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Ransdell & Brown
General Information: info@RansdellBrown.com Matt Brown: Matt@RansdellBrown.com Carl Ransdell: Carl@RansdellBrown.com
Voice - 206-933-2894 FAX - 208-979-5344
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upFront.eZine: Do you want to talk about what happened at Numera? The way I saw it, Numera went through a lot of VC money, but the dream of selling Visual CADD to 300,000 orphaned Generic CADD users never materialized. Carl Ransdell: You are correct, although I look at Numera's history in two parts aligned with it's two rounds of VC funding. In each case, however, the goal of attracting a large number of customers (which we promised our investors) did not happen. The company was started with one million dollars (a small amount by today's standards) in venture capital. With that amount of money, we were able to develop Visual CADD through v1.2, and obtain a user base of over 10,000 in just over a year. Believe or not, we did do things on the cheap. Our office (which you've written about) did have a great view, but because of the unconventional layout and the 1993-vacancy rate in downtown Seattle, we leased it for under $14 a square foot. Before Visual CADD hit the market, unfortunately, Autodesk released AutoCAD LT, which turned the low end of the CAD market upside down. Visio released the hugely successful Visio Technical about the same time, making the low-end CAD market even tougher. In relative terms, AutoCAD was in a market known as the "value" segment. For under $5,000 you could get AutoCAD plus a great third-party application. Instead of just languishing as another low-end CAD company, we decided to try something different -- the "ultra-value" market, with the goal that for under $1,500, you could get Visual CADD plus a great third-party application. To do this, we decided that we needed a second round of financing, so we raised an additional three million dollars. Even with the additional funding, we were trying to do too many things:
It became clear that third-party developers would only be attracted if we had a giant user base, so we looked for a mass distribution partner. Corel was a powerful company with a lot of marketing muscle. Right about that time, unfortunately, Corel bought WordPerfect and they focused their energy on competing against Microsoft Office. With Corel's strategic focus shifting away from vector graphics, the Visual CADD user base did not grow enough to hit the critical mass to attract the third-party apps. After not getting the users, we thought we could with two rounds of funding. But with little chance of getting more investment, the Visual CADD product line was sold to Corel. Numera closed its doors.
upFront.eZine: Visual CADD went from Numera to Corel to IMSI, and now to TriTools. Do you have any involvement with Visual CADD anymore? Mr. Ransdell: After Numera, we did consulting work for Corel, and then a small amount for IMSI. We are not currently involved with Visual CADD.
upFront.eZine: What did you do following the end of Numera Software? Mr. Ransdell: Matt Brown and I formed a partnership and we began doing contract software development under Ransdell & Brown, Inc. (Matt Brown was co-founder of Numera, and one of the original developers of Generic CADD. We've worked together for over twelve years.)
upFront.eZine: It sounds like Ransdell & Brown is doing the same kind of thing as Numera. Mr. Ransdell: Our new company is quite different from Numera; we don't sell an end-user product. Our core business is the sale of programming and consulting services, so our CAD engine is available only as part of those services. We are not in the business of selling just software libraries without our programming services.
upFront.eZine: Okay, so tell me about your CAD engine. Mr. Ransdell: We offer our rbxCAD Engine to distinguish ourselves as more than just contract programmers. With our arsenal of CAD components, we can "snap" together a CAD solution faster and more economically than by building on top of an existing CAD application.
upFront.eZine: Was rbxCAD written from scratch, or does it have any relation to Visual CADD? Mr. Ransdell: The rbxCAD engine is written entirely from scratch, with no relation to Visual CADD. It comes in three modules:
upFront.eZine: I don't want to sound harsh, but why should anyone care about yet another CAD engine, especially in this age where CAD vendors are merging like iron filings to a magnet? Mr. Ransdell: I agree. Most people who work in today's CAD world won't (and probably shouldn't) care about another CAD engine. We're focused, however, on entrepreneurs and organizations not living in today's CAD world -- the non-traditional users of CAD. We are consultants looking at creating original and unique solutions based on CAD component technology to solve specific problems.
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