They Acquire, Acquire, Acquire While We Build, Build, Build

Why is it so difficult to find information about Zoho's management team? 1600 employees and I can't find the name of a single person on their website.<p>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?

&#62; <i>and for that, let’s give credit where it is due: it is not Benioff, it is Bernanke.</i><p>[applause]<p>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.

I've never read such a bitter blog post from a company blog.

Zoho's products are mediocre. But I suppose it makes sense in the context of going for the strip mall approach to cloud software. Offer a ton of services and hope to hook the user and upsell.<p>The main problem I find with their service is the design is atrocious.

Neat article, but deeply undermined by zoho&#x27;s mediocre execution in their crm product. The data model and search are solid, but the ui is wildly buggy (the back button doesn&#x27;t work!) and the API is slow, missing features and poorly documented.<p>It&#x27;s one thing to build, build, build. It&#x27;s another to build well, build well, build well.

Why is deep integration important? (serious question, I'm not sure). I like Heroku before, I still like Heroku. I'm glad that the website tells me nothing about Saleforce and doesn't require me to make a Salesforce login. As you say integration causes all sorts of headaches and integration does little to improve the business model beyond brand recognition (which is why I'm assuming they do the slight logos changes). Whats the benefit of fully integrating a already successful and recognized platform?

The truth is that the ZOHO founder is right (acquisition price is a joke, Salesforce product is clunky, Salesforce multiple is crazy). And yet, clear market leaders in high growth markets command premium prices (Amazon has a crazy PE multiple for example). But ask Netflix or Apple. When you screw up one or two quarters, market reacts fast.

This is the only post on the front page today that's not about government spying.. Well done.

Are n&#x27;t many famous products (Android, Maps, Docs etc) of google are acquired rather than built?. What you think might work for you, may not work for others. Every organization have to figure out what will work best for their customers, by themselves.

Look at how EMC does it. Almost no software companies they bought have really flourished. Smarts, Infra, Voyence, nLayers, Configuresoft and Fastscale are to name just a few. All are on the way out, or are so ridiculously unsuccesful compared to when they were nimble and smaller.<p>If you get acquired by a monolith, then don&#x27;t expect the acquisition to succeed. It will most likely fail.

Could not post this story for couple of Days, mailed to PG, thanks for unblocking/banning :)

Is there a free webmail product at the start of the funnel? An online office suite?

I loved this blog ... no offense on his words, its true

Yay, something that&#x27;s not about the NSA!

Zoho's strategy is this<p>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<p>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?<p>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.<p>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