More of the same at SuccessFactors under SAP

Contact: Brenon Daly

With the official closing today of SAP’s $3.6bn acquisition of SuccessFactors, it’ll be business as usual for the human capital management (HCM) vendor – starting at the top. Certainly the new ownership hasn’t throttled CEO Lars Dalgaard in the least. During his Wednesday luncheon keynote at the Pacific Crest Securities Emerging Technology Summit, Dalgaard was jarringly blunt, colorfully profane and wickedly insightful. In other words, same old Lars.

For instance, during his keynote he gave the flick to the more than 70 venture capitalists that he said passed on SuccessFactors when he was raising money back in the early part of last decade, and then rubbed that in by pointing out that the VC firms that did invest got a return of more than 4,000%. Similarly, in a video clip he played during his speech, Dalgaard noted that one of the more gratifying parts of the sale to SAP – the largest-ever SaaS deal, which valued SuccessFactors at its highest-ever price – was the fact that the acquisition ‘fried’ investors who had shorted SuccessFactors’ stock.

Dalgaard also indicated that even though his company is now owned by SAP, it will continue to be active in M&A. (On its own, SuccessFactors announced six acquisitions, after looking at some 140 companies, according to Dalgaard.) In fact, we understand that SuccessFactors will actually have an expanded corporate development role, taking on responsibility for cloud deals that would go beyond the HCM sector it focused on as a stand-alone company. That mirrors SAP’s decision to tap Dalgaard to run its overall cloud business