A year ago, first class was my second home. Now I’m collecting cans for the recycling deposits. Well, I’m not quite there yet. But I’m fast becoming a poster boy for downward mobility.
And while the headlines scream of an economic miracle of high growth, low inflation and a happy, fat middle class, some of us techno-types are looking to the family dog as a potential source of protein. For every Silicon Valley, 20-something multimillionaire singing easy from options and IPOs, a whole other crew of us find our lots – at least temporarily – on a more precarious, rocky path. And not, in many cases, because job performance was bad or because personal and company cultures clashed, but because of the simple fact that the technology being sold just didn’t make the grade.
Techno Wonder
Every day brings a new wrinkle to the unfolding of information technology wonder. Someone else is offering a new service on the Web. Artificial intelligence narrows the daily information onslaught down to a manageable deluge. Data mining, information analytics, collaborative filtering, and a host of other buzzwords, catch the imagination. But the march of progress allows for few laggards.
Some of us who had the bad luck, misfortune, or just plain inability to read the tea leaves, have found ourselves working for a company whose technology proved to be far from the cutting edge. Our product, yesterday’s marvel, fast became a has-been.
With an eye to IROs contemplating a position in risk-prone technology-based industries, the small-shop IR agency too dependent on one client, or the European reader fearful of the Americanization of business in Europe, here’s my personal tale of life in the stressed out 1990s.
You’ll need to supply the mournful background violins yourself.
Traveling the Globe
For many years – close to a decade in fact – I was a marketing and PR consultant to a company in the online information business. I reported to the CEO, and spent a fair amount of time traveling the globe with him. The company was among the first to gather articles from newspapers and magazines (this one included) for aggregation into an electronic reservoir, through which subscribers could search for competitive news, industry reports, and more.
In the beginning, online was mostly the domain of the professional searcher, such as corporate librarians and independent information brokers. They paid handsomely just for the privilege of logging on, whether they found what they needed or not. The invoices went out, and the checks kept on coming in. This consultant got paid well for all the background noise made, direct mail pieces dropped, roadshows managed, and news clips piled up.
Expense accounts were rarely an issue. Let’s go to a conference in Sydney? Hey, no problem. Life was easy. Looking for other clients was something that, well, never had all that much urgency. Like Mrs Thatcher’s once bold prediction for the Tories, now understood as hopelessly naive, we would just go on and on and on.
Webbed Out
Then along came the World Wide Web (or more precisely, the mass commercialization of Web browsers) and with it the ability for end-users – in this case, corporate executives – to go online from the office desktop. They saw the kids at home playing with America Online, and woke up to the business power of online.
On a larger scale, companies transformed themselves from up-and-down hierarchies to networked enterprises. Traditional business functions became obsolete. Changes in technology allowed information that once flowed vertically – from the worker up to the boss and then back down again – now to flow horizontally, eradicating the need for whole levels of information intermediaries. Ask any of the 8 bn downsized, right-sized, and capsized middle managers about this phenomenon. But where were those of us in the old business information industry? In my case, headed to an abrupt upheaval.
The company that paid me a reasonably handsome fee each month did make a multi-million dollar effort to re-engineer itself. It invested in a start-up to push information into corporate networks, acquired another company that published ‘on demand’ briefing reports and, most dramatically, spent a lot of money to create a new online service that the propagandist (that’s me) promised would be a first for the mass audience of business professionals.
Except we forgot something. Few potential subscribers, except for our core following of corporate librarians (themselves a dwindling, disintermediated group), wanted to deal with an online service that wasn’t on the Internet. Sales plummeted. Trips to Sydney were no longer on the agenda.
Then late last year, the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan. Another company in the information business, but serving different market niches, acquired my long-time anchor client. Its goal was to make a move into the corporate market, and they thought that all the technology and customer ties in place would be a head start.
No shortage of this magazine’s readers have been on the giving and receiving end of less-than-friendly acquisitions, so this part of the tale might not seem that novel. But the wholesale lay-offs, the attitude of the conquerors vanquishing the wretched defeated, did not make for a particularly rosy work life. The CEO was out the door by noon on the first day of new ownership, and many of my other long-time colleagues soon followed. Everyone else felt like Rome’s slaves marching to the beat of Caesar.
Within a few days of the acquisition, I found myself hooked into a conference call with the CEO, senior marketing executive, and PR person at the acquiring company. ‘We’re going to honor your contract because we can’t figure out a way to get out of it,’ said one rather pompous executive. Talk about warm and fuzzy management.
Out the Door
Less than a year later, the marketing guy, along with many other senior executives of the acquiring company, were themselves fired in a mass pogrom. Seems they had so severely botched the takeover of my client that their turn arrived to meet the executioner. And their big move into the corporate market was canceled.
A year ago, my client had 250 employees in one UK and three North American offices. Today, less than 20 remain, and they will soon be gone, too. What was once a well-known name in the online world will soon be forever lost in the annals of forgotten companies. There’s more.
The ex-CEO of my former anchor client earlier this year invited me to help him start a new venture, this time in the arena of push technology. Images of steady paychecks and a growing equity stake (not to mention a revisit to my favorite Sydney watering hole) danced in the head.
So the family was uprooted from a comfortable northeastern life to the new venture’s home base in South Florida. Old house sold; new one purchased. Tearful goodbyes to friends. New clients jettisoned.
But the dream was not to be. For reasons that the lawyers suggest not be articulated here, the venture capital for the start-up was not secured. The company proved to be stillborn. My would-be partner is about to move to a COO spot in California.
Are you misty-eyed yet?
Don’t be. None of us has an option but to move forward, and I’m no different. But this story may prove to be a tale of caution for anyone seeking a career in technology.
The moral? Once it was enough to do your job. Today, that’s not good enough. Now you’ve got to keep an eye on the company’s relevancy in the marketplace. And be prepared to jump at the slightest whiff of obsolescence. Because being a big shot doesn’t last forever.
