The big news of the day is that our company, REvolution Computing, has just secured a new round of funding with a $9million injection from North Bridge Venture Partners and Intel Capital. You can read all the details in this press release. We've been operating in a lean start-up mode for quite a while, and personally I've been amazed at what the team has been able to accomplish with a very small staff. Now with this new funding and the additional resources it brings we'll be able to tackle some bigger projects that we've been planning but haven't been able to execute on yet. You'll hear more about those in the coming months.
With this change comes a new CEO: Norman Nie, a Stanford professor and the founder and former CEO of SPSS. I've spent a fair bit of time with Norman over the past few weeks and my main impression is that he is deeply passionate about making Statistics better with R. He has also made it clear that he intends to invest in the R Community, and has named me VP of Community to execute on that goal.
On the software front, we will continue to produce "REvolution R", our free distribution of R available to everyone. This will include new Windows and Mac versions based on R 2.9.2 which will be available for download soon from our website, and the forthcoming REvolution R distribution available with Ubuntu Linux . And of course, we will continue to have a Sales team focused on introducing our subscription-based distribution, REvolution R Enterprise, to large companies in various industries. It's the exclusive "Enterprise" features (such as the Visual Studio-based IDE in our upcoming release for Windows) that form the basis of our ongoing revenue model, and maintains the funding stream that will allow us to be contributing members of the R community for a long time to come.
I wanted to give thanks to our former CEO Richard Schultz for making REvolution what it is today, and to my former boss Danese Cooper for all her great insights into the world of open-source. I'll miss you and the others from the old New Haven office.
So all in all it's an exciting day here for us here at REvolution Computing. We have a new team in place, a new HQ in Palo Alto, CA and lots of new projects and the resources to execute on them. Keep an eye here for all the things we have in store.
Congratulations to REvolution Computing and to you, David.
Kevin Wright
Posted by: Kevin Wright | October 20, 2009 at 08:23
Nice one firing all the principles of the original company! That will mean a lot for continuity!
Posted by: kent williams | October 20, 2009 at 08:48
Nice move firing everyone who got you where you are today. I hope your customers are just as loyal.
Posted by: Al Dunlap | October 20, 2009 at 10:57
I suppose it will all become clear at some point but firing half of that amazing team and then saying you'll be able to tackle bigger projects just doesn't make sense to me.
Posted by: byter | October 20, 2009 at 13:48
I'm sure the open source community into which you gained so much insight will take careful note of the way you have treated all the people who got you this far. Summary dismissal without severance is a lousy way to say "thanks", no matter how you try to sugar coat it here.
I hope your future business doesn't depend on any of us because we have long memories.
Posted by: The Contrarian | October 20, 2009 at 13:49
Oh, and I found out the details of the betrayal here:
http://danesecooper.blogs.com/divablog/2009/10/start-the-revolution-without-me.html
Posted by: The Contrarian | October 20, 2009 at 14:15
I'm a heavy R-user, a fan of this blog, and curious about the REvolution project. I find the danescooper post and the other comments disconcerting. Perhaps you should clarify why 9million and a new CEO entailed firing half the staff and the founding members? REvolution is privately held, and does not need to justify it's actions to anybody. However this could (and maybe should?) tar REvolution's reputation in the R/open-source community if you (plural) do not provide some explanation/justification for this action.
Posted by: Frank | October 20, 2009 at 15:16
All I need to know about REvolution Computing's new direction can be summed up by the choice of new CEO.
Blech.
SPSS? Open source community development? Can't be mentioned in the same sentence without serious eyebrow-raising. You know, the sort that puts premature wrinkling in that Dilbert spot between the eyes.
If it was early April, it would make more sense.
Posted by: Michaela | October 20, 2009 at 18:29
Indeed, and the firing should be told to the Ubuntu community as well, I don't want no stinking RE copy in my Karmic.
Posted by: kenny | October 20, 2009 at 18:53
Sounds like time for a fork..
Posted by: one route | October 21, 2009 at 01:08
Hey thanks for such a clear statement of concern over REvo's recent actions in the comments on this blog, everybody.
Keep in mind that the R Language is *not* a product of REvolution Computing. R is and has been developed by a core team of academics and researchers at the R Project. REvolution only creates packages that extend the usefulness of R...so please don't conclude that R needs to be forked.
Also, be advised that David M. Smith is possibly the only person at REvo today who is focused on educating developers about R and doing the right thing for the Open Source Community. Be sure you direct your stronger comments to his corporate masters.
I have just added a post with more on this topic on my blog.
Posted by: Danese Cooper | October 21, 2009 at 06:18
"Enterprise customers" and "predictive analytics"? This is starting to sound like the Tibco S+ pages... Has REvolution decided that you can't make money from open source alpha geeks and really need to penetrate the data mining business process deployment solution buzzword sector?
Posted by: Barry | October 21, 2009 at 12:01
Rather than trying to respond here in the comments, I've followed up with my thoughts here.
Posted by: David Smith | October 22, 2009 at 16:46