Oracle Buys Tacit's IP

I've blogged once before about email-sniffing Tacit Software and its founder (and my old boss) David Gilmour. So I was a bit saddened to read this story on VentureBeat entitled Oracle Scoops Up Tacit's Intellectual Property.

Now, happily, I lack personal experience in such matters, but I think that "normally" when software companies sell their IP assets to Oracle, it's a -- uh -- bad sign. I take it to mean that (1) the company's winding down operations, (2) that no one wishes to buy the business as a going-concern, thus purchasing both all assets and all liabilities, and ergo (3) that -- in the absence of other interest -- someone can come along and simply buy all or some of the assets.

I'd not seen any stories on Tacit shutting down, so I was surprised to hear they were selling IP to Oracle. This Network World story has a little more detail, but the final clue came from Oracle's website, here:

It looks as if it's "goodbye Tacit" and presumably "poof" to most of the $29M in venture capital invested.

Audio From My Exit Five CMO Leadership Retreat Presentation

Just a quick post to highlight that Exit Five has published the audio from my presentation at their recent leadership retreat. The presentation was entitled How To Be the CMO Everyone Wants To Work With, and the audio is about an hour long. Exit Five founder Dave Gerhardt published it

On the Socially Acceptable Use of AI in Business

There's a question I've been mulling for a while now, and I think it's time to write it down: when is it okay to use generative AI in a given business context, and when does it cross a line? I'll focus on

The Odd Little Book All Founders Should Read On Selling Their Company

I recently read The Magic Box Paradigm by Ezra Roizen. It's self-published, was first released in 2016 [1] , and you won't find it on most startup reading lists. The writing is uneven and inconsistent. The metaphors are weird. There are too many TLAs (three-letter acronyms). Nevertheless,

Be the CMO Everyone Wants to Work With

I'm a big fan of Dave Gerhardt and the Exit Five marketing community he has built. While I have always liked the idea of peer-networking communities, I think they change from vitamin to painkiller in times of rapid change. Why? Because the playbooks haven't been written

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Audio From My Exit Five CMO Leadership Retreat Presentation

On the Socially Acceptable Use of AI in Business

The Odd Little Book All Founders Should Read On Selling Their Company

Be the CMO Everyone Wants to Work With