Marketo Acquisition by Vista - Thoughts on what this means for us?

[Jon_Gregoire]

In case you haven't heard, Marketo is being acquired by Vista, a private equity firm that has a reputation for moving quickly, gutting companies, and making significant changes to their acquisitions:

Anyone have thoughts on what this may mean for current customers? I could think of a few:

-support/training resources may be stripped down, so this could suffer

-contract discounts will almost definitely be reviewed, so that means prices could increase

LMK

[Justin_Norris1]

Jon G​

Your concerns are valid, although I was not familiar with Vista's reputation you mentioned.

Initial messaging from Marketo is that there will be no impact to prices at this time. We'll have to see how that evolves. 

Regarding support/training -- if they are smart, I can't imagine why they would gut support and training, as this will directly affect customer success and thus retention. It wouldn't make good business sense to my mind.

My own initial reaction was positive in the sense that Marketo will remain independent and can continue to develop its own platform and ecosystem as opposed to being influenced by an existing product roadmap.

Also check out this blog post by Alexandre Pelletier​ who is one of Marketo's earliest customers (also my CEO):

http://perkuto.com/blog/marketing-automation/what-does-marketo-acquisition-mean

[Joe_Reitz]

TL;DR - they're not going to rock the boat.

I tend to agree with Justin Norris​. Acquisition news like this is generally going to be a good thing for we the people. They're going to encourage Marketo to keep what's working and continue to grow and innovate so they (Vista) can eventually flip the business. My personal prediction based on absolutely *ZERO* data is that Microsoft will eventually acquire Marketo somehow... Mostly because I can't think of someone bigger who could afford it.

Alex's point about Marketo remaining independent and free from shareholder whim is so perfect... I mean, let's be honest: a lot of us have experienced the effects of that, if not with Marketo then in our own day-to-day roles.