Company overview: Great Bridge
The story of Great Bridge is a fascinating tale of business failure despite technical excellence, ample funding, and previous business success.
Great Bridge was formed in 1999 and closed in 2001. The company had roughly 45 people on staff at its peak, and spent $16M during its 18-month existence. It was formed by Frank Batten, Jr., CEO of Landmark Communications. Batten was an early angel investor to Red Hat and hoped to duplicate his open source business success with an open source database.
The initial business idea was to hire the original PostgreSQL developers to take the mature PostgreSQL code base commercial. Although a great idea in theory, it was difficult in practice. Differences of opinion on the direction of the company surfaced early and the first CEO left after only two months on the job.
The original PostgreSQL core developers were paid to do full time what they had done previously as part time developers. One developer fixed bugs and did core development. Another developer became project spokesman and arranged public events. The third developer worked on new features.
Great Bridge set out to create a business around the existing and mature PostgreSQL code base and to do what Red Hat had done with Linux. PostgreSQL had traditionally been available as a free product and the company saw little value in charging licensing fees for what people could download elsewhere for free. The company's business emphasis changed frequently in an effort to find a profitable niche. The frequently changing business focus is cited as the company's single biggest problem. The changing emphasis, however, could have only been a symptom of an unprofitable company.
The company initially offered tiered support options. The company also offered hourly and 24x7 support options, but support did not sell well. It provided some consulting for porting & performance tuning. Aside from the selling, licensing, and servicing the basic database, the company did not seek any other avenues of revenue.
According to co-founder Ned Lilly, "It's definitely the case that Great Bridge, like every other company that got money at that time, could have spent it better. Generically, the idea was to throw a lot of money into a company, grow it fast, take advantage of the market, and then cash out. To some degree Great Bridge got caught in the dot com fever of the time."
Lessons Learned from Great Bridge
The history of Great Bridge provides valuable lessons for open source entrepreneurs with a big idea. Investors come as a package deal. They have specific business models, plans of execution, and exit strategies. When you are looking at taking investment, it's important to look at how investors will be involved in the management decisions, whether directly or by appointing personnel to your company.
Another valuable lesson is that an infusion of venture capital funding and a large staff will by no means guarantee sales of a product that has insufficient demand.
