INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
It been 14 years since Mark Shuttleworth first founded and funded Canonical and the Ubuntu project
At the time, it was mostly a Linux distribution
Today, it a major enterprise player that offers a variety of products and services
Throughout the years, Shuttleworth self-funded the project and never showed much interest in taking outside money
Now, however, that changing.
As Shuttleworth told me, he now looking for investors as helooks to get the company on track to an IPO
It no secret that the company recent re-focusing on the enterprise — and shutting down projects like the Ubuntu phone and the Unity
desktop environment — was all about that, after all
Shuttleworth sees raising money as a step in this direction — and as a way of getting the company in shape for going public.
&The first
step would be private equity,& he told me
&And really, that because having outside investors with outside members of the board essentially starts to get you to have to report and be
I&ve got a set of things that I think we need to get right
That what we&re working towards now
Then there a set of things that private investors are looking for and the next set of things is when you&re doing a public offering, there a
different level of discipline required.&
It no secret that Shuttleworth, who sports an impressive beard these days, was previously
resistant to this, and he acknowledged as much
&I think that a fair characterization,& he said
&I enjoy my independence and I enjoy being able to make long-term calls
I still feel like I&ll have the ability to do that, but I do appreciate keenly the responsibility of taking other people money
When it your money,it slightly different.&
Refocusing Canonical on the enterprise business seems to be paying off already
&The numbers are looking good
The business is looking healthy
It not philanthropy,& he said
&There are some key metrics that I&m watching, which are the gate for me to take the next step, which would be growth equity.& Those
metrics, he told me, are the size of the business and how diversified it is.
Shuttleworth likens this program of getting the company ready
&There no point in saying: I haven&t done any exercise in the last 10 years but I&m going to sign up for tomorrow marathon,& he said.
The
move from being a private company to taking outside investment and going public — especially after all these years of being self-funded
— is treacherous, though, and Shuttleworth admitted as much, especially in terms of being forced to setting short-term goals to satisfy
investors that aren&t necessarily in the best interest of the company in the long term
Shuttleworth thinks he can negotiate those issues, though.
Interestingly, he thinks the real danger is quite a different one
&I think the most dangerous thing in making that shift is the kind ofshallowness of theunreasonably big impact that stock price has on
&Today, at Canonical, it 600 people
You might have some that are having a really great day and some that are having a shitty day
And they have to figure out what real about both of those scenarios
But they can kind of support each other
[…] But when you have a stock ticker, everybody thinks they&re having a great day, or everybody thinks they&re having a shitty day in a
way that may be completely uncorrelated to how well they&re actually doing.&
Shuttleworth does not believe that IBM acquisition of its
competitor Red Hat will have any immediate effect on its business, though
What he does think, however, is that this move is making a lot of people rethink for the first time in years the investment they&ve been
making in Red Hat and its enterprise Linux distribution
Canonical promise is that Ubuntu, as well as its OpenStack tools and services, are not just competitive but also more cost-effective in the
long run, and offer enterprises an added degree of agility
And if more businesses start looking at Canonical and Ubuntu, that can only speed up Shuttleworth (and his bankers&) schedule for hitting
Canonical metrics for raising money and going public.
