Supernova: Patrick Grady, Rearden Commerce

[Collaborative notes taken by Tom, Nat, Kevin et al. EAOE.]

[Note that his basic pitch is that “there are other apps for buying things covered by POs — but we handle all that stuff on your expense-reports”. Non-PO spending is a significant part of the bottom line, and it’s almost all services…]

[Wins points by literally taking off his tie. Then by referring to how conference speakers go on ad nauseaum about the long-tail!]

Opens with a reference to Newton and General Magic. Even reaches back to HP e-Speak (claims $400M on that alone?!). Nice history lesson, but seems to be drifting — and then he brings it home:

Market opportunity? The end of EAs — fewer and fewer executives have assistants!

“Imagine a world in which your flight is delayed, and your hotel and car service are notified, your dinner guests and reservation are updated” — that was, I agree, the universal scenario for all the e-business services pitches.

Larry Ellison is wrong — Silicon Valley is not Detroit, and software innovation hasn’t even begun. [He’s doing a good job of ref’fing to earlier speakers in the morning, but I’m not even sure that the conf attendees rememeber as much!]

Less than 10% of e-Commerce is in services. [His slides are waay too small-font]

We are happy Salesforce customers, but true on-demand is coming in more personalized, presence-oriented, embedded ways. Cuts to a race-car slide of hundreds of service providers you might deal with as a knowledge worker (or consumer).

Some of their customers’ employees spend 2hrs a DAY scheduling services. Their platform (for suppliers) is a global reservation system; coupled with a personal assistant for buyers.

His scenario is an opportunistic sale of Yankees tickets while he’s on a business trip to NY. Rearden’s EBS (Employee Business Services) scenario is a little scary — shows clear r/t class customization of employees (who gets coach, who gets the jet). Calls it a nearly $1/2 T category, ripe for at least a 1% savings. People want to lump us together with Salesforce; we have many more subscribers at admittedly less fees, nearly 1M by end of year. It’s mundane, but it drives a network effect.

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