Balaji's Weblog

Lately I’ve been writing a lot about the downsides of small-to-mid sized Tech IPOs. Fuze Box’s CEO, Jeff Cavins, can vouch that I’m not exaggerating. Last October he found himself in charge of a decade-old and dusty company—then called CallWave— that had a surprisingly modern and sexy new product. Called Fuze Meeting, it was a cloud-based way to collaborate in real-time, on any computer, BlackBerry or iPhone in high-definition. It had just launched its the beta iPhone app version of the product to positive reviews.

But Steve Jobs himself endorsing the app would have done little to alleviate the company’s core problem: It was a publicly traded company with all of the downsides and none of the benefits.