MindTouch was acquired by NICE inContact during a downturn. It goes without saying that's not when you want to be having that conversation. The two fundamental things that were MindTouch's downfall were problems of timing and lack of urgency.
- The north star was difficult to understand, and at some times, not there: There were years when it was apparent to most of us that the founders did not see eye to eye. We lost a lot of time during those periods, not focused on what could help us break out in the market. In the end, MindTouch was decent enough in a lot of different ways but didn't excel in any majorly impactful. It's not surprising that the ultimate fate is NICE inContact's Knowledgebase (albeit a good one). It's on par with the knowledge component of Zendesk, ServiceNow, which are a relatively minor part of a much larger solution. That's not a huge ROI for over a decade of work. I obviously wasn't privy to discussions at the board level, but overall I was highly disappointed that the strategy for a successful exit wasn't clear to us (or executed).
- We collectively forgot we were an innovative SaaS company that could rapidly deliver value: Through a lack of serious investment in technology and a product vision that we could actually deliver (in a market where better-funded competitors copied what they needed from us and improved) our roadmap increasingly became a fantasy. The executive team was largely detached from the fact that product innovation, when it did occur, became year-long product cycles. The solution was to ignore the problem and desperately re-position our shrinking competitive feature set in a market that was rapidly outpacing us. We were blindsided by the importance of AI/ML in our space, and it shows, as some of our competitors (or similar companies in our space) that took the shift seriously are now considered unicorns (ex: Coveo). MindTouch was overall far too relaxed and complacent at all levels of the company. I'm not saying the company had to be a grind, but if you are going years without major product launches and no one sounds the alarm bells, then you have complacency. MindTouch needed some bay-area fire under it. Unfortunately, this attitude is sometimes pervasive in San Diego tech companies where the pace of life is slower.