I don't think a bitter blog post like that accomplishes anything positive.
Sridhar isn't doing anything different, he's forcing people to pick a side, and guess what ... it usually works.
"You like bitches and stocks, we like builds and money" - Master V(embu)
That being said, I used Zoho before, but left for Google Apps. Recently I revisited Zoho, but decided to keep looking for Google alternatives. Zoho has great a checklist feature set, but somehow it feels too web 1.0. They offer a bunch of services, but the ones I care about mostly like basic PIM (mail, contacts, calendar, tasks) are nood integrated deeply enough and feel like they require an effort to use.
Anyways, good luck to Zoho.
I'm not sure this writing would accomplish more than simply putting your head down and continuing to build the products you claimed are already much better.
Have you ever used Salesforce as a product?
I tried it and cancelled within a week; it's super-clunky & complicated. He's got great marketing, but the product is crap.
Dismissing Zoho's points based on the author's tone is a bit shortsighted don't you think?
Benioff's headcount is ludicrous when you compare the # of staff he has to 37signals on any reasonable metric ($ of sales per employee across any business function).
EDIT: why downvote this? I'm truly curious. I was a happy customer until not long ago, Zoho's products are great, I just never understood why they don't have a Team/Management page. Unless I'm missing it somehow?
This public presentation I made 3 years ago on our history: https://docs.zoho.com/show/published.do?rid=s0uyx6d6a7e9c859...
High-level business tradeoffs like this are fascinating and worthy of discussion. Even though you name names, it's clearly about the ideas, and not the people. I wish more people had the courage to write so openly and frankly about how they feel.
Unfortunately I'm going to be a wet blanket: I've signed up on Zoho a bunch of times over the years but never stayed because of the Zoho design, or lack thereof. The text is too small, the fonts and icons are ugly or amateurish looking, and its not mobile friendly.
Look, I want you guys to win. I can't stand Salesforce. I'd rather use Zoho products than Google products, but please give some attention to your UX/UI.
Thanks for listening!
What kind of leader hides? It's like a man who won't shake hands or tell you his last name. It's just strange.
Do they think people are going to avoid Zoho because it's Indian? Facebook, Google, Craigslist, & a bunch of others were started by Jewish founders and you know how people have and continue to feel about Jews. Their ethnicity didn't impact them negatively.
Hell, Americans are paranoid about the Chinese and yet still we buy Made in China products.
Zoho should be proud. It came from India, it's privately held, profitable, and hasn't taken venture capital or bank loans. I'd put my name all over that If I were the founder. That's an amazing feat.
1)Let others innovate, we will copy - Always copy the market leader. Anything that can be copied and built by using Java/MySQL and other free software, they will attempt and flood the market. Let others innovate - Zoho has no patent/discovery to be proud of. They always wait for someone to start first, then piggyback on them. The breadcrumbs that are left by the master is more than enough for the puppy
2) Hire Cheap, Be cheap - Zoho hires school students and give them the ludicrous jobs - Help desk ticket assignment, routine jobs like build management etc. Less than 20% of the total school students hired are working in developmental activities. If you see Zoho's linked-in and facebook pages, they are advertising for fresh Engineers to join them. So what about the school students, CEO?
3)Pay Meager - Zoho's salary is very less compared to other product companies around, but marginally better than the consulting/services company. That way their cash reserves are huge. I assume around $50 million goes into cash reserves every year.
4) Zoho is controlled by Sridhar's family. All other founders have either been chucked out or been demoted. Such a frustration lead to the creation of freshdesk.com
People like to say a race for the bottom is good for consumers but it isn't. A race for the bottom is only good for people playing arbitrage games who know to get out before the bottom is reached.
These jobs have to be done by someone.. I don't see why these jobs should be "below" school leavers. Hell, its a good place to start for them to gain some experience anyway.
ps: Zoho may prune the garden at any time too.
[applause]
The only caveat I'd add: Japan has shown that monetary policy can stay bad for a looong time. While I personally think Zoho's chosen path is certainly more solid, monetary stupidity can last a lot longer than anyone believes it should.
Well, you're right, tight monetary policy would kill the economy, very briefly. It would force liquidation of debt. Companies that need to go bankrupt would go bankrupt. And we could finally begin to rebuild on solid footing. As it is we're headed for decades of slowly declining standard of living because we're delaying the necessary reallocation of capital by just flooding the market with money. It's not going to solve anything, it's just prolonging the pain.
And of course small companies (and startups) lose money all the time, and that's expected while they're gaining momentum.
Firms that have very high P/Es (OpenTable and LinkedIn also come to mind) somehow have convinced investors that it's rational for them to spend every scrap of money on growth on a relatively massive scale, as so that the "P" part of the equation approaches zero. It seems then the discussion shifts to what the 'forward' P/E is, aka a prediction about the future where growth has stalled and the business is established and printing money without an obvious place to allocate it sensibly...like Google, or Apple. The theory then being it'd go to dividends, but that doesn't seem to be what has happened, because the business tries to justify holding onto the capital just in case it's needed to grow even more.
FWIW...I don't know anything about this stuff and plow just about everything into Vanguard. I have no interest in beating the market, I just want to track "the economy" so I can meet my needs when I can't work anymore. So, grains of salt and all that, but when I think about what a hyperbolic plot does it always mystifies me why people care so much about P/E when either term is close to zero.
As much as Salesforce is criticizing Oracle, Salesforce is behaving just like Oracle - with a cooler CEO (who is himself a former Oracle guy).
It's one thing to build, build, build. It's another to build well, build well, build well.
I chose Zoho for our team, and as we grow am fielding more and more complaints about these kinds of issues. What am I supposed to tell them?
Specially recently, people have been acquisitions that get integrated (closed down) and are happy then the company is left alone (Tumblr).
The main problem I find with their service is the design is atrocious.
If you get acquired by a monolith, then don't expect the acquisition to succeed. It will most likely fail.
