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Alan Treffler

Founder and CEO, Pegasystems · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveengineerauthorathlete@AlanTrefler ↗LinkedIn ↗pega.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Trefler founded enterprise software company Pegasystems in 1983 to automate business operations and customer engagement, and he later authored the business book Build for Change. A competitive chess master prior to his tech career, he tied for first place in the 1975 World Open Chess Championship while an undergraduate at Dartmouth College.

11statements → 5claims → 5claims resolved → 60%fully supported → 4.18/5average certainty → 1.73/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

3 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 2 opinions · 3 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Alan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Treffler says an outside president stalled Pegasystems under $100M in revenue
“I for five years, brought in a president. And we actually learned a lot. I was able to really step back, but they weren't able to get it up over a hundred million. We were stuck there for several years. When I came back, I learned enough and we made enough cha…”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 5:51 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Pegasystems went public in 1996 with a $32M revenue run rate
“We had a massive run rate the day we went public of thirty-two million.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 7:00 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
63% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Alan Treffler on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Alan Treffler said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Treffler admits excess IPO capital caused bootstrapped Pegasystems to waste money
“And the trouble with that is obviously introducing too much public market money into a firm that's accustomed to boot scrapping entirely and accustomed to a different go-to-market model led us and gave us the opportunity to frankly waste a lot of it.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 7:26 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Opinion
Treffler claims traditional CRM systems fail when real back-end execution is required
“I guarantee you all the sexy stuff sooner or later has to get real. And that's where these CRM systems all fall apart.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 9:59 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Opinion
Treffler claims no companies are currently making money in distributed edge IoT
“But doing stuff, for example, IOT distributed on the edge across the shop floor, it's a good idea. It's going to happen. A lot of companies are in it. Don't see any of them making any money. I don't see that market Coming together soon.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 15:59 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Assertion Supported
Treffler says an outside president stalled Pegasystems under $100M in revenue
“I for five years, brought in a president. And we actually learned a lot. I was able to really step back, but they weren't able to get it up over a hundred million. We were stuck there for several years. When I came back, I learned enough and we made enough cha…”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 5:51 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Insight
Treffler says ramping enterprise sales reps for mission-critical software takes 14 months
“In our business, given, given we're selling mission critical capabilities in a lot of cases it can take double that.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 18:18 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Insight
Treffler warns acquiring companies solely for customer bases creates product confusion
“I'm not as much of a fan of buying customer bases because usually when you buy a customer base, you just give yourself a lot of confusion in terms of you know, which software you're going to offer there.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 18:56 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Disclosure
Treffler funded Pegasystems with family loans and a $500K life insurance policy
“I had to borrow money from family. And one of the first things I did was take out a 500,000 dollar term life and policy on myself.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 2:56 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Assertion Partly supported
Pegasystems took 24 years to reach $100M in revenue before accelerating
“Well, you know, the way I describe the company is we became an overnight success after 24 years. So it took 24 years. To hit a hundred million in revenue, and then obviously the business has really been clipping along since then.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 4:43 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Assertion Contradicted
Pegasystems went public in 1996 with a $32M revenue run rate
“We had a massive run rate the day we went public of thirty-two million.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 7:00 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Assertion Supported
Treffler explains Pegasystems' $160M acquisition of predictive analytics technology in 2010
“So when we, for example, made a build versus buy decision in 2010 to bring in what I still think are absolutely top of market predictive and adaptive analytics, we actually, you know, bought a company for a hundred and sixty million bucks, and then we spent tw…”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 9:25 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"
Assertion Supported
Treffler says GM OnStar's crash response system runs on Pegasystems software
“We have Software that does IOT, for example, for GM, GM OnStar. If a GM car hits a tree, it calls a Pega system.”
Alan Treffler Oct 25, 2018 ▶ 15:12 1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success"

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
1188 Pega About To Hit $1B in ARR as 30+ Year "Overnight Success" Oct 25, 2018 12m
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