This past May I attended a NetSuite Conference in Denver Colorado to learn how to sell NetSuite ERP to our prospects. A question I had before going into the conference was “why would a prospect chose NetSuite ERP over another competitor?” My first thought was because NetSuite had a better solution which could be a true statement, but there was way more to it than just that. What I learned is the resources and leadership team at NetSuite is brilliant and that’s what really gives them the advantage over their competitors.
On our third day we had Jason Maynard, who is the SVP of Global Operations of NetSuite speak to us about the history of NetSuite and what made him join the team. Jason told us the story of how NetSuite was created which really gave me a better understanding of how unique NetSuite really is. Evan Goldberg who founded NetSuite in 1998 was a prodigy at Oracle under Larry Ellison, in which Evan ventured out to create a web-hosted accounting software platform called NetLedger for mid-market businesses (now known as NetSuite). Larry Ellison himself invested $125 million of his own money (approximately 47.4% ownership) to start NetLedger. This opened my eyes that one of the most successful/powerful humans on earth funded and believed in NetSuite in its early days.
As NetSuite progressed, they added more top management to their board of directors to keep evolving as a company. Along with being backed by Larry Ellison, NetSuite added Moneyball’s General Manger Billy Beane of MLB’s Oakland A’s to its board of Directors in early 2007. A little less than a year later in December of 2007, NetSuite went public on the New York Stock Exchange 9 years after they were founded.
When I thought it couldn’t get any better from its leadership and resources standpoint, it does. In November of 2016, Oracle acquired NetSuite for A whopping $9.3 billion, 18 years after being founded. Today, NetSuite is growing rapidly and has the best resources in the game. They are backed by a $200 billion company and have a consistent money flow to keep investing and advancing their products for their customers each day.
My biggest takeaway from Jason’s speech was that NetSuite is the first cloud computing software company, even before Salesforce. NetSuite paved the way for many other web-hosted solutions. The leadership at NetSuite was able to take a huge gamble on the future of software and was able to execute it and perfect it. NetSuite was able to go public on their own and stayed public with a successful track record for 9 years until being acquired by Oracle. It goes to show you that NetSuite’s platform was built extremely well way before the acquisition. This is the big reason why NetSuite is one of the best in the game today and will remain one if the best for many more years to come.
