Decades of Hard Work Lead to Unica’s $480M Acquisition

Often, when a big acquisition is announced, you read a little about the company being acquired, a little about the company purchasing it, and maybe a few quotes from executives on both sides of the transaction. If you do not take the time to look beyond these quick facts, though, you might be surprised at what you are missing.

Last month, IBM acquired Waltham-based Unica for $480 million. During his life, Unica’s co-founder, Yuchun Lee, has done everything from participate in MIT’s now famous (or perhaps infamous) blackjack team, upon which the movie “21” and the book “Bringing Down the House” are based, to steer his company through four recession and finally an IPO in 2005. (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/a7nO8E)

“The hardest thing is having the emotional fortitude to have conviction in what you think is the right path,” Lee explained. “It’s kind of like blackjack. You may get a string of bad hands, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have an edge on the market.”

At the age of 13, Lee moved to the United States from Taiwan. While still in high school, Lee launched his first software company in Houston, TX. In the mid-1980s, Lee moved to Boston where he got both his undergraduate and master’s degrees from MIT in electrical engineering and computer science.

Along with MIT grads David Cheung and Ruby Kennedy, Lee formed Unica in 1992. Initially, the company’s focus was on data mining and financial modeling. Gradually, Unica shifted into the marketing software industry.

“Marketing was not automated then,” Lee said, justifying his company’s change is focus. “We thought it was pretty interesting, and a big-budget item for companies.”

In between trips to Las Vegas, where he gambled on MITs Blackjack Team, Lee worked to keep his company in the black into the late 1990s. While Lee has not confirmed putting any of his winnings towards funding Unica, he ran his company for years without any funding from outside investors, leading some to believe it is likely. (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/a7nO8E)

Unica brought in $48 million from its IPO along with $60 million in product sales in 2005. The company was growing, healthy, and appeared to be unstoppable.

“2009 was the only year in our history that we declined,” Lee explained. “Customers stopped buying.”

This setback in 2009 proved to be relatively brief. Just months into 2010, Unica was hiring again. Presently, the company has over 500 employees and more than 1,500 customers. Of course, this year Unica also caught the attention of IBM and is now owned by the company.

“IBM is in a really good position to shape the conversation in this market, to drive adoption in general… Marketing is undergoing a major transformation… through digital and social channels. The trend is very clear in our mind. The move is toward digital... even for smaller companies... My plan is to stay on. I’m personally very excited.” (Image courtesy: http://www.imb.com/)

It is clear from this summary of Lee’s accomplishments that he has worked incredibly hard during his life and consequently enjoyed many successes. While it has to be strange in some ways for him to hand over the company he started 18 years ago, I have no doubt that he will continue to grow and succeed as an employee of IBM. Finding a story like Lee’s makes you happy you took a moment to look a little deeper in IBM’s purchase of Unica.

[Sources: http://bit.ly/9QstIE, http://bit.ly/a7nO8E]

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TPI Composites Creates 30 New Jobs in Fall River

Although the unemployment rate in Massachusetts may still be higher than desirable, new jobs are continuing to be created in the state. Moreover, new positions are not only springing up in the Boston area, but also in places such as Fall River, which is reported to have one of the highest unemployment rates in the state at 14%. This week, TPI Composites, an Arizona-based manufacturer of wind turbine blades, announced plans to bring jobs into the city by opening a facility along Fall River’s waterfront.

“It’s a good sign for Fall River,” the city’s mayor, William A. Flanagan, said. “It’s a great sign for Massachusetts.” (Image courtesy: http://www.tpicomposites.com/)

TPI's new, 69,000-square-foot factory will serve as the “development hub” for the company’s Rhode Island, Iowa, Mexico, and China locations. If everything proceeds as planned, the factory will be operational as early as January of next year, creating approximately 30 new positions. Contingent on meeting these hiring estimates, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has agreed to award TPI a $250,000 grant to help fund its expansion.

“The main reason we decided to locate here was the proximity to our existing work force,” explained TPI CEO Steve Lockard about why Fall River was selected.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick spoke enthusiastic about TPI opening a facility in the state, expressing that supporting Green Tech makes sense because it is the industry of the future. “We believe if we get this right, the whole world will be our customer,” Governor Patrick said.

With Governor Patrick’s unwavering support of Green Tech, perhaps more companies from the industry will follow TPI’s example and open locations in the region. While Massachusetts’ jobless rate continues to hold at well under the national average, it is important to remember the individual towns, like Fall River, that still have unemployment rates reaching into the mid-teens. New facilities creating new positions in these areas will be beneficial to everyone.

[Sources: http://bit.ly/9xQn0e, http://bit.ly/aKa6Fm, http://bit.ly/c1REaV]

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Waltham's Lycos Sells for $36 Million

In the United States, if you ask someone to tell you the name of the first search engine that comes to mind, odds are you will get one of three answers: Google, Yahoo, or Bing. If you think back to just the mid-nineties, though, predicting the answer to that question would have been far harder, considering the varied number of search engines that were scrambling for their share of the market. This week, Lycos, a search engine based out of Waltham, Massachusetts that you may not have heard about in years, sold for $36 million to India’s Ybrant Digital. (Image courtesy: lycos.com)

“Lycos needs no introduction, we are excited to bring in the Lycos properties into our fold,” said Suresh Reddy, chairman and CEO of Ybrant Digital. “The quality of content and tools offered by Lycos has always attracted the best of the consumers across the world. Our goal is to combine the benefits of Ybrant’s global network with what Lycos has to offer in creating a compelling global destination for our advertising clients worldwide. Coupled with our offerings for advertisers, we do present new products to our local users worldwide.”

While not generally viewed as one of the big players in the search engine arena in the U.S., Lycos still reports receiving 12 to 15 million unique visitors per month in the nation. Beyond its search engine capabilities, Lycos also offers video sharing, social networking, blogging, web hosting, online games, and email. Worldwise, Lycos is a top 25 internet destination, with a global reach of 60 million unique visitors per month. (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/bISFkP)

“Our goal is to combine the benefits of Ybrant's global network with what Lycos has to offer in creating a compelling global destination for our advertising clients worldwide,” explained CEO Reddy.

Although Lycos may have passed its prime in the United States, it would be hard for anyone to argue that Waltham’s Lycos is not a success, considering its substantial world-wide reach. Even if the search engine does not focus on recapturing the U.S. market while under its new leadership, it appears as if the company will have no trouble remaining profitable in the international market.

[Sources: http://bit.ly/9vkYFs, http://bit.ly/bPVHvs, http://bit.ly/c26wdJ]

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PAETEC Opens Massive Data Center in Andover

When big-name companies, such as Adobe or Microsoft, open branches in the Boston-area, people take notice. Startups opening their doors for the first time often garner attention as well. But when a Fortune 1000, business-to-business company moves into the area, it can be easier to miss the news. Today, PAETEC Holding Corp. announced that it will be opening its two-story, 92,7000 square foot data center in Andover, Massachusetts. (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/aczWYo)

The center will serve as a secure storage facility for data from companies in the New England region and across the world. The center’s primary goals include ensuring “regulatory compliance, disaster preparedness, and business continuity.” PAETEC will use the center to further its efforts towards supporting cloud computing, or computing in which services and storage are provided over the internet, rather than locally.

“Moving business applications from the desktop to the cloud will bring efficiency not possible before,” said Arunas Chesonis, chairman and CEO of PAETEC. “With our expertise in telecommunications and data convergence, we’re in a leading position to support the shift towards cloud computing and can provide our customers with a comprehensive set of managed service solutions to meet their business goals.”

The Andover center opened today after an 8-month renovation, costing nearly $6 million, during which PAETEC “replaced every electrical component in the building.” Now, redundant grid power, and massive generators capable of running the facility for over a week, ensure that the center will always remain operational. Presently, a staff of eleven manage the day-to-day workload of the center, which includes running a 24-hour Technical Assistance Center, or TAC.

“We’re utilizing our more than ten years of data center experience along with our advanced portfolio of communication solutions,” explained CEO Chesonis. “As a result, we’ve built an infrastructure that will responsibly serve our customers’ needs now and in the future as we continue our data center expansion efforts, implement virtualization, and provide server consolidation, content acceleration, and software as a service offerings.” (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/cgWS5o)

Andover is only one of a handful of locations in which PAETEC plans to open data centers over the next 18 months. PAETEC will open new centers in Houston, Milwaukee, and Phoenix before the end of the year.

It is admittedly slightly disappointing that such a large center provides so few new, full-time positions, but any company that brings new, quality jobs into the area is of course welcome. Perhaps the center will require more workers as additional clients move their data to the location. It is also nice to hear that the company has found a new use for what was previously a massive, outdated facility in Andover.

[Sources: http://bit.ly/dsjrfC, http://bit.ly/bXvt95, http://bit.ly/aczWYo]

Cambridge to Add Entrepreneurial "Walk of Fame"

The rivalry between the Boston-area and California’s Silicon Valley has existed for years now. It often makes news when a company chooses to leave one innovation hotspot for the other. Recently, though, a story came out about Boston borrowing from a different part of California: Hollywood. Bill Aulet, Director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, has proposed creating a “Walk of Fame” in Cambridge’s Kendall Square to commemorate great entrepreneurs and inventors from the area.

Aulet’s idea already has the support of Lelant Cheung, Cambridge City Councilor. According to Cheung, the proposal is presently in committee and he hopes the full Council will vote on the matter this fall. (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/d4CWV4)

Aulet says that the idea for the Entrepreneurial Walk of Fame comes from the belief that “successful entrepreneurship is about spirit as much as it is about skills.” “Our model is Educate-Nurture-Network-Celebrate,” Aulet said. “The stars on the sidewalk falls right in line with the ‘Celebrate,’ which we should do more of. If you want to keep a culture of risk-taking and entrepreneurship, then we should treat our entrepreneurs as stars, and what better way than this?”

If the project is adopted, Councilman Cheung says the courtyard around the Marriott and the Kendall Square T Station would be the ideal location to place the first stars. The stars would include the name of an entrepreneur or inventor from the Cambridge area, his or her key contribution, and perhaps the date of the contribution. (Image courtesy: http://bit.ly/b6QiP6)

Adding a Walk of Fame for entrepreneurs and inventors is a novel implementation of a tried concept. It does make sense that celebrating the contributions of these people would help to inspire further innovation. If this idea becomes a reality, with all the great entrepreneurs and inventors that came out of the Cambridge area, it will be interesting to see who is recognized first and how the decision is made.

[Sources: http://bit.ly/9oGKh1, http://bit.ly/d4CWV4]