The Difference Of C.E.O.’s

Last week during Solidworks World I wrote about Solidworks C.E.O. Jeff Ray's personal interaction with his companies customers. Today I attended the Pacific Design Show in Anaheim. Among other CAD companies in attendance was Alibre. I had started noticing these little bags of popcorn prominently displayed all around the Autodesk booth:

Upon closer inspection, it was actually a bag with an Alibre logo on it. So off I headed in search of this Alibre. When I found the booth, I found the source of the bags, and decided to see what they had to offer that they felt it right enough to produce such interesting popcorn containers. As I was checking out their demo video, a gentleman walked up and started asking one of the booth attendees about their software. The popcorn, combined with a show special software price of $495, was certainly a draw. Anyhow, back to the guy. Having the benefit of anonymity, I listened in to the conversation and the questions being answered. There was one that really stuck out. The guy asked how it worked. So the guy from Alibre explained it this way. He said that Alibre was different from Solidworks and Inventor in one major way, Alibre was a parametric based system, and the others were not! He explained than in Solidworks and Inventor, you had to draw things to the exact dimension, and in Alibre, you sketched it, and then sized it. So after the guy took his free 30-day demo CD and walked away, I introduced myself to the guy from Alibre. Now this wasn't just any guy, he was Alibre C.E.O. Greg Milliken. So after telling him I was a Solidworks C.S.W.P., User Group Leader, and Blogger, I called him on his comment about Solidworks not being a parametric based system. Needless to say Mr. Milliken was a bit speechless. He tried to explain away his comments to the booth visitor by saying that wasn't what he really meant to say, yet he had said it, and the guy had walked off none the wiser. I next asked him to explain to me what benefits I would see by switching from Solidworks, to Alibre. Choosing his words carefully, he explained that Alibre wasn't meant to target power Solidworks users like myself, but to provide a similar software package for what he called the bottom of the pyramid. He knew he really couldn't slide any more sales pitch stuff my way, so he offered me his business card (just minutes after telling the previous guy he was out of cards), and asked me if I would like a demo CD to play with for 30 days. So I took my CD, and off I went.

The comparison I'm trying to make here is the drastic difference between someone like Jeff Ray, and this guy. While Jeff Ray may be a tiny bit on the stiff side, one thing that is evident is his passion for delivering a product that he can be proud of. He shows that he doesn't need smooth lines, or sales pitches to sell his product. He lets the product speak for itself. This guy from Alibre has obviously only tried to copy what Solidworks does, but he should also take a look at how to create a product that won't require tricky sales lines, or crafty popcorn containers to be successful. So Mr. Milliken if you somehow come across this article, I ask you this: how do you say "Alibre is the future of 3D CAD", and that "The guard is changing" in this blog post, but then tell me your product isn't aimed at a user like me? Maybe Alibre should stick to popcorn bags.

Anyhow, a few more pics from the show:

Where's popcorn? Can you spot the bag in the Autodesk booth?

It looks as if there were two guys at the show who thought Digital Prototyping was a new term from this century!

Comments

[Mike]

Brian,

Solidworks was there also. Their booth as usual had the most traffic. I went around and watched the presentations given by them, and Autodesk, and by far the Solidworks one was much more informative about introducing people to the software. The Autodesk presentation was on creating Type-A surfaces in Alias! I dont think there were many Alias users in the audience since most of the people watching had a blank stare on their face afterwards!

[Brian]

Busted! Glad you called him out on that.

Did SolidWorks participate in this show?

Brian
http://www.cadfanatic.com/

[Phil Way]

Excellent Job Mike. It is because of businesses and its management/ownership run in this fashion that other engineering organizations and managers are often sceptical when a truly new and innovative product is offered on the market. Glad to see you addressed the situation that certainly needed attention.

Phil

[Mike]

Devon,

To be a good private investigator, I would need Matt's spy photo taking skills!

[Steve Calvert]

Great article, Mike. That sounds a lot like what I used to hear from PTC guys, you have to do this and you have to do that, blah blah blah. Sales people will say anything to get the sale. Jeff came to Austin a few months back and he seemed to have a good idea of things worked. It is nice to hear that from a CEO.

Steve

[Devon T. Sowell]

Great story Mike!

Have you considered becoming a Private Investigator?

Devon