Pros
If you were talented, had a propensity to act and take risks, and were ambitious, you could grow your career. The downside of that (this is a con), is that the ceiling was quite abrupt as new ideas, opportunities, new teams were often hindered by lack of investment - it's not obvious how institutional capital was spent. Though not in MindTouch's favor, many of us used the elevated responsibilities we were given to gain positions in better-funded organizations. Therefore, MindTouch was a good career-builder. The founding CEO and his partner CTO were both very talented (more on the downside of the dynamic in the cons section). The founding CEO was an incredible advocate for the company and knew how to keep MindTouch relevant and in the conversation. The CTO is a genius, though I would have liked to see more engagement with the rest of the business or the analyst community. They both inspired me. Some of the most talented people I've ever met have come through this company. On the product and engineering side, you can now find them in senior roles at FAANG companies or in unicorn growth startups (some are still at MindTouch). From my understanding, the company was acquired primarily for its product and technology (and likely the potential it had with better investment). Though not as transformational to the industry as we would have liked (more in the cons), obviously some of us were able to contribute to something of measurable value.
Cons
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.
