Page 106 - Forbes - Asia (December 2019 - January 2020)
P. 106
STRATEGIES
Mark Bishof, the former CEO of Flexera Software, an ap- is biggest challenge these days is likely back home
plication management company outside of Chicago that Bravo in Puerto Rico where it all began. Bravo announced
bought in 2008 for $200 million and sold for a nearly $1 bil- Hin May that he is contributing $100 million to his
lion profit three years later, has a succinct description for this Bravo Family Foundation that will be used to promote entre-
wild success. “He just kind of cuts all of the bullsh*t,” Bishof preneurship and economic development on the island.
says. “It’s refreshing.” Flexera’s profits rose 70% during Bravo’s This new foundation was birthed by Hurricane Maria,
ownership, largely thanks to four major acquisitions. “Orlan- which devastated the island two years ago. Bravo was in
do’s like the general in the foxhole with his sergeant. You know Japan raising cash for yet another massive fund and franti-
he’s knee-deep in there with you,” Bishof gushes. cally calling San Juan trying to locate his parents, who were
Under Thoma Bravo’s watch, companies on average saw living in the capital. They were fine, but the island wasn’t.
cash flow surge as margins hit 35%, as of 2018, nearly tri- Five days later, he flew his Gulfstream jet with 450 ki-
ple those of the average public software company at that time. lograms of supplies—water, granola bars, meal kits, satel-
“It’s like training for the Olympics. . . . You have a finite goal to lite telephones, diapers, intravenous tubes and hydration
make it [in year four], and you make it very, very clear,” Bravo pills—to Aguadilla, near Mayagüez. When an airport work-
says. Today’s roaring market adds potency er opened the door of his plane,
to the playbook. Lenders are now gorging Bravo says, the look of fear on his
on software debt, and stock market multi- face was unforgettable. “All you
ples for these businesses are surging. With a fresh could say was ‘I’m sorry for what
A recent example is Detroit’s Com- happened to you.’”
puware, a decades-old pioneer of soft- $12.6 billion war He returned two weeks later in
ware applications to manage mainframe a larger plane with 3 metric tons of
computer systems. In 2013, this Nasdaq- chest, Bravo is supplies. Then he came in a massive
listed giant was all but left for dead and now eyeing $10 DC-10 cargo plane before ultimate-
up for sale. There was minimal interest, ly chartering two container ships
other than from Bravo and partner Seth billion-plus deals carrying 272 tonnes. “It was just like
Boro, who were keen on Dynatrace, soft- cold-calling for deals,” Bravo says of
ware that helped companies move data- and expects to rounding up all the donations. He
bases to the cloud, which Compuware personally put in $3 million in just
had acquired in 2011. Thoma Bravo used begin buying the first 30 days, and committed
$675 million in cash and raised $1.8 bil- $10 million altogether.
lion in debt to buy Compuware and then entire divisions When the Federal Emergency
split off Dynatrace as a separate compa- Management Agency became fully
ny. The pair began to move Dynatrace of tech giants. operative there, the island’s rich-
from selling database licenses, once the est native turned his attention to
bulk of its business, to cloud subscription Puerto Rico’s future. Though 44%
services, now 70% of sales. This past Au- of Puerto Ricans live below the
gust, Dynatrace went public, and Thoma Bravo’s 70% stake is poverty line, Bravo believes in the potential to foster entre-
now worth over $4 billion, with the remainder of Compuware preneurship, citing that a tenth of the population has tried
worth nearly a billion more. “I learned more about build- to build a business.
ing an efficient software company over the last four and a half Armed with his money, his foundation is looking to back
years than in the first 30 years of my career,” says Dynatrace Puerto Rican technology entrepreneurs, even ferrying them
CEO John Van Siclen. to Thoma Bravo’s offices for training. Bravo admits to being
With a fresh $12.6 billion war chest for its 13th fund raised tired of the debate over Puerto Rico’s statehood and holds
in 2018, Bravo is eyeing $10 billion-plus deals and expects his tongue when asked about President Trump’s performance
to begin buying entire divisions from today’s technology gi- during Maria. “My passion, which is the same as with com-
ants. But thanks in part to the success of his firm, he now panies, is to move beyond the strategic, long-term pontifica-
faces more competition. Heavyweights like Blackstone and tion, and into the operational and tactical moves that make
KKR are increasingly sussing out software deals, not to men- you move forward today,” he says. “Economies go down,
tion his longtime rival Vista Equity. And he’s not immune to companies miss their numbers, trade stops, product issues
mistakes. Bravo’s $3.6 billion 2015 acquisition of San Francis- happen and people quit. [The question is] do you have a
co-based digital network tracker Riverbed Technology is cur- creative approach to problem solving?” Bravo says. “Some
rently struggling because of slowing sales and too much debt. people are stuck . . . and some people love putting the pieces
He isn’t worried. “There are bigger and better companies to fix together. I just feel like every operational problem can be
than there were ten years ago,” Bravo says. solved. There’s always a solution.” F
102 | FORBES ASIA DECEMBER 2019 / JANUARY 2020
