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Integer and the Venture Capitalists
Introduction
This scenario shows how Integer can be used through an Intranet to enable faster and better-informed decision making than ever before. Integer has capabilities beyond those used in the following scenario, which demonstrates
- Real-time collaboration on a shared spreadsheet among geographically wide-spread users.
- Real-time data feeds; in this case, current market values of investments.
- Access to a shared spreadsheet through a URL.
- Cross-platform capabilities; all that a user needs is a computer that can access their Intranet.
- Compatibility with legacy systems.
Starfire Ventures is a small, international venture capital firm. They have offices in New York and Moscow and partners in New York, Paris and Moscow.
Our story begins with a conference call between the partners. They are discussing fund raising and investments.
Peter (New York): Go to our Intranet page "current.quarterly/html "to see next quarter's funding and investment numbers. Do you remember the password?
Larry (Paris): Yes? I'm opening it now.
Sam (Long Island): I'm there.
[Larry and Sam access the page that contains an Integer real-time spreadsheet.]
Boris (Moscow): Yes, I've got the password. Give me a second to kick my boots off, and I'll pull it up. I just got into the office, and it's snowing again today in Moscow?
[Boris opens the URL and sees the proposal along with the same Integer spreadsheet Peter, Larry and Sam see.]
Larry: Hey, Boris, get on board and look at this! I thought we had more money than it shows here. Our fund seems short. Wait! The figure's changing! A second ago it said $3.1 million? And it just changed to $3 million! Why is it changing?
[Larry sees the first page of the spreadsheet with numbers trending down.]
Peter: It's changing because we're all looking at the same spreadsheet and the numbers are built against the current market price. Who parked our money in Microsoft stock?!
Sam: Whoops? I figured because Microsoft was doing well that it'd be smarter to park our unused fund in MS-Bills rather than T-Bills.
Boris: Sam, can you say, "Preliminary Injunction?" Even we folks in Russia know about what's happening with MS and the DOJ.
Larry: Okay, what can we do?
Sam: Did you notice the hedging I've done? Switch to the "Total Holdings" layer. If we get out of MS and the MS puts, we should be only about $100K in the hole. Let me do the trade right now.
[Sam sells the MS stock and the puts. All of the partners see the assets moved into T-Bills on each of their screens.]
Boris: Why did my spreadsheet change?
Peter: With Integer, we're all collaborating on the same spreadsheet.
Boris: But I didn't re-load my spreadsheet. How could you be changing the numbers on my screen?
Peter: The spreadsheet is on one of our servers. We're all looking at the same spreadsheet.
Boris: This thing is great!
Larry: How are we going to finish raising the round? and make up for someone's $100K mistake?
Boris: I've got some people here in Moscow, who are interested in investing.
Sam: Boris, we don't take rubles.
Boris: Actually, the money is in a Swiss bank. We've been talking investments in Swiss francs to be redeemed in Euros.
Peter: Can we hedge Euros?
Sam: Let me just update the spreadsheet to handle Swiss francs in and Euros out.
[The screens update with an inserted row for Swiss franc investments.]
Boris: They are in for 650,000 Swiss francs.
[Boris enters the numbers and the spreadsheet shown on everybody's screen updates.]
Boris: What do I have to do so you guys can see the numbers? Where's the "send" button?
Peter: There's no "send" button. I see your changes.
Sam: How real is this number?
Boris: Pretty real.
Sam: I'm going to discount it by 25% until we have cash in the bank.
[Sam updates the number and everybody's screen changes.]
Boris: Yeah, it still works even with the discount.
Larry: Let's get onto the investments. I've found this great start-up called "Arrivontech" in a Paris garage. They make a really hot product. I built an Excel spreadsheet to model their cash flow. Let me create the "Arrivontech" layer and import the spreadsheet.
[The "Arrivontech" layer appears on everybody's spreadsheet.]
Sam: These numbers look impressive, but they are looking for a lot of money. Can we tie our investment to their making these numbers and stage the payments?
Larry: They seem hungry, so I think I can get them to agree.
[Sam updates the numbers to show a staged investment.]
Sam: I've updated our fund's cash flow to reflect the Russian Connection's investment and our staged investment in Arrivontech. Looks like we're comfortable with cash over the next 30 days or until the next start-up with a killer app comes along.
Boris: Okay, so who owns this spreadsheet?
Peter: What do you mean?
Boris: Who is keeping the most current version?
Peter: It's on a server. Any time any of us access with our password, the most current version will be available.
Sam: What happens if someone makes mistakes when he's playing "What if?"
Peter: The spreadsheet is saved by version, and there's a change history, so we know who made which changes.
Boris: Call me superstitious, but I'd like a copy on my hard disk.
Peter: Use the "Save as Excel" function, and you'll have a copy on your hard disk. Or, you can save the whole document as HTML, and it will preserve the Integer spreadsheet inside the HTML.
Larry: This must be costing us a mint. But it was a nightmare trying to run this fund when we were e-mailing spreadsheets all over the place and trying to make sense of each other's changes.
Peter: It costs less than one of Boris's "fund-raising" dinners.
Sam: Sounds like the best investment we've made so far?
Summing Up
This scenario demonstrated how Integer enables users to take full advantage of their Intranet through seamless connectivity and real-time collaboration. The partners could see and update the same information at the same time, enabling them to accomplish in minutes what previously might have taken days of e-mailing spreadsheets with individual changes. Using an application built with Integer, they didn't need to worry about who had the most updated version of the spreadsheet. It didn't matter what kind of equipment the users had. In addition, Boris appreciated the full interoperability with legacy productivity products; he was able to save the work to an Excel spreadsheet stored on his own hard disk.