I'm here today with Mike Capone, long-standing and hyper-successful CEO of Qlik. Mike, welcome to Beyond the Deal.
Mike, it would be great if you could tell our listeners a little bit about Qlik.
Sure, I'd be happy to. So, Qlik is really the leading independent provider of data analytics and AI at scale for large enterprise customers. We solve the problem of harnessing data, getting the quality and the transparency right with data, and then analyzing that data. And then the last, most important piece is getting insights from that data and acting on them. That is a platform that we have built and we market today.
That's great, Mike. Thank you for that. It's obviously a super exciting time in the world of data infrastructure as it relates to AI. With that, of course, brings the need to constantly innovate, and I'd be curious to get your perspective on how you keep that innovation engine going as a leader of a billion-dollar-plus business that now has a couple decades of operating history behind it. What's the secret to making sure that you're always looking ahead?
Yeah, you know, it's a matter of survival, right? A billion dollars is where SaaS companies go to die, and we've broken through that. It is because we've been able to stay on top of innovation, and really it's everybody's job in the company. I've got a great team, so we're constantly on the lookout with analysts, publications, things like that. But actually, we have the benefit of TB, so we're really good friends with a group that owns a large portfolio of technology companies. We lean on TB a lot to help us scan the market and see what's going on out there. And then, our strategy's always been a good combination of organic building of technology, but also rapidly acquiring new technology, doing tech tuck-ins to accelerate our innovation as well. So, an M&A machine has really been a big part of our staying ahead of innovation.
Yeah, you've done an amazing job innovating organically and inorganically at scale, and you live in a market that moves very, very quickly. Maybe as fast as it's ever moved with the advent of GenAI, which you responded to very quickly and one that you've been working on and in and around for quite some time. So, from my perspective, it's all seemed very natural. When you look back at your time with Qlik and time with Thoma Bravo, you were always working in the public markets before as an operator. What's kind of surprised you in this world of working with us in a private company that perhaps you hadn't quite realized before you took the job?
Yeah, well, it was interesting as you highlighted. I only worked in public companies for the first 25-plus years of my career. So, when Orlando called me and proposed I talk to him about the Qlik job, I said, well, private equity, I don't know, I don't really know much about it. I had sold companies to private equity in the past and the outcome wasn't always great, so I was a little bit skeptical until I got to know everybody, until I talked to Orlando and got to talk to you. I remember meeting you in Chicago for the first time and you said our model's very different. And the one thing I have to say is absolutely true. The thing that I was really pleasantly surprised about is the level of collaboration and operating flexibility that comes with the partnership. Yes, there are things that TB expects and there's a very successful playbook that we get to take advantage of, but we generally agree on the trajectory of the business. But then the amount of flexibility and support I get to operate the company — I would say it surprised me in a very pleasant way, because you hear private equity is very prescriptive, but you're not. As Orlando likes to say, you hire good management teams, you bet on good management teams, and you let them do their thing, and then you guide them with the expertise and your experience over all these years. That's been terrific.
Well, we've not said AI enough yet in our discussion, so we're going to say it again. One of the things that I've always been very impressed by with Qlik is you were very early in this thought process around AI governance. Can you maybe walk through the AI council that Qlik has led and how you're thinking about it? Because of course one of the big issues today, everyone's dealing with it real time and trying to figure out how to govern this new world that we're in that's hyper-complex but moving fast. I think it's really interesting that you were so early on that, and maybe tell our listeners about the council and its objective.
Yeah, there's a couple dimensions to this. Obviously, to be a good leader, to be a good company, you have to admit what you don't know, right? And there's just a lot, it's a fast-moving space as you talked about. So how do you admit what you don't know and then figure out how to get that information? And the second dynamic that's going on in the market with AI right now is, look, this technology, like many technologies, but I think this is on steroids, is going to outstrip society's ability to actually regulate it. Governments always are lagging on the regulatory aspects of it. AI is moving really fast. And so, what we decided to do was go out to market, not get technologists, but actually get people from academia, from public sector, people who are really intellectually very far ahead on these very topics and then advise us. So we did form an AI council that works with us on these obligations we actually have to do AI right, both from a transparency and governance standpoint and yes, from a technology and monetization standpoint as well. And that group not only advises us, but we actually expose them to our customers. Honestly, it's been incredibly valuable to us, something we plan on keeping going forward.
What's one of the things that you wish people knew about Qlik that perhaps they don't?
