I haven’t often directly mentioned the name of my employer, Proficient Systems, wanting to give my blog a bit of separation from the company. The news came through this last week, the announcement that Proficient is being purchased by LivePerson, our chief competitor in the enterprise market for proactive chat on web sites.
It’s a mixed bag of news, and I have a ton of different feelings wrapped up in it, particularly since this is one of the few jobs over the years that I’ve actually grown to care about. We have a great team, great product plan, and great momentum in the right direction. The product plan is all but certain to survive. The rest is less certain. It’s GREAT validation of what we’ve been working on all along. It’s fantastic to see how well we’ve been able to compete on technology with a company that has a lot more resources at their disposal. It’s humbling to see how much more successful they’ve been in sales by building a base in the low end of the market and moving up from there. I have little doubt that the combined company will have a fantastic product with a great sales force behind it. The stock market gets this – their stock was up as much as 8.5% on the news. Still, the competitive part of me wanted to beat them, not merge with them. If you’re in the Atlanta area and need a few solid Java Engineers, I know some folks who are searching. And if you need a technical manager who can also contribute at a technical level, let me know that as well… I might know a guy.
