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This article outlining the history of Ventura Publisher from its
conception through December 1991 primarily reflects the views expressed in
Venturian interviews with two former Ventura insiders: NYVPUG member Larry
Posner (New York Sales manager with Ventura Software Inc., from 1988 to 1991;
now with Interleaf) and Andrew Miller (with Xerox from 1978 to 1991; now
Marketing Program Manager for Polaris Software in San Diego). The past few
issues of The Venturian have concentrated on the program's future with Corel,
so it seems appropriate to begin the new year with a tale of Ventura origins.
The choices made and the paths taken by Ventura's previous owners and
developers may provide an instructive perspective on what's to come.
IN THE BEGINNING...
Ventura began with John Meyer, its visionary developer, and a
team of employees of Digital Research Inc. (DRI). The team also included Don
Heiskill, Lee Lorenzen, and John Grant, and it wrote all of the early Ventura
versions up through 3.0 for GEM and Windows. This team of DRI employees came up
with an idea for a graphics publishing package that would allow page makeup to
be done on the computer. They took their idea to John Rowley, president of DRI,
for his consideration, but were turned down--Rowley wanted DRI to get out of
the application software business in order concentrate on GEM and operating
systems. Basically, "Digital Research allowed the most effective piece of GEM
software to walk out the door," according to Stan Viet in the August 1992
Computer Shopper.
Andrew Miller, who left Xerox in 1991, is a 14- or 15-year
veteran of the company. He remembers the story this way: "I started with Xerox
word processors when they cost $26,000 and you stored one page of information
on a magnetic tape--1978. I cannot tell you precisely what was going on in the
minds of John Meyer and his people when he was at Digital Research Inc.... They
went to the 'powers that be' at DRI with a concept and a very basic
architectural sketch for a new desktop product. This was about the time that
PageMaker was just starting to rear its head over at Macintosh. The GEM group
was making claims that they could do something as good, if not better....They
were told in no uncertain terms that DRI was not interested in developing such
an application. So they took that nod as agreement that they could leave the
company and go pursue this project on their own. The apocryphal story goes that
they had already started coding the product in John Meyer's kitchen."
The men quit and formed Ventura Software (later sold to Xerox),
which produced the GEM-based Ventura Publisher. This system sold over 200,000
copies from 1986 to 1989 (when it was updated) and was the best-selling system
in 1987.
Andrew Miller states: "They got a fairly decent working
prototype going just a few months after they left, . . . started shopping
around for a marketing champion, and visited companies like IBM. Larry
Spelhaug, who was part of what became Xerox Desktop Software in the Independent
Products Group (IPG), saw this product about 1986.... Larry stuck his neck
out--doing something outside the normal realm of procedure at Xerox--and signed
a contract to take on this product."
DECENTRALIZED XEROX
At that time, Larry Posner reports, Xerox was decentralized and
not cohesive. "Offices were all over the place, and responsibilities were not
clear. For example, a tech support person worked for Xerox USMC, not Xerox
software--therefore, it was almost impossible to get authorization to change
anything in the software."
John Meyer and his associates continued to own Ventura, and
Xerox only had the exclusive marketing rights. It was sold through three
different divisions of the company--one group sold directly to Fortune 500
accounts and another group sold to retail stores (Xerox even had its own stores
at the time--"The Xerox Store"). A third group sold Ventura along with the
Xerox 40/45, a very large, very expensive desktop laser printer. Andrew Miller
states: "It was selling against the Hewlett Packard laser printer, which at
that time cost about $2,200. They thought Ventura might be the application that
would finally do for Xerox what PageMaker had done for Macintosh. Thus, a whole
lot of organizations within Xerox essentially were competing with each other in
overlapping markets to sell [Ventura]."
EARLY SUCCESS
According to Andrew Miller, Ventura "just took off like a shot.
In a matter of two years its market share went from zero to about 15 percent.
With the later versions, this growth continued to the point where it was
estimated that the total number of users of Ventura Publisher exceeded the
number for PageMaker--37 percent market share versus 36 percent."
Then Xerox decided to create a division called "Xerox Desktop
Software." This division had about twenty people as the exclusive sales unit--a
unit to go out and look for other desktop products that would duplicate the
success they had with Ventura Publisher. Art Coles from Printing Systems was
made head of this unit.
LACK OF VISION
"Looking back, a lot of people know that Ventura Publisher was
the software that was successful despite the company that was selling it,"
Miller believes. "All the research and all the development came from Salinas,
California, from John Meyer, his partners, and a secretary."
Marketing at Xerox suffered from a lack of vision, Posner and
Miller agree. Larry Spelhaug, who had brought the product in, saw an
opportunity to get further up in the organization. This didn't happen, so he
went to Aldus. At Xerox, the hope always was to increase the sales as opposed
to developing the product further. Larry Posner believes that John Meyer became
frustrated with Xerox, sensing that he was not getting the marketing money and
support necessary for the product to grow and develop. He finally offered Xerox
the right to take the product over under their contract. Meyer and his partners
had already made lots of money--some estimate as much as $17,000,000 in
royalties by the time they lost interest in the project.
Larry Posner says: "In my early Ventura days [from 1988] I had
the opportunity to share a lot of dinners with John Meyer, and he shared his
frustrations. Xerox didn't know what to do. John was trying to get Xerox to
focus in and realize that the market was changing." However, Posner believes,
that focus was stymied by "a major Xerox consultant who was always in back of
everything--Dave Hanna."
Xerox now set up a field organization of 40 people with a
trainer in each region. The trainer's job was to go out (for a fee) to train
dealers (for a full day) in selling Ventura. Larry Posner continues: "There was
the first inkling of a major flaw in the thinking. Dealers were going out of
business like crazy, their staff turnover was significant--so why train
somebody? And for an entire day? Xerox really put pressure on me to get
training going, so I called 47th Street Photo, and they said 'Larry, do
you think we're going to take five salesmen off the phones so you can train
them to sell your product?'."
GROWING "OUT"--DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR
Posner continues: Xerox "decided that the way to grow was
out--and this is still the way of a lot of backward thinking people--'let's get
some more products'." In January 1990 Xerox decided to import Cricket, a
Macintosh tool, over to Windows, and rename Cricket Graph and Cricket Presents
"Xerox Graph" and "Xerox Presents." The problems were that: (1) under
Windows, Cricket Presents and Cricket Graph were painfully slow because very
few people had 386s (at that time, a 386 was $8,000 plus RAM); and (2) the
negotiated deal with Cricket was that if Cricket was bought out, any rights
Xerox had went back to the firm that bought it. In fact, Computer Associates
eventually bought the company.
It was estimated the Cricket products would grow to sales of
$50,000,000--but they didn't. In June, projections were off by 50 percent and
chaos ensued. It was decided that "centralizing" would help, so outside
(non-Xerox) executives were brought in to run the Ventura operation.
"Dave Hannaa decided to bring in outside management and brought
in... Larry Gerhard," Larry Posner says. "Larry Gerhard sees what a money maker
this could be. He pressured John Meyer to sell out; he wanted the code so that
he could put whatever features he wants into Ventura Publisher. He wanted it to
be market driven instead of [function driven]. In the past, it was John Meyer
who decided what went into Ventura.
"Larry Gerhard came from a company called Decision Data out of
Philadelphia. He was president. He convinced Dave Hanna that he had put
together a merger between Decision Data and another company; what actually
happened was that his company was subject to a hostile takeover. The minute his
company was taken over, he was ... out. Gerhard ... [brought along] his old
crew from Decision Data.... They got the green light from corporate in Stamford
to buy out John Meyer and centralize all the functions. Sounded very good, and
we in the field were very encouraged."
"This plan sounded great to the sales force--until 50 percent
lost their jobs. This 50 percent are now considered lucky because Xerox was
good to them--those who were 'let go' later were not so lucky. The sales force
was told 'it's going to be a great company.... Everyone's going to make a lot
of money.'... Meanwhile, what they planned was to get everyone together and cut
down on expenses, relocate to San Diego, and go public."
At the same time, Ventura had to come up with a Windows product
and (according to many users) did an unsatisfactory job. ("There were
380 known bugs three days before it was released," Posner recalls. He
describes a meeting of product marketing managers, some of the engineers, and
the entire marketing and sales staffs. "We all sat down at a meeting with Larry
Gerhard [and asked] him not to release the product. But he wanted to 'stuff the
channels' and then go public. The only concession we got out of Larry Gerhard
was to reduce the upgrade price from $250 to under $200." Posner alleges that
Gerhard put his own personal enrichment above the company welfare. Besides
Gerhard's decisions to go forward despite the bugs and to flood distribution
channels with the Windows version, Posner cites instances of luxury-class
travel and other extravagances that contrasted with the Xerox corporate ethos
of frugality in areas such as air travel and limousine/auto transportation,
even for top executives.
VP 3.0
VP 3.0 was announced in the summer of 1990, and although
customers were trying the Windows product, they were sticking with the GEM
version. "Version 3.0 comes out and I'm the busiest guy in New York," Posner
continues. "I have people coming up every 45 minutes for a demo for major
corporations. And we're worried because they're trying the Windows version, but
they're sticking with the GEM product, and we know [the Windows version] is not
right.
"Gerhard began shipping the product in enormous quantities in
September, shipping the Macintosh product in October, and shipping the OS/2
product in November. This gives an overblown sales figure (annualized from the
last quarter of the year) of $27,000,000. Meanwhile, in the field, the salesmen
were being called by customers because the products weren't working well--when
the products started to come back, the sales force was told to "keep them out
there."
THE SLIDE
"Then it started," Larry Posner continues. "Sales stopped cold
in January. We had no sales in January, February, March, April, May, June....
Gerry Wilson [NYVPUG member and Venturian editor at that time] was right: The
product was a dog. The GEM product was the only one that was worth anything....
Many major users dropped Ventura for Windows. We would go up to our top
executives and say, 'What can we do?' and they were only interested in going
public. And then in June and PCExpo, Pat Lannihan, senior vice president for
sales and marketing worldwide, resigns. He was Gerhard's person; he was not a
Xerox man."
The Presidents Club--a reward for good sales--had always
involved a trip to Hawaii. Larry Posner relates that "Dave Hanna was there
giving pep talks to the sales force. For the Hawaiian trip, there had always
been an option to 'add time' to the basic four days (make a vacation). Now the
option was no longer open to salesmen, even if they used vacation time--the
party was over. And going public was out of the question; sales in the last two
quarters weren't good enough."
In September 1991 Gerhard "was fired," Posner says. David Hanna
took over as acting CEO, soon closing down half of the sales offices, among
them Larry Posner's.
"Dave Hanna took over in August of 1991 and closed down half
the [sales] offices in December. I don't think he personally did it. A week
after I got my 'reduction in force' I got a Christmas card from him. That shows
you how in touch he was. His job was to sell the company-- that's all he was
there for. They put people in there, but they weren't John Meyer--they were
just ordinary clods.... They tried to upgrade, but they lost their whole
market. Going public was what the whole thing was about. The product wasn't
getting worse and worse, but other products were passing it."
That is the story of Ventura and Xerox through 1991 as recounted
by Larry Posner and Andrew Miller--a company with a good product that failed to
keep its charismatic developer interested, failed to keep up with the market
and its needs, and failed to keep up with the competition in product
development. |
