The other day, I was listening to an audiobook, and the author spoke about ideas. He noted that they are either good or bad, yet most folks only think about the good ones. I thought about this, as you can tell, and said to myself, okay, let’s write a post where the e-learning history and thus learning systems, authoring tools, and alike are intertwined with good and bad ideas. I decided to explore the spectrum of good, great, bad, and poor ideas.
There is always one person who comes up with the idea, whether in the workplace or out of it.
Sure, others may get involved (the usual case at a company), but there is still initially one person who thought of it.
Maybe they considered all the scenarios and didn’t, but they came up with this idea and ran with it. A lot of us, I think, come up with ideas.
The awful ones go right into the brain’s dustbin immediately without any additional thoughts. Others, though, we may feel more, map it out, or unleash it and see what happens (not recommended).
Someone came up with the idea of an LMS. Someone came up with the term LMS – albeit Jay Cross (RIP) is said to be that person; however, this is debatable.
Someone came up with the idea to create templates for developing courses quickly – and no, it wasn’t someone from Adobe or Articulate. Instead, it was someone from Macromedia Dreamweaver, which is software for building websites.
Someone came up with the idea of an LCMS (RIP) Community of Practice (yuck, first it went the way of the dodo bird, then it has made a comeback – just like the dodo bird – which is being re-created genetically). Someone came up with the idea for the term WBT – a brilliant move.
Someone came up with a term for DVD content, a horrible idea – and well, nobody remembers it.
How, then, should I write a post about ideas and the history of offerings so that anyone can ascertain the differences between good and downright poor or bad? We can look at this in hindsight or through rose-colored glasses and say, “AHA, you are looking in hindsight. Therefore, it initially was a good idea, but it went south.” I can’t entirely agree.
There are times when, right away, you think to yourself, ‘Who came up with this?’ It’s a bad idea before it even goes to market.
Anyone who worked during the dot.com days can attest to this.
I chose the groupings route.
Groupings seem like a good idea, but feel free to say this is a bad idea, and I’m okay with that.
Acquisitions
Any company that acquires another, in our case, a learning system, always thinks it is a great idea. I decided to eliminate PE firms, except Vista Equity.
The initial person who thought buying SumTotal was a great idea (initially it was) and then dumped it for a fortune to Skillsoft (another great idea), which in turn was someone at Skillsoft thinking this was a great idea, which turned out to be false and was a factor in Skillsoft going into bankruptcy due to the albatross known as SumTotal.
Then Cornerstone came along and bought SumTotal for peanuts, which was a good idea, and here we are with SumTotal.
The wonderful thing about acquisitions is that very few people publicly know who is on the market, who isn’t (but is open for acquisitions), and what the financial status is – unless the company is public, which is an outlier in our space.
In my grouping, I interspersed it with historical references unrelated to our industry, simply for the sake of doing it. I won’t go into all the particulars on that side; instead, I recommend using an AI search engine or using the web.
Fortunately, you will avoid all the garbage of the top ten this or push of that, which has turned the internet into space junk.
LTG, Macromedia, Adobe, and Smart ideas (for the most part)
LTG acquiring Rustici (makers of the SCORM engine and Watershed LRS, among other items) is a great idea. Someone at LTG should get a raise for going up to their boss or being the boss and suggesting, “Let’s look at buying Rustici.” IMO, this is by far the best buy LTG has ever made, and I know all of their acquisitions.
LTG, however, made a poor decision (although they disagree) in buying NetDimensions. Sure, they got it for a song and a dance—Fred Astaire is back!
However, ND never hit its stride, despite having the potential to do so from the very first vendor, and you could use part of it via a jump drive (true). I never tested it, but they noted it.
They had some other clever ideas, but I remember telling their CEO on a webinar panel that mobile learning was the next big thing, and he disagreed.
It turned out to be accurate, and the rest is history. Some companies still use NetD, despite the system not receiving any updates or maintenance.
Therefore, from LTG’s standpoint, it is a gift that keeps giving. I still think it was a bad idea.
In another acquisition, LTG snagged Bridge away from Instructure.
The person who came up with the idea landed a good one because Instructure never really figured out how to use Bridge; I mean, Instructure is an EdTech company, and it got so bad that I know of folks who eyed Bridge, and Instructure was pushing Canvas as the better choice.
On top of that, one CEO I know told me he once got a call from Instructure on how he would position and make Bridge better. The CEO demurred.
Whoever thought this was a smart move should receive kudos for attempting it just from the sheer holy moly yowsa, and at the same time, a bad idea.
Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia initially looked like an awful decision, and yes, from the website build, it was; however, tapping into those templates that Macromedia created for creating courses was a great idea. At the time, I hated it.
I was using DazzlerMax and Authorware, which are superior offerings for creating courses. I reviewed the templates and realized that anyone could make a course without knowledge of ID or e-learning development, which isn’t ideal.
The person who saw the template potentially hit it out of the park. Adobe was the first vendor to use templates to create courses. Not Articulate.
Articulate and the person whose idea recognized that rapid course authoring was the way to go, establishing a considerable market even today, deserved huge kudos and a lot of money, probably got a pen. Studio drove the market to the point of going into Storyline, which is essentially a PowerPoint converter.
It’s simple to use, creates a course in just a few minutes, and usually, it isn’t very good. However, the product person who first saw the value of a TOC was correct – although that has gone by the wayside.
For me, GO1’s track record is mixed regarding its buy decisions.
I suspect, okay, more so, that the person who came up with the idea to go made a poor decision. They disagree (I think you are starting to see a trend here). GO1 picked off Anders Pink, which was initially a good idea. I mean, GO1 didn’t know the impact of AI in content finding and bringing in (nobody did), and their strategy for leveraging AP was smart.
On the other hand, purchasing from a couple of vendors solely for the benefit of those running or actively involved with the product was not a good idea. Why not just hire those folks away?
It seems to make more sense. Nevertheless, there were other apparent reasons for doing so, yet the people aspect was a key factor. I remember the soon-to-arrive president (I always saw him as somewhat of a de facto CEO) telling me they were not good buys. He noted reasons why, which I will leave out, along with some thoughts he presented. He is no longer at the company. And for the record, I honestly believe that Andrew, the founder and CEO of GO1, is a brilliant individual. I have always had the highest respect for him, and he knows my perspective on those acquisitions. Equally, I thought buying Blinkist was not a good idea either. There were other ways to go here, and GA didn’t do it for me. But there is someone there, who believes and probably still does that was and is a great idea.
Cornerstone Track Record for Learning System Acquisitions
Mixed. I understand the reasoning behind the deals, but there were clearly some good ideas here. One idea, though, was a bad one from a system standpoint, but it was financially very smart.
Good ideas
- Saba – At the time, this was a brilliant idea. The system had a lot of potential, so the first thing they came up with was what they referred to as TIM (think of a mentor thing that helps you). TIM I understand is still around and hasn’t evolved. Saba always thought of themselves behind the scenes as a performance management system, even though they publicly pushed it for L&D employees.
- SumTotal – I mentioned it earlier, the peanuts buy minus Snoopy. While some people’s reasoning was to eliminate the competition (Saba and SumTotal, see ya), Cornerstone definitely made an impact. However, their major competitors are still out there. Both were a client buy (prevalent, BTW) when vendors buy other learning systems. The notion it is for the technology is a farce. Maybe they want to integrate it into the system, OR they see it as a revenue channel by keeping it as a standalone – there are plenty more who seek it solely for getting the clients and moving them over to their system, ideally sunsetting the system if they can – the one they bought.)
- EdCast—Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. The idea was mixed – it had some good aspects and some poor ones. It is sort of in the middle. I didn’t like it and saw no benefit since Cornerstone already had a legit LXP in their system, including the whole skills piece, the third-party content, and the other standards. EdCast remains a strong player in the LXP market, having added ubiquitous features to the LMS space at the time. There were other reasons for the decision (and yes, I cannot disclose), but the idea – the initial person who went this strategically- makes sense; no, I do not see it as a good idea. Consider various other systems that would have made sense, not just from a competitor standpoint, but a more decisive entry into two valuable segments, including customer training, which Cornerstone is not strong in, let alone a player.
Learn.com; Plateau Learning – It seemed like a good idea
Count Olaf. Probably the best con artist of all time. He once got a guy to buy the Eiffel Tower. Then the guy took the money and bolted, before the person realized the tower wasn’t for sale. The Count (hint – not a real count), even landed a financial gain with Al Capone, and lived to talk about it. It’s a remarkable story of how the goal wasn’t to rip off Capone (a guarantee of death), but rather to recognize that what he really wanted was X, and which Capone gave him, because he was sure that the Count was going to rip him off. I recommend reading the 48 Laws of Power, which discusses the Count.
I bring up Olaf because the person whose idea led to the acquisition of Learn.com would have impressed Al Capone. I don’t mean this negatively; instead, the person who suggested selling to Taleo, and everyone agreed, either never heard of the Count or was unfamiliar with the Capone story.
To say Taleo pulled the rug over the eyes of Learn.com back in the day is an understatement. They promised folks who worked there (at least one exec told me this) that they were going to infuse money into Learn.com and make it even better. HA! That never happened, and if it did, it was probably a few dollars.
Taleo in turn, was acquired by Oracle. And the rest is history. I never understood the buy from the Taleo standpoint of Learn.com, which by that time was a course aggregator. Ahead of its time, actually, especially since they started out as an LMS. If you think hmm, I thought this happened before, well, not before, later – because GO1 started out as an LMS and is now a content/course aggregator. Thankfully, Taleo isn’t around to buy.
Learn.com wasn’t a bad system. It wasn’t great or okay, good, but there were people who liked it. When they went course aggregator, I saw them as a nice alternative to Skillsoft who was off acquiring other course providers including NetG and then down the road, Element K.
This just goes to show that one person, somewhere out there in the ancient world of early learning systems and e-learning, thought to themselves that Taleo would save them (Learn.com wasn’t exactly raking in the cash), and improve the system and just take it to the next level. The challenge that befell Taleo, IMO, was that they were never in the learning business to begin with, they were in the recruiting software business. Perhaps, they eyed what SuccessFactors had done – for SF was a recruiting software company that went out and purchased Plateau Learning, tweaked it up a bit (which was better than before, and that’s saying something), and whalla – SuccessFactors LMS or whatever they pitched it as.
For the person who had the idea to buy Plateau, it was a good idea. At the time, PL was a dominant player in the industry, with lots of loyal (aka recurring revenue) customers. The people who had PL loved it. I often describe it as a dated, archaic system that made SharePoint seem like a revolutionary solution for online learning (it’s not).
The first person who suggested selling to SF was smart, too. A good idea all-around. Two cheers! For two good ideas from two different people.
SAP buying SF, and the person who came up with the idea to do so, was equally brilliant. SF today is a cash cow for SAP. Moo – Moo. The purchase of Litmos was not a great idea. Litmos became the Cinderella, if Cinderella was not given any money to buy a revamped carriage, with all the goodies, including an upgrade from eight-track to HD radio. Oh, and Cinderella was pitched as someone who couldn’t date the prince, but Jolly the Jester is available. Litmos suffered, IMO, under SAP, and the impact was clearly evident in whom SAP prioritized from an enterprise standpoint – SF, over Litmos. It got to a point, whereas if you were interested in Litmos, a salesperson from SAP had to be on the call too. The best thing that happened to Litmos was a person, yes, a person who came up with a good idea of rescuing them with a buy and capital infusion.
Skillsoft and SumTotal
Yes, it is time to bring up this acquisition.
In the history of acquisitions in our industry, at least from my perspective, this one is by far the worst. At the time is seemed clearly as though they struck gold. SumTotal was doing solid business, people that used it, and stayed with it (and yes, there are companies today still on it, from those days of Skillsoft’s ownership). There was solid ARR. The problem though was that the visions of where ST could get to, oir what was the perceived long-term growth just never materialized. I’m sure lots will disagree but take a gander at the filing for bankruptcy that Skillsoft had to do, and you will see SumTotal as a key reason. This was an albatross.
I knew of vendors who received letters of interest for ST and scoffed. Skillsoft saw ST as a potential whale (Vegas is experience in the whale business, and no I am not talking about an actual whale), however it ended up being Charlie the Tuna, minus his tinned can. Sorry, Charlie.
I have no idea on whether the person who had the epiphany of unloading SumTotal to another vendor, which turned out to be Cornerstone, but they were smart to do so. Not because the system was lackluster or a bad buy for Cornerstone (it wasn’t), rather because they were able to unload it.
Skillsoft’s strength is now Perceipo, which oddly enough wasn’t seen as the system winner at the time, that was ST. Skillsoft rolled out the “P” too early, it was really a work in progress at the time. The UI/UX though was far superior to ST (in comparison). Anyway, the idea of that person who said Perceipo, which is not an LXP, despite what others may say, is the future should be given a medal. Or a few free tickets to Disneyland.
Bottom Line
There have been a lot more acquisitions over the years, and a few last years alone. The idea of “consolidation” is occurring though just isn’t accurate, not even in the same planet. I didn’t talk about the recent buys by Docebo (last year), or previous buys in year’s past by Absorb.
I demurred from talking about vendors who say they are rocking, and privately are hoping that somebody buys them – ignoring the fact that nobody is going to pay 8X for them.
What I love though about buys or sells, is that someone, somewhere, whether in a boardroom, or at their desk or cubicle or in the airport lounge or shopping for carriages, had an idea.
They ended up either being great, or good, or poor or downright bad. At the time though, they seemed to be a winner. Nobody, comes up with an idea, thinking this is a loser, but let’s roll with it. Especially when it comes to pitching it to others, getting buy-in and then acquiring a vendor, or learning tech, or some other offering.
There will always be outright wins here, and yes, questionable in hindsight losses, and while we can look through rose-colored glasses and say this was a good idea or bad idea, there are as earlier mentioned many of us (not just me), who heard about abc selling to DEF or EFG buying AXR and saying, bad, bad idea.
History is scattered with ideas that turned out to be successful.
And while, we can agree to disagree on what is really a good versus not so good idea, I think we can all agree on one thing.
Not having enough lifeboats on the Titanic, was a bad idea.
E-Learning 24/7
No post next week, as I continue my business travels.