Brian Bailey Interviews Kathryn Kranen

Brian Bailey at EETimes has an interesting interview with Kathryn Kranen. He says that the interview will be published in installments but the first one is up here. This first installment is mostly about how long-lived EDA companies (and others) have become since it takes a long time to build up enough revenue to be able to IPO.

She contrasts how she has worked at Jasper and earlier companies with Jim Hogan’s “run lean, don’t raise too much money” approach. Each time she raised over $30M. Her view is that small companies don’t scale for success. If a company with hundreds of designers adopts a product from and EDA company then the EDA company has to be of a scale to handle that, international offices, lots of AEs and so on. A small company can develop some technology and establish some level of credibility but then it has to be acquired by a company with a large channel to scale.

Go read the whole thing.