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(Source enr.com - Date 3/23/03)
By Judy Schriener
The buzz about Buzzsaw is that after
a year and a half on its own, it's going back into the Autodesk
fold. Buzzsaw CEO Carl Bass basically demurs on the question,
saying that it's always been one of three possibilities, the
other two being to remain independent or go out of business.
A fourth possibility would be for Buzzsaw to be acquired by
a company other than Autodesk. Bass says that it would be
difficult to bring Buzzsaw back into Autodesk, because of
Buzzsaw's ability as an independent entity to spend more money
on development and technology than a big company would normally
be willing to put forth.
An Autodesk Inc. spokeswoman says "At
this point, there is no new news with Buzzsaw." At the very
least, the two companies will be working more closely together
and integrating their services as never before--that will
likely be officially announced at next week's A/E/C SYSTEMS
conference in Chicago.
Autodesk's new "My Files" section on
its Point A design portal sports a "Powered by Buzzsaw" label.
More information is forthcoming next week, says Carol Lettieri,
spokeswoman for Autodesk. Meanwhile, Buzzsaw remains focused
on its collaboration and reprographic services. Bass claims
that Buzzsaw has 125,000 users who move some 20 to 50 Gigabytes
of data per day. Buzzsaw is consistently one of the top five
Internet companies in the AEC industry.
Companies larger than Autodesk have
expressed interest in acquiring Buzzsaw, but Bass blows most
of them off or has a perfunctory conversation with some. Most
suiters are interested in bargain shopping, which doesn't
interest Bass. "There's no way we're selling the company for
$X," he says. I don't think an acquisition is in the works,"
he adds. "If [Autodesk] ever bought [Buzzsaw], it wouldn't
be a part of Point A," because Point A is not designed to
be money-making; it's a value-added feature for Autodesk users,
he adds.
While where Buzzsaw lands may be great
fodder for water cooler conversations, if it were to go back
into the Autodesk fold it would have relatively little impact
on customers. There would not be an integration challenge,
as there has been with the Bidcom-Cephren merger, nor would
there be a change in focus, as design-oriented Autodesk and
Buzzsaw have the same core customers, demographically speaking.
Only if Buzzsaw were to be acquired by another company or
end up closing its doors would there be a problem for customers.
Last month, when Buzzsaw laid off about
70 of about 245 employees, Bass told construction.com that
he was going after $20 million in additional funding to tide
the firm over "until we get cash flow positive," which he
hoped would be early next year. (See May 15 related
story.) "It's more than a promise," he said at the time,
but, of course, he would not say where the capital was coming
from. Buzzsaw started out with an infusion of $15 million
in late 1999 and snagged another $75 million last spring,
squeaking ahead of the dot-com money crunch. Autodesk is a
40% owner. The $75 million came from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter,
Bank of America, Impact Venture Partners and Crosspoint Venture
Partners. Revenue last year was $5 million.
Buzzsaw started out in late 1999 as
a spinoff of Autodesk Inc. that offered a mostly free Web-based
collaboration service for design teams to store and share
drawings. Buzzsaw was launched at the height of the dot-com
fury and was quickly overshadowed by Bidcom, another collaboration-focused
Internet company, which raised the bar to new soaring heights
(or lowered it to new cratering depths, depending on your
point of view) when it came to shameless self-promotion and
hype. Bidcom and Cephren merged to form Citadon last year.
The whole industry has morphed since
the big stock market dip last April that hit all of the dot-coms
hard, right in their venture capital. The list of 150 to 200
Internet companies has been gutted since then, with the majority
shutting their doors, being acquired or just fading away while
they attempt to sell their assets or get more funding. Buzzsaw
has remained visible and vital, even if not yet profitable.
In other Buzzsaw news, co-founders Larry
Wares and Anne Bonaparte are no longer full-time employees
of Buzzsaw. Both remain involved with Buzzsaw in consulting
roles, says Bass, just not on a day-to-day basis. "They're
each doing work for Buzzsaw, just not the same job as a month
ago," he says.
Photo by
Judy Schriener
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