RANDOM THOUGHTS: DARTH VADER
A news item said most Americans prefer Darth Vader for president over any known candidates in 2016. Former VP Dick Cheney immediately said he was willing to be the Dark Lord’s VP, but Vader shuddered when informed of the news. … Previously unknown dialogue from “The Skywalkers” an unsuccessful TV spinoff from the “Star Wars series”: “Luke, I am your father.” “Ah gee, now I know why you never came to career day.” And in an unfortunate situation, Vader is barred from passing through airport security when he won’t take off his signature helmet. … The guy sitting next to me said, “I always enjoy good night’s sheep.”
QLIK TECH LOSS RISES
Qlik Technology CEO Lars Björk was bubbly this week about new product introductions during the earnings conference call for the second quarter ended June 30. That includes this month's roll out of Qlik Sense Desktop, the first commercially available release from the QlikView.Next project. For all that, the loss rose to $10.2 million, 28-percent higher than the slightly more than $8 million in red ink for last year’s corresponding period. Sales rose only 22-percent to $131.6 million in the most recently ended period, up from $108 million a year ago.
FRESHBOOKS RAISES $30M FROM VCS
FreshBooks says it has raised $30 million in what it terms its first institutional venture capital round. And given Xero’s fundraising and plans for a IPO in the United States, it shows how eagerly investors are willing to bet on the low-end, online accounting marketing. You may remember that earlier this year, Paychex made an investment of undisclosed size in Kashoo. The funds raised by FreshBooks will be used to fuel growth, including the expansion of its work force from 150 to 400 by 2016. The round was led by Oak Investment Partners with participation from Atlas Venture and Georgian Partners.
ABILA UPDATES MILLENNIUM
Nonprofit software vendor Abila has introduced an update to its donor relationship management application, Millennium. The company has added Millennium Drive, an analytical feature that offers personalized dashboards and lets users access reports and Visual Analyzer pages, along with providing new search functionality. Drive offers a key tasks list, with the tasks shown in a daily, weekly and monthly calendar views.
NETSUITE READYING NEW INTERFACE
And yeah, yeah, it was a good quarter, but the big news from this week’s quarterly earnings webcast was that NetSuite will introduce a new user interface in 2014. “Later this year, we plan on rolling out our next generation interface,” said CEO Zach Nelson. “It will make NetSuite the easiest and most enjoyable business application to use anywhere.” The other thing notable was it seemed Nelson might avoid taking a whack at the competition. But what a relief, at 40.04 minutes into a 50.40-minute long event, Nelson talked about when companies are “ready to upgrade out their legacy stone age SAP or Sage implementation”.
FRESHBOOKS RAISES $30M FROM VCS
- Details
- Published on Friday, 25 July 2014 10:37
- Written by bobscott
FreshBooks says it has raised $30 million in what it terms its first institutional venture capital round. And given Xero’s fundraising and plans for a IPO in the United States, it shows how eagerly investors are willing to bet on the low-end, online accounting marketing. You may remember that earlier this year, Paychex made an investment of undisclosed size in Kashoo. The funds raised by FreshBooks will be used to fuel growth, including the expansion of its work force from 150 to 400 by 2016. The round was led by Oak Investment Partners with participation from Atlas Venture and Georgian Partners.
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NETSUITE READYING NEW INTERFACE
- Details
- Published on Friday, 25 July 2014 00:04
- Written by bobscott
And yeah, yeah, it was a good quarter, but the big news from this week’s quarterly earnings webcast was that NetSuite will introduce a new user interface in 2014. “Later this year, we plan on rolling out our next generation interface,” said CEO Zach Nelson. “It will make NetSuite the easiest and most enjoyable business application to use anywhere.” The other thing notable was it seemed Nelson might avoid taking a whack at the competition. But what a relief, at 40.04 minutes into a 50.40-minute long event, Nelson talked about when companies are “ready to upgrade out their legacy stone age SAP or Sage implementation”.
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XERO PLANS U.S. IPO
- Details
- Published on Thursday, 24 July 2014 03:55
- Written by bobscott
Cloud accounting company Xero plans an initial public offering in the United States for the year ending March 31, 2015. The company raised $150 million in capital late in 2013, largely from American investors, and you'd think these folks want their money back at some point. Xero is already public in Australia and New Zealand. With the company moving into an offering and the sensitivity involved in such endeavors, I was not surprised when an offered interview with Peter Karpas, CEO of Xero North America, did not produce a lot of new news.
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MICROSOFT'S NADELLA: DIFFERENT STYLE
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 23 July 2014 23:38
- Written by bobscott
Microsoft did its usual and reported a gazillion dollars in results for the year ended June 30. But that is not the most interest thing about the earnings webcast for the fiscal 2014 results. The thing that stood out is that CEO Satya Nadella participated in the event. And you may not think this is special – after all don’t CEOs take part in the earnings presentations? In the overwhelming number of cases, that’s true. But in Microsoft’s, it hasn’t been the practice. If former CEO Steve Ballmer was on any of the calls, I don’t remember and I started listening to them after the purchase of Great Plains in 2001, back when Bill Gates was CEO.
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The Editor
Bob Scott has been informing and entertaining the mid-market financial software community with his email newsletters for 10 years. And he has been covering this market through print publications for 18 years, first as technology editor of Accounting Today and then as the Editor of Accounting Technology from 1997 through 2009. He has covered the traditional tax and accounting profession during the same time and continues to address that as executive editor of the Progressive Accountant.
FrontPage Author
About the Author: Jennifer Wilson is co-founder and partner of ConvergenceCoaching, LLC, a leadership and marketing consulting and coaching firm that specializes in helping CPA and IT firms achieve success. Learn more about her company at www.convergencecoaching.com. |