History is written by the winners

This is a bit outdated but still worth noting.  On March 11th, Marketwatch had an article on Vani Kola and Certus.  Now Vani is a terrific entreprenuer and I respect her immensely.  She has done a great job in running both Rightworks and Certus and is a strong positive role model for women entreprenuers.  However this article gets the facts wrong and I am sure its partially the reporter's fault.  Full disclosure: my firm is an investor in OpenPages which is a competitor to Certus. Here is an excerpt from the article:

In 2001, a few months after selling her first company, RightWorks -- her first start-up -- for about $667 million, the now 40-year-old Kola started thinking about her next venture. At about that time, scandals at Enron and elsewhere started making headlines.

"The more I was looking at the news and reading what was going on, my view was that there would be a backlash and management would be held to a different grade of responsibility than hitherto," Kola said in an interview at Certus' offices near San Jose, Calif. The privately-held company has about 50 U.S. employees and 40 in India.

Kola started developing a product designed for companies eager to set themselves apart by raising the bar on corporate governance.

"I thought there would be a ... new standard because there was so much loss of life," Kola said, speaking metaphorically about the toll corporate scandals took on investors' confidence, and pension plans.

In 2002, the federal government gave Kola's idea a hefty boost in the form of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and its requirement that companies faster and more accurately report their financial condition -- and any possible risks to their bottom line.

The way this article makes it out to be - Vani left Rightworks and had this insight around corporate governance and decided to start Certus.  Great story but alas not the complete truth.  Vani started nth Orbit (the old name of Certus) right after Rightworks.  Thanks to the Internet archive wayback machine, here is what the main page looked like on May 19th 2001:

nthOrbit is a well-funded startup focused on developing real-time, supply-chain software so companies can collaborate and quickly respond to market fluctuations.

We are backed by Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture-capital firms, are led by a seasoned management team with deep supply chain experience, and have a strong network of industry partners and advisors.

Another snap shot from October 21st 2001:

Do you experience

 

• Less than stellar on-time delivery to your customers
• Constant requests for Purchase Price Variance
• Premium charges to expedite delivery
• Excess inventory from your suppliers?
• Weeks rather than days for response to schedule changes?
• Surprise shortages from your suppliers?
• Too much time spent managing the supply chain?

nthOrbit has a solution.
  Efficient, responsive production networks for the manufacturing enterprise

You get the picture.  Not exactly focused on corporate governance, are they?  You can see the complete evolution at the wayback site. 

Every company goes through ups and downs and if anything, we should congratulate Vani on how she has successfully evolved Nth Orbit into Certus.  However its misleading to distort history.  Its particularly ironic since she is trying to improve corporate governance.