(Updated) Portland-based Jive Software, an enterprise collaboration software company we have covered in the past is dreaming of an IPO, perhaps as early next year, CMO Sam Lawrence tells John Cook. The 90-person, six-year-old company is hoping to close out 2007 with revenues of about $17 million. Jive’s main competitor is Microsoft’s SharePoint.
PS: Sam Lawrence left a comment that points out I miss the nuance, mostly because of what I read on John’s blog.
That seems like an amazingly ballsy statement to make in terms of going public with just $17MM in revenues. Not that there’s a magic number every company should hit before they can go public, but that seems like a ridiculously low number given that they still haven’t proven there’s bright future in what they’re doing. For general public investors to justify putting any amount of money in, I would think there needs to be a relatively steady way of forecasting revenues and it seems like it absolutely doesn’t exist in this case.
Yup, that is why I brought it up. I think you and others can deduce pretty clearly that they need to spend some more time building up their revenue base. That said, I do know they seem to be doing terribly well as a software company.
Hey guys,
We do think there is room in the market for more public enterprise software companies and we certainly have those aspirations. I was asked by John Cook what our exit strategy was and my response was that we hoped that we’d be in a position to make that call by late next year. John’s blog reported this as a public offering that “could occur as early as next year.” Regardless, without predicting exactly when, it’s safe to say it’s certainly not “early next year” as Om, mentioned. 🙂
Cheers,
Sam Lawrence
Jive Software
Glad to hear it Sam. You need at least $30M in a software as a service (SaaS) model or $50M+ in a perpetual model.
btw- I’ve heard your software is very robust and liked. Nice!
Good luck!!!
Ive have also been hearing excellent things about your company. I currently use the software from Communiclique. I am very satisfied with their product. However , I would just like to say congratulations you guys seem to be doing very well.
Charlie,
We would like to thank you for the continued use of our product for your projects. For those readers who are not familiar with CommuniClique, the software was designed to make project management and collaboration an easier process for all organizations. We are offering a thirty day free trial period to give new users a chance to test drive the software at http://www.communiclique.com. We are confident it will make your business workflow more efficient and organized.
Thank You,
Andy Powers
CEO CommuniClique