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Growing a small Parisian technology start-up into a NASDAQ-listed multinational with 6,700 employees, 45,000 customers and $1.5 billion of annual revenue is no easy feat, and that was the inspirational story told last week at London Business School.

Bernard Liautaud, founder of Business Objects, took to the stage as part of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Speaker Series and explained the company’s meteoric successes (and mid 90s failures) that led to the $6.8 billion acquisition by SAP in 2008.

Included in the story were lessons in the gentle art of attempting to purchase intellectual property from a programmer, raising venture capital and preparing for an IPO. Bernard achieved this in a period of just 4 years and in 1994 Business Objects became the first European company to list on NASDAQ.

However two years later, the glamour of Wall Street, and the pressure of investors, led the company to over-reach. Bernard committed the company to put all its energy behind the launch of a new product to run on the newly-released Windows 95. So committed in fact, that the software was not backwards compatible to run on 3.1. Making the mistake of exerting too much pressure on the development team, even the non-programmer, Bernard, was left staring at lines of code, when the delays hit.

Shortly after, a large customer deal in Germany fell through, forcing Business Objects to engage in the cardinal market sin of re-stating its earnings. Investors were furious and the stock price bombed from $55 to $5 in just two months.

However, in 1997 Bernard’s turnaround plan was in full swing. He took the decision to move the management team from France to California, in a deliberate move to cozy up to partners and investors. Meanwhile, his desire to re-innovate led to the creation of a web team and a pure internet-based product. That year the technology company posted a 50% growth and never looked back.

In 2003, Bernard desired to leap-frog the competition and his big bet was to acquire Canadian BI-firm Crystal Decisions. Organic growth continued apace and it was only a matter of time before SAP, IBM & Oracle made approaches to buy the company.

Click here to watch a video of the full seminar

Bernard Liautaud’s key success factors:

Value innovation

• A simple value proposition
• Create new market (Blue Ocean Strategy)

Entrepreneurial model

• Raising smart money (Silicon Valley & European)
• Assemble the greatest possible team (using equity)
• Shoot for an IPO 5 years down the line

Transnational model

• Go global quickly & head to the US (the driving market) in year one
• Transnational money, board & management team
• Go public on NASDAQ

Ambition / culture of passion

• An aggressive business plan to be #1 worldwide.
• Darwinian organisation (R&D)

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