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Rory O’Driscoll
Managing Director
Date Joined: 1994
Board Seats: Arena Solutions, Box.net, DocuSign, ExactTarget, Hubspan, Livescribe, Lumension Security, and Vantage Media
Focus: Software as a Service, Cloud
Past:

Mercia (UK) – CEO
Education:

London School of Economics – BSc, Economics
Biography

Rory has been an investor at Scale or its predecessor funds since 1993. He has invested across the board in software and internet companies, but with a particular focus on software companies benefitting from the move to software as a service and the wider transition of enterprise computing to the cloud. Currently he sits on the boards of Arena Solutions, Axcient, Box.net, DocuSign, ExactTarget, Hubspan, Livescribe, Lumension Security, and Vantage Media.

Prior successful investments include IPOs such as Omniture (subsequently acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion), Connect and NetGenesis (subsequently acquired by SPSS). Acquisitions include ScanSafe (Acq: Cisco), Frontbridge (Acq: Microsoft), Zone Labs (Acq: Checkpoint), Placeware (Acq: Microsoft), OuterBay (Acq: HP) among others. The automation of marketing in the internet era has been a theme of his investments from NetGenesis in the 1990′s, to Omniture in 2005, and Exact Target today. Rory blogs on the partnership website www.scalevp.com and on his blog at www.vcmatters.com.

Rory holds a BSc from the London School of Economics. He is a winner of the “Always On VC 100 List” for 2009. Prior to Scale he was the CEO of a manufacturing company in the UK.

From The Blog
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    Mining the Gap - DST and the IPO Gap
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    February 2, 2012
    The time to buy is when everyone else is selling. The dearth of venture backed IPO's in the last decade, with almost none in 2009, created a massive demand for "IPO like" capital from the private markets. DST figured this out first and has made billions.
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    Scooping the Big Pot - Venture Capital Since 2007
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    November 15, 2011
    When Facebook goes public, the Russian venture capital firm DST, will be one of the largest investors in the most significant technology IPO since Google.
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    SaaS and the Cloud Ten Years In
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    August 15, 2011
    I recently had to give a talk on trends in SaaS and the cloud. Attached is the full Powerpoint.
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    The Next Ten Years in SaaS
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    July 6, 2011
    The SaaS business has now hit early middle age and the best way to think about it is to compare it to the client server revolution in the 1993/1994 time period.
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    Facebook is Worth More Because It’s Growing More
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    March 30, 2011
    The Old Gray Lady is worried about a bubble in tech, and did a nice graphic comparing the valuations of Facebook and four other social media deals, to the valuations of the crop of 1999 tech IPO’s.
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    Go, You Giant Vampire Quid
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    January 8, 2011
    I simply love Goldman Sachs. The Facebook deal is a brilliant poke in the eye for just about everybody, and proof, yet again, that money, like water, finds its own level.
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    Never do a COO Search... or Not
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    October 18, 2010
    Venture has lots of rules of thumb, short summaries of received wisdom passed down. One of the most common is “never do a COO search”.
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    Winning in SaaS
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    June 13, 2010
    In every technology market, the number one player gets disproportionately rewarded.
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    Magic Number Facts
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    May 20, 2010
    In the last post on this topic, I said that a simple calculation of sales efficiency, which we called the Magic Number, is a great predictor of future success for subscription based business (saas or open source).
  • Rory O’Driscoll
    Magic Number Math
    By Rory O’Driscoll
    April 20, 2010
    Product companies, including license software companies, recognize revenues immediately upon sale and delivery of the product.
View all Rory O’Driscoll posts >
Video
Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.net, introduces his company.
Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.net, talks about the benefits of Box.net solutions for the enterprise.
Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.net, talks about the new workplace enabled by the cloud.
Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.net, talks about why cloud-based technology is cost-effective for customers.
Craig Livingston, Chairman and CEO of Arena Solutions, talks about Arena’s business.
Scott Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of ExactTarget, explains how his company works with its customers and the kinds of services ExactTarget delivers.
Scott Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of ExactTarget, talks about company growth.
Scott Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of ExactTarget, talks about ExactTarget’s broad integrated marketing platform.
Scott Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of ExactTarget, talks about starting his company and what it delivers to customers.
Scott Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of ExactTarget, talks about the growing market for internet marketing.
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