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David Duffield: Company
built 630 days ago
Abstract : On September 21, PeopleSoft founder David Duffield stepped down as chief [E]xecutive of the struggling business software maker. The 12-year-old company announced that president and chief operations officer Craig Conway would take on the additional role of chief executive officer. Duffield will remain chairman of PeopleSoft's board.
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David Duffield has resigned as PeopleSoft's CEO and chairman. He lasted less than three months after taking over again as CEO at the company he founded and which is in the process of being acquired by rival Oracle.
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Duffield's job at PeopleSoft's Pleasanton, Calif., headquarters is 215 miles from the scenic Sierra Nevada ranch. Some equity analysts say he was picked for the CEO spot because he wouldn't hesitate to help out the company he loves, despite the personal cost, when PeopleSoft needed a new leader quickly.
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The first new market that Duffield tried to crack was the giant manufacturing sector. Specifically, PeopleSoft began chasing manufacturers of automobiles, electronics, and consumer durables in 1995. The manufacturing market offered massive growth potential for the company, as client/server software sales to that segment were then growing at a rate of 78 percent annually (compared with a still-healthy 38 percent for the financial software market). Duffield believed that success with manufacturing software would allow PeopleSoft to quadruple its revenues within two years. To meet that challenge, PeopleSoft brought on board leading manufacturing software veterans like Roger Bottarini and Chris Wong.
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Duffield is betting Kagermann is wrong. Duffield's first 12 customers are small and mid-size companies, but his long-range ambition is to attract larger companies that typically invest tens of millions in software from Oracle and SAP. He hopes to do that by offering a product that is easier and less expensive to use, much faster to launch, and offers more features. Workday's products have the look and feel of an Internet site. And helping to shape them are its early customers -- like Tom McElroy, director of human resources services for Covad Communications, a 900-employee broadband company in San Jose.
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Duffield, despite the cash drain, was not about to give up control of his company again to outside financiers, and he was able to secure a $1 million line of credit from a bank. That helped to offset some costs, but he needed more. In 1991 Duffield sold 11 percent of his company for $5 million to Norwest Partners, a venture capital firm. He used much of that cash to update the company's systems and ... to help fund development of a new client/server program for financial management applications. In addition to the $5 million, PeopleSoft enjoyed net earnings in 1991 of $1.9 million from sales of $17.1 million.
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