Fortune’s John Fortt caught up with Dave Duffield, founder of PeopleSoft and co-CEO of Workday, to ask about life, work and why hitting an IPO is so important. Below is a key excerpt, but you owe it to yourself to read the whole piece.
Workday has raised $165 million, which is a big chunk of change. You guys started this company after losing another one in a takeover. You’ve made no secret of the fact that you intend to have an IPO one day. But why do that, when it’s become such a hassle?
Duffield: It’s a rite of passage. It’s a special thing to be a public company. It would make our job easier, frankly, during the sales process where a big Fortune 500 company comes in and they’ve already accessed all the financial information they’ll ever need. With a private company you’ve got to get into who’s investing and what’s the balance sheet like. So going public is a positive thing from the perspective of the sales organization.
As a Workday customer as well as one of its first implementation partners, working with Workday over the past several years certainly has an energy about it. The company is gaining momentum by the day, amassing key customers, and generally turning some long-held preconceptions of HR, financials and payroll on their respective heads. It’s management and employees are motivated, positive and purposeful. It’s not often in this space you find a company that has the buzz and energy of a web startup, yet that’s exactly what Workday managed to create by marrying a web 2.0 culture with core enterprise application technology. It’s a happy symbiosis, and companies are noticing.
If you’re smart, you’ll watch what Workday is doing.
(Via Dave C.)
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I was a customer of PeopleSoft, and love David Duffield’s management style.
I would like to invest in Workday, and want to know when there will be an IPO. Is there a date for this??