An Insight from Kurt Vonnegut
"True terror..." [Click on title to read more.]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 26 February 2010
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M&A Poem
Negotiation
Cheap buyer insults seller
Angry seller screams
Negotiation
Buyer wins seller wins joy
Problem found cannot close
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 31 December 2009
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Make sure you understand the question before you answer
We almost lost a deal in LOI recently when a small thing turned into something pretty big. [Click on title to read more.]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 16 December 2009
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What did Watson mean?
A while ago I posted the founder of IBM, Thomas’ Watson’s comment “I think there's a world market for about five computers.” [Click on title to read more.]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 11 November 2009
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The World Market for Computers
"I think there's a world market for about five computers."
Thomas Watson (Founder of IBM)
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 14 October 2009
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Financial Planning and Cloud Computing
Last month on the 3rd anniversary of the launch of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon, said... [Click on title to read more.]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 15 September 2009
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"Who knew?" moments
Software technology is interesting, there’s lots of near rocket science stuff out there. [Click on title to read more.]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 19 August 2009
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Needed: A clear competitive edge
I sat through an interesting presentation by an executive of a new Corum client. I do that a lot lately. Corum is busy with new clients. The interesting thing... [Click on title to read more.]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 12 August 2009
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Searching for capital
I was invited to participate in a group to meet in Bend, Oregon with Senator Wyden to talk about his recently passed legislation to fund a Venture Catalyst position for EDCO - Economic Development of Central Oregon. The idea is to fund…. [Click on title to read more. ]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 24 July 2009
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Forecasting as you go
I’ve been helping, but mostly watching, one of my clients go through the process of forecasting revenue for a financial package intended for the reading pleasure of a potential buyer. He’s doing well, but.... [Click on title to read more.]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 17 July 2009
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Independence Day in a small town
I went to the Madras, Oregon, my adopted home town, 4th of July celebration today. It was a lot of fun. The kick off parade had horses a couple of goats, clowns, old cars, kids on farm wagons pulled by really big pickups, mostly sponsored.... [Click on title to read more.]
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 07 July 2009
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“The Edison Gap”
Have you seen the term “The Edison Gap.” I hadn’t, but I expect everyone else has. The phrase was coined by Francis McInerney, the managing director of North River Ventures in NewYork to describe the financial hole technology companies dig when they spend more on R&D than they get back in operating profits...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 03 March 2009
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Crisis always offers opportunity
“I live in mighty fear that all the universe will be broken into a thousand fragments in the general ruin, that formless chaos will return and vanquish the gods and men, that the earth and sea will be engulfed by the planets wandering in the heavens."...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 27 February 2009
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Financial news headlines
I was on the net this morning skimming financial news headlines – none of them good, when it occurred to me how often I don’t see a cash flow statement in the financial packages I get from my smaller clients. Our depressed economy is causing businesses across the board a lot of pain and software companies licensing software tend to have a pretty lumpy income...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 11 February 2009
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Aptonyms are the core of a lot of bad puns
I ran across a new word today – Aptonym. I wanted to share with you. Microsoft’s spell checker doesn’t know it either so I don’t feel too bad about my ignorance. What is an Aptonym you ask? An aptonym is the term used for "people whose names and occupations or situations have a close correspondence"...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 05 February 2009
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"Shop in your own closet!"
I was wandering around on the Internet this morning and ran across an article about saving money titled "Shop in your own closet!" about magazines. For some reason the title made me think about the people that work at Corum and in every company...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 30 January 2009
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Predicting professional success
I was reading a Malcolm Gladwell blog entry titled Teachers And Quarterbacks this morning. He made a comment I think is relevant to anyone hiring software developers. Gladwell, in part said “..what matters more than anything in predicting professional success is the quality of the learning environment that the quarterback is drafted into, not the quality of the experience he was drafted from.” ..
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 27 January 2009
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Time for new beginnings
The new year is upon us and it’s the traditional time for new beginnings. I’m involved in one here in Central Oregon where the nascent tech community is trying to get organized and, I assume by acclimation, I was asked to be the treasurer of our new group. I guess they figured since M&A guys have to deal with financials I could balance a checkbook...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 22 January 2009
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Technology will eventually supplant paper
I can’t remember what I was Googling for, but whatever it was I got sidetracked by a blog comment about the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News scaling back on home delivery. If I remember it was about that time the Chicago Tribune declared bankruptcy...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 20 January 2009
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Recognition of revenue
In a conversation today with one of our former clients, I was reminded that one of the most common accounting mistakes we see our clients make is the improper recognition of revenue: they collect money upfront for services they haven’t yet performed, and book the income then...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 13 November 2008
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Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and M&A
According to Gartner, 90% of e-commerce sites will use SaaS by 2013 and by 2011, 25 percent of new business software will be delivered as SaaS. It’s not hard to understand why this is happening and Nicholas Carr in The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google summed up SaaS’ appeal nicely by observing that corporate executives and...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 08 September 2008
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Keep In Touch – Whether you need to or not.
I’ve been exchanging emails with a woman who with her husband is starting a software business. Their attention today is on raising money to start the marketing process and build a business to sell a product he’s developed. I’ve been down this path and I envy them. It’s exciting and they have a world of possibilities ahead...click on title to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 04 September 2008
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Valuing a Software Business
By law licensed movers in Oregon can’t give you a firm price. They must estimate how much they will charge basing their estimate primarily on weight. In our recent move, two movers estimated from 9,000 – 11,000 lbs and the winner, who had the best credentials, moved 17,000 lbs, thus nearly doubling the moving cost. I wasn’t happy...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 28 August 2008
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Bad news is in the eye of the beholder
I was talking to a prospect this morning who was enthusiastically telling me about his software. It sounded good. He’s a great salesman and I love to dig into software, but what he was telling me wasn’t that helpful. Only in rare instances do we need or want to know much about the inner working and hidden mechanisms of the software our clients sell...click the title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 21 August 2008
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Commuting & Technology
We’re in our new home in Madras, Oregon and expect to put roots as soon as the boxes are out of the living room. Madras is not Portland. Population is about 6,500 and the high tech community in Central Oregon is pretty small. However, the Internet provides a long reach and my extension at Corum is still 204 so for me the difference is what I see out the window...click on title link to read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 11 August 2008
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Introduction
Hello to all. I'm Bill Montgomery a Senior Vice President with Corum and for a few days more living and working near Portland, Oregon. By the time you read this I'll have moved to central Oregon where I'll continue working deals for Corum. Central Oregon certainly isn't the center of the software world, but the Internet and a good airport make it easy to do the job and best of all...read more.
Posted by WilliamMontgomery, Senior Vice President on 31 July 2008
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