Deelip.com

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

This or That

Ralph Grabowski on UpFront.eZine: "When I run some rough numbers, I can see why SpaceClaim needed a second round of financing. 63 employees x $100K each = $6.3 million expense; 500 licenses x $1700 = $0.85 million income; burn rate = $6.3m - 0.85m = $5.45 million."

Al Dean on MCAD Online: "Sales are moving ahead and I’m told are ahead of first year projections."

I think it is quite obvious that one of them has not got it right.

posted by Deelip Menezes at 9:02 AM

3 Comments:

  • Deelip, what exactly are you saying? Because Ralph ran some made up numbers and hotched them all together in a quasi-mathematical equation, that I'm wrong? Where's the basis for the figures?

    You seem to have more than a few issues with the traditional press - there's been an underlying current in a lot of your posts and it bothers the shit out of me. Because we're employed by a publishing house, spend weeks on end talking to vendors to look at their products, their services, their offerings, does that mean that we're some how biased? that we don't report correctly.

    I know a lot of the people at SpaceClaim and I trust what they tell me, otherwise it wouldn't appear in print or online - if you have a problem with that, fine - just don't pretend that other media outlets are somehow better informed or more impartial.

    You held up CADCAMNET as a paragon of virtue recently, purely because its funded by reader - something I disagree with whole heartedly. The fact that its paid for by the reader doesn't mean its any more accurate. Who do you think the subscriptions come from? from the engineering community? yes, sure. But also a lot of it is subscriptions from vendors.

    So, if the content is "tailored to suit the people paying for it" but a proportion of 'those' paying for it are vendors, where's your argument gone?

    The whole point, from my perspective, is to give the reader information about how products, technology and services work, to give them information on which to base their purchasing or adoption decisions. and yes, to encourage them to move to 3D-based technology and do more with that rich source of data once they get there. We do it for free, so that anyone, and I mean anyone, can use that information as they wish.. and they do - I've run into people in Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, China, all over Eastern Europe, where information is scarce and they read our content vis google translation - because they don't have access to anything else. If I charged them to read it, would the content differ? No.

    That's the funny thing, if I'd have put thoughts into a blogger template, used times new roman and unlicensed images, filled my content with poorly constructed witticisms and hopeless outdated information, then you'd probably consider it to be part of the web 2.0 revolution.

    Take the CoCreate acquisition. Everyone's talking about Direct Modelling and how PTC are adopting it. What everyone misses is that this deal is about other things, outside of a modelling technology that's practically on its knees.

    Its about PTC's consistently poor performance in Japan, the fact that it has acquired a user base that's comfortable with a product range who's rate of development that has flatlined (so its cheaper to maintain and still retain the same revenue stream).

    Knee jerk Reaction? Damned right it is.

    Al

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 3:56 PM, December 04, 2007  

  • Just one question. If everything was so rosy at SpaceClaim, then why are they turning things upside down. See my last post "SpaceClaim Changing Direction - Finally" (http://www.deelip.com/2007/12/spaceclaim-changing-direction-finally.html)

    By Blogger Deelip Menezes, At 4:10 PM, December 04, 2007  

  • I actually welcomed Ralph's financial analysis, rough as it may have been, because he attempts to evaluate the viability of the vendor. There has been an extraordinary amount of material written about SpaceClaim in the industry press but it may be all for naught if the company will not be around long enough to gain traction.

    Also, I don't see any "issues with the traditional press" in this post but even if there were some in other posts, I would welcome criticism of the press as healthy and a chance for us to evaluate the job we are doing for our readers.

    In defense of Deelip, I have found his posts about the industry very insightful. Also, as a software developer, he can offer a perspective us journalists would not normally be able to provide.

    By Blogger rtara, At 1:34 AM, December 06, 2007  

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