Turbonomic CEO and Bain Capital Managing Director Ben Nye corrects Nathan Latka's misunderstanding, clarifying that VMware remains cash-generative despite slowing revenue growth.
Opinion
Pure business model companies like Uber lack defensible long-term sustainability
“There are other companies that are pure business model companies. I don't think they have the sustainability and the worry you have there is ankle biters coming up through the ground. Think of, you know, Uber and Lyft as an example, great company, In Uber, but…”
Disclosure
Ben Nye became interim CEO after founder and external CEO clashed
“There were some issues between the founder and the CEO hire. And so that's, that was the time when the board made its decision and asked me to step in on an interim basis, which I agreed to.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
91% of Turbonomic customers achieve full payback within three months
“No, I think we're, look, 91% of our customers have a three-month full payback, so by definition, we've, you know, even with the price increases of the last four years we certainly feel that we've offered a huge consumer surplus to our customers.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Every startup Bain evaluated that directly competed with VMware died or sold
“And just to make the case roll the tape forward. And every one of those players that we looked at has either been acquired or gone.”
Disclosure
Turbonomic repurchases equity from departed employees to keep cap table active
“From time to time the company has retired passive shares. And there's typically a thing called an investor rights agreement that governs the way in which that is executed. And indeed we've done that as well, just to keep more equity and more active hands.”
Assertion Partly supported
194 million enterprise workloads ran across hybrid cloud in 2016
“There's a hundred and ninety four million workloads in 2016 between that which run on prem or premises and that which runs in the public cloud.”