On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 08:35:33AM +0200, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> My answer was this. I worked for that company, and I had lots of
> criticism about how it is being run. I then moved to Check Point, and
> had even more criticism about how it is being run, so maybe the problem
> is with me :-)
Checkpoint is not exactly doing well.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?symbol=CKP
A year ago they were slightly over $18 a share, then they went
up to over $28. Shortly afterward they hired a new CFO and
then a new CEO.
The market has not been very supportive, their stock dropped
to $21.56 with the new CFO and went up when the new CEO was
appointed. It peaked after an announcement of PROJECTED earnings and
has since gone back down to around $23 a share.
I think that although there has been short lived confidence in
the new CFO and CEO and their claims of future success, the
stock market also believes as you do.
> Yes, Gil is the common quoted example of someone successfully turning
> from founder to manager, but the simple facts as I see them is that all
> of Check Point's top management (at least when I was there) was from the
> founding generation. Check point did not successfully show that they can
> recruit an outside manager for anything that is even closely related to
> development.
>
> Obviously, the company is doing relatively well, so who am I to
> criticize. Then again, if things were different, I may have still been
> working there (and, no, I was not fired - I quit), so obviously it has
> some downsides as well.
See above. Doing very well is relative, and they have replaced the top
management, but not to investor's satisfaction.
At this point it all depends upon whether they make those sales and
earnings targets.
>
> I am equally certain that, just as you cannot claim that Check Point and
> Gil Schwed are an overwhelming success stories, you can equally well not
> claim that they are unique. Not all companies strive to be "market
> leaders", and very few companies reach market leadership even if they do
> everything "right".
Considering that 95% of all startups never make it to the "sell out" or
IPO stage, it may not be unique, but it is definitely rare. You can easily
tell where the seed money comes from if you look at a startup. If they
are all "young" and there is no one with experience running the company,
the seed money did not come from a VC or professional investor.
Ones that do get to the first VC stage often find themselves with
CEO's and CFO's appointed by the VC as a condition of the financing.
That's why you often see a company announcing closing a VC deal and
then a week later announcing a new CEO.
Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/
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