eRoom Technology focuses exclusively on providing Internet
collaboration solutions to the extended enterprise.
The eRoom digital workplace allows organizations to
quickly assemble a project team wherever people are
located and manage the collaborative activities that
drive the design, development and delivery of their
products and services.
The eRoom solution is used by more than 475 companies
such as 3Com, Arthur Andersen, A.T. Kearney, Bausch &
Lomb, Cisco, Compaq, Deloitte Consulting, EDS, Ford Motor
Company, GTE, Hewlett-Packard, Ketchum, KPMG, Morgan Lewis
& Bockius, Pfizer, Siemens and Solectron.
The Internet has blown out all of the traditional boundaries
the way we do business- creating the opportunity both
for tremendous freedom and for tremendous stress. For
companies, the Internet means learning to deal with increased
outsourcing, complex channel management, and increasingly
intimate customer relationships. For the people within
organizations, the new way of working means trying to
move faster, be more creative and meet higher expectations
- in cooperation with teammates, customers, and partners
that are sitting in offices around the world. The revolution
is on�.
We at eRoom are committed to helping innovative companies
and courageous people transform the way that they work
to take advantage of this opportunity. We're reducing
time spent on the road, sending and resending faxes,
and sitting in long, boring meetings. We're helping
corporations with offices that span the globe cross
geographical, cultural, and technological boundaries
to innovate, collaborate, negotiate, and transact. We're
part of marketplaces, exchanges, and horizontal and
vertical communities. Wherever people are meeting in
virtual space, we're there, providing them with a place
to get their work done.
And we've only just begun�.
Founders Jeffrey Beir and Pito Salas
share their stories.
Click on Jeffrey to read a narrative involving two guys,
some anxious VCs, and a dude ranch .
Click on Pito to find out how a good idea became real
and how every good idea contains a bad idea struggling
to get out.
A Narrative Involving
Two Guys, Some Anxious VCs, and a Dude Ranch
An interview with eRoom Technology's founder and CEO, Jeffrey
Beir
Q: What got you started thinking about how teams work
on collaborative projects?
In 1995, I was assembling a team inside of Lotus, where I
worked, to address some new business opportunity � the
usual crew of sales, marketing, engineering, some people
from international ... oh, and a half dozen companies
that were going to supply the tools the new business
required. And it suddenly struck me that even though
we had the best product on the market at the time, we
still were relying on email, losing documents, getting
totally out of synch. And the people who were at a physical
distance were inevitably second class participants.
We got the project done, of course, but it suddenly
seemed so much more painful to me than it had to be.
Q: So you quit Lotus in order to build a better way of
collaborating?
It wasn't that direct. There was a guy at Lotus I'd known
for ten years, Pito Salas. Brilliant technologist. And
a really bright, funny guy. We had never worked together,
but we had always enjoyed each other's company and recognized
that together we represented an interesting, whole pie:
Pito for technology and me for business. So, when I
left Lotus in early '96, Pito and I talked and found
out that we shared a vision of the kind of company we'd
like to work at. We wanted to build a company so cool
that you had to tell your friends about it. The business
would stand for particular values. We wanted the business
to focus on what got accomplished, not face time. Focus
on working when and where it best makes sense for you.
Focus on having fun and making money � the two going
hand in hand. Focus on having a real impact on people.
In fact, these values come straight from looking at
the best team experiences we'd had at work.
Q: So then you realized that you should build collaborative
software for teams...
Nope. Pito and I looked at a number of different ideas in
the spring of '96, ranging from online shopping to warehouses
for distributing online purchases to handheld devices
for ordering on the Web. But we kept coming back to
our own passion, which wasn't for mass market consumer
software so much as for building really interesting
business applications. We met up with a whole bunch
of venture capitalists in New England and tried out
the different ideas.
Q: I take it they didn't go wild for them.
We learned many ways that people can say no without actually
saying no: "Interesting idea. Has some real possibilities.
Good kernel, but needs development." Never "No," much
less "Get out of here, you morons." Those New England
VCs are a very courteous bunch.
So, Pito and I continued to kick around ideas until we thought
back to our experiences putting together teams. Suppose
you could bring to the Web the tools real teams need
to do real work? Web project spaces fully "furnished"
with everything you'd need. As soon as the idea surfaced,
we knew it had "legs." This was in April of '96. And
we were each about to take a one-week vacation. Pito
went first while I worked on a business presentation
trying to lay out the idea. And then I dropped off the
documents and went on my vacation.
I went to a dude ranch in Tucson with a business school
friend of mine. (He turned out to be a competitor in
later years.) When they make the movie about this trip,
it'll star Billy Crystal and Jack Palance. Anyway, the
question was: Should I commit to doing eRoom Technology
or sign up with an early stage company the venture guys
were pushing? After a week of riding horses and herding
cattle, with no connectivity and no newspaper, but with
a very sore butt, I realized that I wasn't going to
be happy unless I pursued the new idea. When I returned,
Pito and I looked at each other across the table and
he said the same thing. So, eRoom Technology was born.
Q: At that point, the browsers were pretty wimpy, so you
were ahead of your time. What trends did you see that
led you to think you could actually succeed with eRoom?
Four key trends. First, we saw that Web browsers wouldn't
remain simply screens for reading pages, but would become
an application platform. Second, the Web was bringing
businesses into closer communication with their partners
and customers, extending the enterprise. Third, the
Web was going to empower individual users. Fourth, we
thought the world would recognize that the fundamental
unit of work is the project � a rapidly assembled team
working towards an objective.
The Web was in a funny transitional state at that point.
Business had gone through the desktop revolution which
empowered users; they didn't have to go to IT to get
a spreadsheet done. But the Web was re-centralizing
the office, putting power into the hands of the few
who could hand-code HTML. We knew that users would flock
to an application that put them back in direct charge.
That became a fundamental principle of eRoom.
Q: How did the VC's react this time?
Pito and I went dark for a few weeks as we spec'ed out the
product and worked on the business plan. The venture
folks we'd been talking with before our vacations all
of a sudden noticed that we weren't returning their
phone calls. They sensed something was going on. I started
getting messages from the top four or five venture firms:
"What are you up to? What are you working on?" Our going
silent made them worry that they were being left behind.
In the begining of June'96 we started showing the fruits
of our labors. There was one fateful meeting on a Friday
afternoon when we presented it to a VC who fell in love
with it and asked us to come back on Monday to present
it to his partners. They ended up as investors. We showed
the plan to about six venture firms and got quick commitments
from four, and selected two early investors: Northbridge
and Matrix. As soon as that happened, we went into hyperdrive,
hiring engineers and the design team. We were building
and prototyping simultaneously.
Q: And you were off and running ...
Not yet. In September, we took a prototype to customers for
the first time. It was like when we first went to VCs:
"This is interesting. This might be useful." You know,
when you're taking your baby out and showing it to people,
no one says flat out that it's ugly. But there was one
close customer I had worked with in the past who was
never one to hold back. He told me over breakfast: "You're
going down the wrong path. You're going to get killed."
That was a turning point. Suddenly we realized that
we had an ugly baby. I came back from the trip and told
the engineers to stop in mid-project. We brought the
team together to figure out the right direction. It
was a scary time. But it turned into a defining moment
for the company. It really formed the twelve of us into
a team. We realized that our previous direction � building
a custom client � was one ugly baby. But changing direction
meant relying on our ability to juice up Web browsers
which at the time were, as you say, pretty wimpy. We
charged ahead. By the end of October we had more momentum
than before we pulled the plug. By July '97 we were
able to launch the beta at a trade show in San Francisco.
Q: And you were off and running ...
Actually, yes. We made a big splash, got a 30x30 booth in
the center of the floor, and unveiled eRoom. People
were walking by saying, "Where did you come from? I
never heard of you guys but it sounds like you're going
someplace." Big momentum for us. Great press. A lot
of great leads... and we were off running.
Q: And did you build the sort of company you and Pito set
out to build?
Yes, I think we did. It's what I'm proudest of.
Pito Salas, CTO and Senior
VP, on How a Good Idea Became Real and How Every Good
Idea Contains a Bad Idea Struggling to Get Out
Q:
So you and Jeffrey had what you thought was a good idea. But
ideas are cheap. How did you move forward with it?
VCs
like to ask �What�s your unfair advantage � what do you have
going for you that the 100 people we saw before you don�t?�
Other than our good looks and friendly disposition, our advantage
was that we thought we knew how to build great end-user software
to support collaborative projects. On the other hand, inside
of every good idea lurks a bad idea struggling to come out.
Q:
If the good idea was your commitment to building great user
software, what was the bad idea?
To
build an end-user application that took full advantage of
the web, we thought we had to build a fat client. A stand-alone
application. Not something that ran inside a web browser.
Q:That's a path that many, many companies were taking at
the time. How�d you find out that it was a bad idea?
This was in the middle of 1996, when we'd just hired the first
set of folks. We had a Visual Basic prototype which was pretty
cool, and this is what Jeffrey took with him to show off at
Agenda. It was a lucky break because he came back with a passionate
plea that we had to stop the presses and rethink things. And
he had good evidence to back it up.
So we went back to the drawing boards to examine what how
we could fulfill our vision, but create something far more
integrated with the web, which "ran in the browser." This
was not a simple problem considering, especially a few years
ago, browsers did HTML and that's all. How were we going to
create this awesome drag and drop UI [user interface] in HTML?
Not obvious!
Q: Java?
We
thought so at first. But, I had been doing quite a bit of
research and was not at all optimistic on Java's future, especially
as a client side language. And believe me we had gotten pressure
from the VC's every step of the way: �Why aren�t you using
Java? What's wrong with you?� A lot of soul searching and
debate, and we decided to stick with ActiveX as the way to
extend the user interface of the browser. And we were right.
Q:
So, are Java clients dead?
No,
no. Don't count Java out yet. The current industrial strength
commercial language, C++, is a dinosaur of ridiculous complexity
and unreliability which will be replaced sooner rather than
later, and believe it or not, Java is what will replace it.
It just didn't happen as quickly as some people wanted.
Q:
How strict was the division of labor between you and Jeffrey
in those early days?
Participating in the invention, design and creation of the
product was tremendously interesting and challenging ... but
it was just as much fun to participate in the creation of
the company: thinking through what kind of company we would
want to work at ourselves, how large, with what kind of people,
what kind of environment, what kind of policies even. All
along, we wanted to create a "company you would brag about
to your friends", a fun, productive place, a hot company that
created hot products, and a fun place to work. Early on we
captured this in our list of benefits, written, metaphorically
on the back of a grease stained napkin in a sub shop. On a
whim, I added this item to that list: "Every Leap Day (Feb
29) will be a company holiday."
For
the last 3 1/2 years, when explaining the benefits package
we covered that little item with a smile and shrug. After
all, who knows if a startup will last the almost four years
it would take to get to that Feb 29, 2000 Holiday. Well, probably
to the bewilderment of some of the folks who've joined eRoom
Technology in the last six months, this year we have a second
holiday just a week after Presidents Day, an extra holiday,
called Leap Day!