Comments on: Former Googler leaves WebTrends searching for a new CEO, finding Alex Yoder

By: VGT

VGT — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:56:35 +0000

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By: jack

jack — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:29:16 +0000

He was never vp of sales for touchclarity. he ran a region! not us sales

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:35:50 +0000

If its acquisition bait, it’s acquisition for a song. What have they got to sell? Products that are first generation web technology and difficult to improve as witnessed by their track record of releases? Unhappy customer base? Yoder may have gone to a good oregon college, but it seems to me that problem ridden webtrends would need more than a sales guy, and those that have met Yoder know that’s what he is — a hard charging sales guy that stops at nothing — apparently Stickel got in his way. Maybe that move was good for Alex, but we’ll see if it was good for webtrends.

By: Kory

Kory — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:59:27 +0000

Wow, four CEOs in only 10 months!!!
Let’s see–
Greg Drew, to October 07
Bruce Coleman, Oct 07 – March 08
Dan Stickel, March 08 – August 08
Alex Yoder, August 08 – TBD

Not exactly confidence-building for customers. And, how does a guy who only held an executive role (VP Sales) for a few months since being back to the company get elevated to CEO? I’m sure he’s a really nice guy and good at sales management, but that’s a *VERY* different skill set than managing a software company- with all the demands of engineering, client services, finance, HR, etc.

Good luck to them, but I don’t see a very long future for WebTrends– smells like acquisition bait to me.

By: Jmartens

Jmartens — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:10:57 +0000

@Rick Good points, I’d agree.

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:23:47 +0000

Macorayne is right in one respect, someone was brought in to clean house. But it was Stickel’s predecessor, Bruce Coleman, who did the cleaning. Coleman is a career “interim CEO” who had done that at other companies prior to WebTrends.
One of Coleman’s other tasks was to find a permanent CEO – guess Coleman doesn’t get a 100% for this stint…

By: macorayne

macorayne — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:28:34 +0000

Stickel was brought in to clean house. I don’t think he was ever meant to be long term. He was there to make some hard descision and then to leave to allow another CEO to lead the company in the right direction.

By: Rick Turoczy

Rick Turoczy — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:19:02 +0000

@JMartens I agree that the business obligations of the respective CEO roles were very different. I think you’re absolutely right.

Mine take (as usual) was more from an emotional and cultural perspective, where they both seemed to be searching for “someone who knows the company culture to lead the company.”

In that vein, both of those CEO stories seem incredibly similar.

By: Jmartens

Jmartens — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:10:06 +0000

P.S. I was just reading that Forbes Magazine thinks Whitman is one of the top schools in the country and #1 in the state of Washington…not a bad place to be from!

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/lists/2008/94/opinions_college08_Whitman-College_94556.html

By: Carri Bugbee

Carri Bugbee — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:09:11 +0000

Was that one of the shortest CEO stints in Portland tech history? Maybe you should conduct a poll. Could be an amusing list to compile!

I don’t know anything about what’s happening at WebTrends and wouldn’t dare to speculate, but I will say that when I met Stickel at an industry event, I got that big-city “I’m looking right through you because you’re not important enough for me to talk to” vibe. That doesn’t happen very often in Portland (thank goodness!) because we all know this is a small pond and we’re going to run into each other over and over again. So, maybe it was culture clash? ;-)