Do CIOs face more resistance from the board in private equity-backed companies?

The common theme around these private equity acquisitions is that the stand-alone company was not always making the right budgetary decisions. There's usually some business model behind these things—sometimes it's about rationalization and optimization, but sometimes it's about looking at why this go-to-market model is so far off from what the comparables and peer companies are.

At the end of the day though, private equity firms (PE) are there to return dollars on debt. They're not there to build technology companies. They use technology companies as a vehicle for ROI. So you have to understand that you're going to work for a company that could have an intrinsically different motivation than you might as a technologist.

Vista does have a growth mindset around their companies and at the right size, they have a formula that works for them. The challenge is that the company I was in didn't fit. We were the first company they acquired that was outside that scope, and at a different point in its maturity life cycle, so their playbook wasn't necessarily relevant. But I wish I had that playbook operationally to bring to my company, because there are places where we could be leaner and more effective, but we are not motivated enough to do it around the edges. That would free up money to do some of the things we really want to do.