “One of the things we did at XXXX was….  You might want to think about incorporating that kind of model into this.”

It was great to see that we'd engaged the execs at that level.  We now need to continue to define and refine the ideas to present as compelling of a story to the investors as possible.  Listening to the advice and guidance from the DevCo BoD will be critical in making this all happen.

 

Just to re-iterrate that one of my intentions is to keep the community informed that we're still running full tilt to make this work.  Another reason is to continue to highlight that and express that the existing Borland management is committed to make sure this is a win-win scenario.  Of course Borland wants to maximize their return in this.  I want folks to understand that in order to do that we have to make this business as attractive as possible for the type of investor we're looking for.  I think that is a key point.  It is in the best interest of all involved that we get the right buyer, in whatever form they take.