Founding of Pure Software
Hastings' first job was at Adaptive Technology, where he invented a tool for debugging software. "I worked for Audrey MacLean in 1990 when she was CEO at Adaptive Corp. From her, I learned the value of focus. I learned it is better to do one product well than two products in a mediocre way," says Hastings.
Hastings left Adaptive Technology in 1991 to found his first company, Pure Software, which produced products to troubleshoot software. The rapidly growing company soon proved challenging for Hastings as he lacked managerial experience. "As the company grew from 10 to 40 to 120 to 320 to 640 employees, I found I was definitely underwater and over my head," said Hastings. "I was doing white-water kayaking at the time, and in kayaking if you stare and focus on the problem you are much more likely to hit danger. I focused on the safe water and what I wanted to happen. I didn’t listen to the skeptics." Hastings' engineering background didn't prepare him for the challenges of being a CEO and he asked his board to replace him. "I tried to fire myself — twice," Hastings says. "I was losing confidence." The board refused and Hastings says he learned to be a businessman. "I was an engineer myself. We doubled our revenue every year, but my transformation from engineer to CEO was when Morgan Stanley took the company public in 1995."
In 1996, Pure Software announced a merger with Atria Software. The merger integrated Pure Software's programs for detecting bugs in software with Atria's tools to manage development of complex software. "With a single vendor and a unified sales force, we'll be able to make a really profound difference in the way people develop software," Hastings said at the time of the merger. But the Wall Street Journal reported that there were problems integrating the sales forces of Pure Software and Atria after the head salesmen for both Pure and Atria left following the merger.
In 1997, the combined company, Pure Atria, was acquired by Rational Software, which triggered a 42% drop in both companies' stocks after the deal was announced. Hastings was appointed Chief Technical Officer of the combined companies and left soon after the acquisition. "I had the great fortune of doing a mediocre job at my first company," says Hastings. "We got more bureaucratic as we grew." After Pure Software, Hastings spent two years thinking about how to avoid similar problems at his next startup.
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Famous quotes containing the words founding and/or pure:
“... there is no way of measuring the damage to a society when a whole texture of humanity is kept from realizing its own power, when the woman architect who might have reinvented our cities sits barely literate in a semilegal sweatshop on the Texas- Mexican border, when women who should be founding colleges must work their entire lives as domestics ...”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.”
—Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Titus, 1:15.
See Lawrence on Puritans.