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Introduction
Geoffrey Moore published a book entitled “Crossing the Chasm” in 1999. He divides people or firms into 5 categories (Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards) as to how quickly they adopt a new technology. If one graphs the numbers of users as a function of the time to adopt, one gets a normal distribution curve. Moore goes on to describe the characteristics of each group and the selling techniques need to successfully target each group. Start up companies introducing new technologies as opposed to offering cheaper versions of existing products will be targeting the first two categories. To build very successful companies one must eventually successful sell to the Early Majority and Late Majority segments that comprise the bulk of the available market. The tagline Crossing the Chasm deals with the difficulty of moving from selling to technology enthusiasts and visionaries (Innovators and Early Adopters) to pragmatists (Early Majority).
A firm that seems to speak from the pages of this book is VaST Systems Technology Corporation. VaST is also a company that has undergone considerable change in the last 6 months or so. They closed a $12M in round C funding in May 2005. Recent personnel changes include
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Alain Labat - CEO as of Jan 10, 2005
Robert Bedicheck - VP Engineering as of May 2005 Linda Prowse Fosler - VP Marketing & Business Development - Nov 2004 Erin Marshall - Sales Director US Central Region June 2005 John Faase - Sales Director US West Graham Hellestrand - Founder moves from CEO to CTO |
Prior to joining VaST Alain Labat was CEO of Tera Systems and founder, president and CEO of Sequence Design. He was previously with Synopsys Inc. as senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. Labat holds an MBA from INSEEC, France, and an MBA from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona. Mr. Labat serves on the board of Jasper Design Automation and is a founder and member of the board of the French American School of Silicon Valley.
I assume you had a variety of opportunities. What attracted you to VaST?
Alain: Couple of things. One I started my career back in 1986. At that time Bill Davidow (Founding Partner of Morh Davidow Ventures who led B funding round at VaST) was probably the most influential person and mentor for me in business and marketing when he was on the board of investors at Valid Logic Systems which later on became part of Cadence. Over the last 19 to 20 years Bill has been someone I respected and one with whom I talked about companies, strategies and so forth. He has been talking to me for many months before I took this job. I felt that it was a very compelling company. I felt that any investment done by Bill is a smart investment and the other things is - our corporate joke - that VaST was one of the best kept secrets in the industry because Graham who had made a great commitment to the R&DD effort had a stellar group of companies in the wireless communication and automotive arenas over the last few years. Frankly very few people were aware of that except possibly the investors and the customers themselves.
When you look at the company's financials at the end of 2004, this was a company that was in a breakeven position with great customers and great technology but frankly with very under funded investment in sales and marketing which is typically the reverse in our business. If you look at that, it was very compelling to me. The more I was talking to the investors, the more I felt that it was a fantastic opportunity to use my skill set in developing the business more on the marketing, strategy and sales side. Linda had joined in the fall right before I did. For the last few months we have been building the R&D infrastructure and more importantly the management around Graham who obviously stays as CTO and Patricia Hughes who0 is managing the Australian operation.
The latest round of investment came four months after you joined. Was this largely in the bag when you joined?
When I was thinking about the opportunity there were several companies, namely Foundation Capital, that was very interested and had done a lot of investment in that space: embedded systems with WindRiver and lots of EDA and silicon connected companies. I personally was thinking about a set of new investors that had a lot of added value, knowledge and expertise in that field and strong interest and guidance for all of us here. I was thinking about them. We put on an effort but we were also pleased that the investment was finalized in a matter of a few weeks as opposed to taking many months as it sometimes does.
The latest investment round was led by Foundation Capital. As a result Mike Schuh joined your board of directors. He is also on the boards of Jasper and CoWare. DO you see these firms as complementary or competitive?
Alain:I am actually a co-investor with him at Jasper. In fact I brought Mike into Jasper as an investor. This is highly complementary, RTL formal verification. Mike is not on the board of CoWare but is an investor in CoWare. I think he views that as the first generation of ESL technology. We have very different complementary technical set with companies like CoWare.
Linda: When Alain came on board we really repositioned the company to be focused on embedded systems and design automation and within that primarily on the wireless, consumer and automotive market segments. In order to be successful in these segments with that type of an objective for Virtual System Prototyping you really need to have very high speed, close to the real hardware speed plus timing accuracy at something close to 100% cycle accurate. Because we are very focused with these two markets specifically, we actually never run into CoWare. They supply an ESL solution that satisfies a different range of needs.
When you came on board, you took over from the Graham Hellerstrand, the company founder and CEO. How has that transition gone?
Alain: I can tell you that Graham is very much a part of the management team here in his new role as CTO. Unfortunately he is visiting customers today. He is very committed and excited about being part of the new team. He would tell you that if you talked with him directly. His skill set has been tremendous in the early inception of the technology but as you know to be able to scale the company to over $10 million, a different skill set is needed. This is what the management team brings with Linda, Rob and the recent appointments to US sales management announced this week.
I view my role here as sort of a facilitator to bring together the right synergy and right skill sets between all of the people in different functions. I remember the same thing occurred at Synopsys when Aart was the founder of the company and Harry James came to bring more strategy, marketing and sales. Maybe the reverse happened in that case, the founder took over after the IPO. I think you will execute well if you establish a culture and values such that you allow your people to best do what their skill set is for. I think you build a great extended team with an incredibly powerful team. I would say that Graham, no question, is the best CTO with that skill set that you could find. I would challenge Aart or Fister at Cadence to say that. We feel fortunate to have Graham here. He was the founder of the team. Rob coming to the team as VP of R&D brings a different skill. Graham is very much a part of the team. I feel very fortunate to have him.
What is the sales model at VaST?
Alain: We are in the early adoption mode. The field coverage we have is a direct sales model. We do have a distributor in Japan but to the end user it is a direct sales approach. This is very similar, analogous to the usual EDA sales model. Down the road we will have a more complex sales model, perhaps using platform partners, silicon vendor partners, OEMs and so forth but today and traditionally major accounts sales. The early adopters are directly served and supported by our sales and application engineers.
Linda: We will be growing our sales offices in other parts of the world. The business was roughly breakeven. We are using the recent investment for two purposes. One was to step up engineering a little more robustly. We have the fortuitous problem of having a lot more business that we can handle right now. The second area is to build out the field sales organization which has always been largely a direct sale and support organization but very, very small. We have a dedicated distributor in Japan (GAIA System Solutions Inc.). We are looking at other distributor relationships in other parts of Asia. More importantly we are building out the US and European sales forces. Some of our recent press announcements are the addition of two directors of sales in the US.
Where is your R&D operation located?
Linda: The body of R&D at the moment is in Sydney Australia. We have a small technical staff here in Sunnyvale. We will continue to build Australia but we are also going to build the technical staff in other locations.
Could you give a high level overview of the product and its value proposition?
Linda: We enable our customers to develop virtual system prototypes. These are software simulations based upon models of a SoC or a meaningful subcomponent of that SoC. The basic value proposition of doing that as early as the architectural stage is that you are able with much more precision and in a way that is quantifiable and measurable to perform system analysis and optimization. Equally or more importantly you come out of that phase with an essentially executable specification that serves as a golden reference model for concurrent hardware and software development. One of the interesting things when Mike Schuh was checking out our reference was that he said he had heard about codesign and how it shaved time off schedules from the vendors but never from users. He talked extensively with our current and most experienced VaST users. One of the things that impressed him was that they talked about taking 9 to 12 months off their development cycle, particularly in wireless and consumer that can be the whole ball game. That's the basic value proposition. To enable that we provide tools that are similar to EDA tools and virtual models that work together to perform 20 to 200 mips and up to 100% cycle accuracy.
Your high level pitch should be very enticing: Employ more resource up front but fewer resources overall and end up with shorter time to market (TTM) and less risk of respins. What do you encounter as pushback from prospects?
Alain: Pushback if any, is really the reluctance of changing from their traditional methodology and design tools that they had by using more manual and hardware driven verification sorts of systems. This is why we are excited about the opportunity here. The early adopters, the leaders in each of the geographic regions or verticals have adopted this methodology and in some cases we are in the second generation of their product. We've proven the fact that we can shed 6 to 9 months of development time. We are not seriously competing against anybody. We're taking the time to convince upper management and engineering management of the benefit of what we are doing. Next week we will announce some success stories with Infineon. That's a very compelling message.
Linda: The whole area of electronic system level tools and methodologies had over promised and under delivered for many, many year as far as the users are concerned. That has a damping effect on anybody who looks like they are in that space. We have a strong antidote to that. When Graham built the company he had such strong success with a number of companies that back to the original comment by Alain we are about the business of getting that word out. That wasn't much done until maybe 6 months ago.
So part of the resistance is the natural reluctance to change current design flow which may not be optimal but one in which they have a reasonable level of confidence and some level of predictability.
Alain: This is what they have known for the last years, the last generation tools, process and products. At the same time those people are challenged by the same things, increasing complexity, time to market and need for predictability. When you are facing that hard market reality, if you are a market leader, you think maybe that worked at 130 nm but there is no way it is going to work at 65 or 45 nm. If I don't change the way I am putting my cell phone together, it's going to be a problem. I think that we are fortunately in a great position because as I said earlier next week at DAC we will have the first announcement of some success stories with a wireless partner who can demonstrate that they did actually shave 6 to 9 months of TTM with our tools and methodologies. That's huge.
So we are in early adoption. I think over the next year or two, the market we believe is going to follow these early adopter market leaders. We fell pretty strongly about it. Each of the verticals: the Delphi's, Toyotas, Cannons, Infineons; each of these guys represent success stories. These kinds of customer leaders is critical for us. That's really where we are and we believe this will be the easiest way to convince people that what you did yesterday; the traditional methodologies can be changed because here's is the proof. We can do it faster, better.
Customer success stories have greater credibility than vendors' collaterals or PowerPoint presentations. How difficult was it to get these customers to go on the record, since they might believe that using your tools and methodologies gives them a competitive advantage?
Linda: It's not hard to get them to go on the record but it is hard to be able to publish full case studies because with that amount of technical detail that would expose their IP. That's the hard part. Higher level success stories have been easy - well, we are just starting. The first couple of cusses stories have been relatively easy.
If I am a design house using ARM processors and ARM introduces a new processor - if I am a major AMR customer, I might even get early access -, where do I get the model for this new processor?
Linda: I hear two questions. One is how do we keep pace with the proliferation of models as they come out from companies and how do we work with our users to take their new processor models and put them into a virtual system prototype which also includes the processors, multiple processors and peripheral devices. We have a range of answers for those things. First of all we model ARM, StarCore, NEC, Toshiba … third party standard IP and individual customer proprietary IP. The reason we have been able to do that and I think have been more successful with more efficiency than other who have tired to do it is that Graham very wisely invested the engineering effort into building a set of internal tools that substantially automates that process. I don't want to make it sound easy because it's not easy. But it's more efficient at that than what others have tried to do. That's part of the answer. The other part of the answer is that with some of these organizations we have a very close working relationships, StarCore would be an example of that, where we have a free flow of information that goes back and forth and where we have access to things as they are creating them. This makes the time to market for virtual models much easier. Even ARM has been remarkably cooperative, particularly of late. We have worked very closely in modeling the 1156. We have joint customers for that. We are currently engaged in the process of modeling the 1136 and 1176. We are very pleased with the way the relationship with ARM is improving and see that it could quite likely end up in the same category as the StarCore relationship where we have this easy relationship. StarCore would tell you, if you talk to them, that cooperating with us and having virtual models of their processors almost instantaneously is an extraordinary competitive advantage for them.
If a customer wants to create models of their own peripherals, what tools are available?
Linda: For us this is a bigger deal than that. During the last few months we made a strategic decision to take what had been the proprietary VaST modeling technology, one of the things that had helped make the company as successful as it has been up to this point and make it available to customers. Not a very easy decision for us to make. But we knew that if we came down on the side of what was in the best interest of the customer long term that would in the end produce the biggest win for us. The Virtual Processor Model Transformer (VPM-T) which was announced at the end of May is one example of that. A better example is the Peripheral Device Builder (PDB), released in March, which cuts the time for the development of a device in a VaST model by 70% to 80%. So we have made that technology available for our users, encouraging them to build models. We still model many of the peripherals and are happy to do that but we also want customer to create their own VaST models. We now have provided a tool that automated that and makes it much easier for them. VPMT is the same kind of thing and begins to do the same sort of things for the processor model themselves.
Is some one likely to use your product for processor development?
Rob: A number of us here have processor design background. I managed architects, logic designers for California AMD. I saw a real opportunity to enlarge this technology. In fact earlier in the processor development process, processor core design, micro architects and micro simulation people. You worry no matter how big you are, no matter how many people you have, you want to run more architectural variations. There are more experiments that you would like to try. The VaST technology is unique with tremendous application to processor design problems. Our challenge is to talk to the processor people and say some of us are like you, we've been in your shoes, we speak your language and we have this amazing tool. It's not going to replace mirco architect guys but it is going to augment them so that they can produce a processor that 3% to 5% faster than they would otherwise, which in the processor design business is a big deal. Maybe be able to move up the tape out date by weeks which is tremendous. The other plus here is once they have created that model and use that as a tool to sell their processors much sooner because they can give virtual models to customers, making it more real, addressing customer's concerns abut processor performance. How will the processor perform? The answer is it's just like the virtual prototype we gave you. In fact you can do all of your software development on it. It's an amazing combination. Getting in early with the chip guys will gives us a number of other dividends as well.
Linda: As a company we have not focused on this area that Rob has been describing but it will be a real area of focus for us in the second half of 2005.
How many seats would we find at the ever hard to define typical customer? One for each system architect, one for each designer, one for each software developer?
Linda: Two answers. First one is that we have built our business model for the next couple of years around what we have referred to as early adopters. These are advanced thinkers within large companies. They are the group that is using advanced methodologies for their product development. They are a small portion of the whole. Within that domain we have architects, system software designers and depending on the company possibly application software developers. Our tools and number of license are different in each area. So a typical initial engagement would be a few seats to architects who are the earliest of the early adopters. That tool is called Comet. The tool that software developers use is Meteor which can accept any model developed by Comet. This gives software developers magnificent visibility into that model, much more than he would have with a hardware prototype. The relationship between architects and software developers depending on the company is 1:5 or 1:10 in terms of license and we sell to both as well as licenses for the models that they use. We are also engaged with several large organizations discussing OEM relationship and we are very interested in pursuing that. I am sure that over the next 6 months, you will see information about that. VaST distribution of virtual system models to our customer's customer. There we will have a much larger set of numbers associated with that.
Product pricing and packing?
Linda: Our tools, Comet and Meteor, are licensed as you would expect EDA tools to be licensed. We offer per seat with node lock license, permanent and floating licenses. Some of the models are created by our users and not licensed at all. The peripheral device area is a good example of that. The processor models right now are created by VaST with the VMPT. There will be models that are not created by us. The models are also licensed if created by VMPT. That IP is licensed and we retain the rights to that IP and can resell it.
If I am a system architect and a VaST user and want oo examine possible combination of processors and peripherals, will I run up a big bill for model licenses?
Linda: It could. The difference here is whether we have to create something unique for you or whether it's in our library. Very often what you want is a StarCore 1400, ARM 926 or ARM 1156 which are in our library. The cost is substantially less than if you have some custom unique DSP which is yours alone and you want us to model it. Then we charge you an NRE for that.
Can you share the tools from a practical point of view or does a user pretty much tie up the tool?
Linda: It depends. When architects are developing their architectures, they use the tool a lot. Software developers use their Meteor licenses very extensively during much of their development. Some organizations buy floating licenses, although most of out licenses are TBL
Target markets for VaST product?
Linda: Right now we are focused on automotive, high end consumer and wireless but the technology is applicable to a wide variety of applications. We have a pretty impressive customer list in each of those areas, e.g. Delphi has written us into their supplier contract, Toyota is a long time and long term VaST user, Cannon is a big user, Infineon, Siemens, ..
Total number of customers?
Linda: About 30 customers of the class we just listed.
Alain: With any new tool and new methodology starting the business is focus and working with the leader in each of these applications. Today we have a small sales force that is very, very focused on going after a handful of those people. It's really important as we develop the successful and scalable business that we partner with these people and make sure that the flow works and that at the end of the day they deliver a piece of silicon on time and of quality.
Once we establish that first rollout of successful silicon, then we can expand more broadly. But it is very important for our business model to go after a handful of people and have a very high level of interaction all the way from management to R&D to make sure that everything is working very, very well. We have a high bandwidth dedicated for us from Rob's teams and from Linda's team to make these early adopters highly successful.
Pricing?
Alain: When we talk about the first engagement with the customer, typically it's in the range of $100K to $150K. That's the early evaluation tools, if you want. Then typically what we have seen and have a track record with is the second project, maybe an extended project with more users in the neighborhood of $300K to $500K. Then we are at a point of corporate deployment, corporate usage. This is a multi-year, multi-million dollar engagement. We are very focused in implementing a predictable track with early adopters where one year to eighteen months later gwe are oing to a broad multiyear deal and driving the deployment throughout the company.
Who do you see as your competition? If no one is doing precisely what you are doing, is there someone overlapping or perhaps offering a different technology which competes for mindshare and budget share?
Alain: There are a lot of people are putting a label under ESL. Three are about 20 companies going to DAC. Going around with T-shits and buttons (and we are one of them) saying we're ESL. There is a lot of marketing and promotion going on. We are a startup trying to successfully build the company. Since I have been here a half year and I have not heard a customer say: you know we need to do an extensive benchmark Mr. Labat because we have vendor XYZ claiming to do the exact thing you said. I haven't heard that. Over the last 6 months visiting customers in Europe and Japan (I do spend a lot of time with customers), no one said that. A lot of people have said I have this methodology and how do I get out of that to establish predictability and be able to get to the market within the window I need. A lot of companies, CoWare is more of a first generation ESL company. Foundation Capital is very careful in its investments to make sure there is no conflict of interest in their portfolio companies. You wouldn't do that if you were a top tier investment company in Silicon Valley. They do things we don't do. They are complementary. We don't see them in our key accounts. High level complementary, driven by a few customers.
Where we are today is market launch. When you are sub $100 million, you are not going to compete with anybody head-to-head today. We feel we are in a very good position with these accounts by being able to establish a full design methodology which again has proven successful and will be announced in a couple of weeks. From what we have seen, I hope we give you a sense that we feel good about where we are today.
There was an exchange of letters in Electronic Business earlier this year entitled the “Death of ESL”. The original letter argued that because of the physical requirements for chip manufacturing at the smaller geometries a bottom's approach to design is required rather than a top-down approach ala ESL. Your CTO answered back. Any thoughts?
Rob: If I understood the thesis correctly with advanced processor nodes the critical problems are around manufacturing not design. I don't agree at all. I lived and breathed these manufacturing problems for years at AMD. They are indeed hard. Companies like AMD have hundreds of engineers whose careers are based upon fixing problems with manufacturing and making right choices so that there aren't problems in the future. It's a challenging problem but there are armies of people to attack it and make that tradeoff. There are lots and lots of people to figure the out the design. Basically you need both. It's just not the case that there are no issues around software. As a sort of a gut check, how well does all the software on all the devices work? The web browser on my cell phone is terrible. If they had a virtual model of that cell phone, they would have done a lot more design and the web browser would work well.
There is far more differentiation based upon software in these devices. Competitive pressures are higher. All of these things point to the need today to do very accurate function and timing modeling of your devices. To get the software running before you make the $50 million market launch of a product. If you look at the money spent on just buying parts and on Marketing. A million dollar contract for some modeling they can shave weeks or months and increases the probability of a successful product, is one of most inexpensive things that you could have for a product launch
From our point of view there are a lot of people interested in buying our product. Fundamental market recognition of that. Linda: In our positioning we are not using the words ESL, not that these are bad words but I think the world community of tool providers has over promised and under delivered in that category for many, many years. It has alienated the marketplace a little bit. The solutions have not been robust and particularly value added. That's not true of the VaST solution.
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