Doug Lindroth tells us that he is not likely to forget the day that Google filed its S-1 registration statement simply because it was on the same one that semiconductor distributor Memec filed its own S-1.
Back in June 2004, Lindroth was CFO of Memec when the firm’s management opted to file a registration statement with the SEC while anticipating a midsummer IPO.
Read MoreHowever, by summer’s end, only one of the two tech companies would be public—and it wasn’t Memec.
“Google was the only tech company that ended up getting out that summer,” reports Lindroth, who notes that the more cyclical nature of Memec’s business made its management extra cautious, a trait that would ultimately lead the company to pull its S-1.
Nevertheless, the filing had already exposed Memec’s financial information to the light of day, catching the eye of some of the industry’s largest players, including distributor Avnet, Inc.—which would ultimately acquire Memec only 2 years later. –Jack Sweeney
Made Possible By
- Doug Lindroth discusses the changing landscape of software company valuation, emphasizing the need for balanced growth, operational efficiency, free cash flow, and positive earnings to attract investors.
- He shares his experiences, including the challenges faced during the dot-com crash, navigating the complexities of public accounting rules, and his transition to the role of CFO.
- The discussion highlights the importance of clear role definitions, specialized finance teams, and leveraging data to drive strategic decisions within the organization.
CFOTL: Tell us about Tealium … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Lindroth: Tealium is a Software-as-a-Service company. We believe that we really are the most trusted customer data platform in the industry. We connect customer data in real time on a global scale, connecting across Web, mobile, and offline. We have online and offline for the benefit of our customers, so that they can better connect with their customers. What all of this means is that our software helps to break down the silos that exist within enterprises.
“We pull all of the data out into one central place that we call the ‘data layer.’ From there, we’re able to federate this data across all of the different functional areas within a company.” –Doug Lindroth, CFO, Tealium
Within digital marketing, or overall marketing, you may have a Web team, a mobile team, an analytics team. All of these have different pieces of data about the customer because they have pulled it out of different software systems. We clean all of this up and then are the layer below all the of the software that we call UpStack that is enabling these customer interactions.
Read MoreWe pull all of the data out into one central place that we call the “data layer.” From there, we’re able to federate this data across all of the different functional areas within a company. This doesn’t have to be just in marketing. Now, everyone can have the same set of data. They may use it differently, but it’s a complete, whole set of data, the use of which really, really improves the end-customer experience as they’re working with our customer. Most of us have heard a lot over the past few years about digital transformations. Well, Tealium is a key enabling part of a digital transformation.
We have already pre-built more than 1,300 turnkey integrations to connect different applications in such a very easy way that our customers are often able to do it themselves. A business person can do this. They don’t need detailed technical knowledge and they don’t need to go to IT or engineering to be able to make a connection because they need a piece of data that’s in a software package that they don’t have access to or can’t easily get because they can’t write code to get it.
jb
Tealium | www.tealium.com | San Diego, CA