Re: What I Think Delphi Needs to Do to Survive

"Randy Magruder" <rmagruder@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4410f5fe$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Because they are likely to face much smaller budgets now than when
they were with Borland.

Just WHERE do you get this information? Without knowing who the buyer
is or what their approach will be, or how deep their pockets are, how
can you say this is likely. Anyone buying Delphi is going to be smart
enough to know that it NEEDS more investment.

Huh? Most "investors" know very little about the kinds of things you and
others here mean when you make such a statement. They look at things like
past revenues, costs, time series characteristics, PE ratios, the
term-structure of the liabilities versus the assets, etc. None of these
technical indicators are going to tell them that Delphi could thrive if it
only had enough investment. In fact it is going to tell them that it is a
risky investment at best, and the expected profit minus a risk premium is
actually very low.

See, here's the problem. I know, and you apparently also know, that Delphi
could thrive if only it were given the proper investment, and we know this
because we are software developers that know what is needed for software
developers to buy a tool. Non-software-developers do not know this, at best
they may only suspect it, based on what they hear from software developers.
Most investors have no such inside track, and in fact most do not even
knowany softawre developers, and so they rely on accounting "fundamentals",
all of which look rather uninspiring for Delphi heretofore (thanks to
Borland starving Delphi).

Any argument that relies on the assumption that people with money are
intelligent enough to see every potential opportunity, and seize it, is I
think an argument that is likely to disproved by the ensuing reality.
"Investors" are not prophets, and they sure are not geniuses, near as I can
tell so far in my exposure to them.

Why buy a product and
then starve it for resources?

This is actually done all the time by "venture capital" and private
investors. It is common for them to buy products they think are
inefficiently produced, and then go in and try to force greater
"efficiency", by cutting costs. It sometimes works, by the way.

Humanity has an appallingly bad track record when it
comes to prophecy.

Yours included, I hope you are humble enough to admit.

Actually, my track record on these types of things has been pretty good. For
example, I predicted that Aristocrat would kill TurboPower. I predicted that
Chrome would not be a big commercial success or challenge Delphi in any way
in the market.


.

Relevant Pages

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