Rearden Commerce: On-demand services procurement

Rearden Commerce has been in stealth mode for five years. They've emerged with a buzz about them, that prompted me to write this post. Sounds like they started out building an on-demand business services procurement service. Travel, hotel, shipping, etc, integrated through web services with major business service providers. Five years in stealth for that? Maybe it took a while to find big clients and get service providers signed up to connect. They do have a bunch of large enterprises signed up, each with a potential few thousand employee users. All good so far. Not a mega idea, but a unique niche to own - procurement for indirect, C-category cost items - the kinds that are typically overhead line items.

But now, they also want to pitch being a general purpose on-demand e-commerce platform. Its a slippery slope. Fresh no-name company, VC backed, with a tall sounding platform pitch. Just my opinion.

If it sounds like wannabe salesforce.com, its really not. Salesforce.com, freshman too in the platform world, first got a beachhead with on-demand CRM. Then they grew in the popularity ranks, expanded footprint with Supportforce, dug their heels in with an IPO, and then set about launching their Sforce and Multiforce platform-style offerings. And credible bandwidth to support a partner program around it as well. You would'nt think of them like WebSphere, .Net, Oracle Fusion or SAP NetWeaver. But if we do end up with something such as a hosted application platform of choice for SMB's, SFDC has the best seat on the bus. (I'll leave an analysis of hosted SMB 'applistructure' for another post...).

So what with the overloaded pitch by Rearden Commerce? (technology marketing, I tell you). Why not stick to on-demand services procurement and mellow a bit first? Looks like their VC may be getting impatient here. For a company that seems to have been conceived in the heady days of 2000, has used $42 million so far, stayed in stealth far too long, basically gained some traction in a niche segment, and has a CEO who sounds bombastic. Jump into the cauldron, I hear the VC's chant...time for a trial by fire.