I think Birst made a bad hire on the CEO, it was pretty clear that they needed one and Brad needed to step back. but Hiring a CEO with not much experience in the BI space was probably not the best way to go. Also, the new CEO brought in a lot of his cronies (they all do this, Birst no exception) I think some of them were good choices, most however were not. The culture of the company really started to shift at this time.
Huge pivot to the Enterprise/abandoning SMB was too soon, and didn't really address the sentiment of the Market. The old guard of BI is already in place the cognos, BO, Microstratgies of the world are already the incumbent, and most people hate them, learned that at the end of the day most people will just use Excel anyway, and Tableau owns the visualization market. Tableau filled the need by taking something that is already being done (using Excel for BI) and found a way to market it. The market changed, people are burned by tractional BI and I dont see that changing. Staying in the SMB, and really aggressively going deeper into the OMB embedded space would have been the way to go. Pushing to the enterprise without fully understanding the market, was a big Con.
I left Birst 10 months ago, and in that time have seen a number of very smart and awesome people move on. Hate to see it happen, Also Gartner pushing Birst down and to the left hurt. I hope they can re-focus. Its great technology with some great people.
