Download The CDC Story and The PleaseTech Story

The CDC Story

CDC Solutions Ltd (initially Computerised Document Control Ltd), was my first company. In the book's foreword I allude to the back story. The appendix documents the CDC story at a high level.

The CDC story is the stereotypical ‘game of two halves’. The first half (1994 to mid-1998) covers the early days in which it was a struggle for survival in which the company gradually became a sensible, profitable operation. The second half (mid-1998 onwards) is the post venture capital investment period. This half features a fundamental change in approach in that profit became a bygone objective and it was all about burn rate and growth.

All of this took place in a rapidly changing environment during the height of the dot-com boom. I’ve tried to make sense of it covering timelines and pertinent market developments.

The CDC Story is ultimately a success story. It is true that the company didn’t grow at anywhere near the crazy rate of the silicon valley companies of the era or even its main competitor but, in European terms, it was up there at the top of the growth rankings for private technology companies. Furthermore it was one of the few companies to retain its value and deliver a return to the VCs (and it's original shareholders) in the post dot-com bubble period.

I hope you find it of interest. Download The CDC Story Here .

The PleaseTech Story

The PleaseTech Story is considerably less complex than The CDC Story but covers twice the number of years. There were no external investors to consider nor was the macro technology environment in the process of a step change, with the Internet firmly established. We did however have to weather the after-effects of the dot-com boom and bust and the 2008 financial crisis.

The early 2000s was not an ideal time to start a software company. In November 2003, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, noted that ‘the San Francisco Bay Area has been battered by the information technology (IT) downturn’ . No technology vendor was having a good time and the downturn was global. IT budgets everywhere were severely restricted. Businesses were not spending without a very defined need and a very clear return on investment.

It was into this environment that Kcentrix Software (later to become PleaseTech) was born. The birth being the result of my impulsive acquisition of the assets of a bankrupt software company!

The PleaseTech Story charts the transition from the two archive boxes of patent applications, user manuals and CD-ROMs I’d acquired, into a going concern eventually selling it's software all over the world. Once again there were two separate phases. The pre-PleaseReview phase (2002 – 2004) and the post-PleaseReview phase (2005 onwards). Given that these phases covered two completely separate products and markets, it was in many ways the equivalent of having two separate start-ups.

I’m not certain I’d recommend starting a company on the basis of the assets of a bankrupt software company - although it seemed like a good idea at the time. Despite the lows and highs, the story has a happy ending with the announcement, via the London Stock Exchange, on 23rd March 2017 that PleaseTech Ltd was to be acquired by Ideagen Plc.

I hope you find it interesting. Download The PleaseTech Story Here .