July 19, 1998

Third Time's a Charm

In 1994 Bob Parsons sold the company he founded to arch-rival Intuit. Two and a half years later, in August 1997, Intuit sold Parsons to Broderbund. In that deal, Intuit kept (and killed) Parsons' popular Personal Tax Edge program. Now, just one year after the Broderbund deal, Broderbund itself is being purchased by The Learning Company.

I've learned a few things in my 38 years. One of the chief lessons is that you can't predict the future. Solomon said (paraphrasing) that whether a tree falls to the north or to the south, there it lies. We take the future that God gives to us and work with it.

Upon each acquisition I've been able to say, "This will make us better." I think in each case I was somewhat right. But it would have taken us a long time to get better under Intuit, and perhaps another year to get better under Broderbund. I don't want to count my eggs too quickly but if I had to make a guess, I think we'll get better much faster under The Learning Company.

One of the reasons why is the connection The Learning Company already has with Bible software. Neither Intuit nor Broderbund had ever sold Bible software. They didn't know what to do with it. TLC, on the other hand, is one of the lesser known but most successful Bible software companies out there. They dominate the $9.95 budget Bible category and they own the (non-Christian-bookstore) retail channel with their Compton's Interactive NIV product.

Combine this success with Parsons' dominance of both direct marketing and Christian bookstore channels and the relative weakness of our existing competitors (primarily Biblesoft and Logos/Nelson) and you've got a formula for success. What that means to you, of course, is more and better products.

At this point in time I can't talk much about what's going on. We need to wait for the deal to close before we make any definitive plans. But I can say that our contact with our new owners at TLC has been very positive at this point. I'm confident of our ability to work together to create a better Parsons Technology.

Boy, does that sound optimistic looking back on it a year later. I think I really believed this at the time, though.