Why it takes 18 years to build enterprise PLM startup?

Fundamentally new technologies don’t become productive until a generation after their introduction. The time it takes people to learn how to use new tools and how to introduce these tools to businesses is very long. We have seen examples of adoption in personal computing, productivity tools, mobile devices and some other tools.

Few years ago, I elaborated on examples of engineering tool adoption, which usually takes 10 years to become productive and widely adopted from the initial idea to real production tools. Check my article – Why engineering technology has 10 years adoption cycle. I brought examples of GrabCAD and SmarTeam. In some way, MySmarTeam was an early example of portal solutions that came very early and didn’t survive because of various reasons. However, the idea was repeated by GrabCAD successfully, which allowed to GrabCAD to get to mass adoption in establishing public engineering portal for 3D files.

I shared my thoughts about recent money infusion in Aras Corp. here. PLM eco-system is buzzing about investment money flowing in the industry. However, industry should remember about adoption cycle.

Andy Rosens’ article in The Boston Globe  – This 18-year-old company is somehow one of Massachusetts’ hottest startups brings Aras Corp story. It has all you want – early mistakes, long development, ups and downs.

One of the Boston area’s fastest-growing tech startups has been in business for 18 years. Aras, which makes software to help businesses manage the development of complex products, is an outlier in other ways, too. Its headquarters lies far from the glimmering new construction of the go-go technology scene in Boston and Cambridge, in a quiet Andover office park off of Interstate 495.

To find an adoption way was a key element in the way Aras approached the market.

But the company’s trajectory wasn’t always so certain. Schroer founded the company with his wife, Karen Schroer, in 2000, just before the dot-com collapse. The company grew slowly, funding itself largely through its own sales before it attracted a few rounds of venture funding, starting in 2003.

Aras had a roster of mid-size clients at that point, but Schroer said the company needed to distinguish itself if it was going to succeed in a crowded market. So he decided on a new business model, essentially giving its open-source software away for free and charging money to support and adapt it to clients’ specific needs.

That decision was going to mean slower growth, Schroer said. He said his venture investors were not willing to wait around, so he made the painful decision to buy them out. (Kaiser says Greylock is willing to be patient with companies that have good plans.) The company, which had grown to about 50 employees, shed all but about a dozen.

Aras found their magic trick in a combination of free downloads and long adoption cycle combined with solid architecture, product decision and slow and steady growth. Read more here – What is behind Aras momentum? (https://beyondplm.com/2016/12/24/behind-aras-plm-momentum/).

What is my conclusion? There are lot of things to learn from Aras PLM development. One of the key takeaways is that enterprise software is sticky and to find how to compete with a status quo, existing platforms and people decision is hard. As Peter Schroer said, having more money and employees is much more fun, but next Aras challenge can be harder to achieve as company will be growing in a higher segments of PLM market. Did Aras found a highway and only need to go faster and become bigger? Great question. I’m sure Aras is different now. But, manufacturing is transforming and it can bring changes in the future adoption and development of PLM technologies. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased