{"id":633,"date":"2009-10-22T01:57:50","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T00:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/22\/glu-mobile-you-only-live-twice-or-thrice\/"},"modified":"2009-10-22T02:16:13","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T01:16:13","slug":"glu-mobile-you-only-live-twice-or-thrice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/22\/glu-mobile-you-only-live-twice-or-thrice\/","title":{"rendered":"Glu Mobile: You only live Twice (or Thrice)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 5px; float: left\" src=\"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/glu_logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/>After Greg Ballard&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/09\/greg-ballard-gets-unglued\/\">announced<\/a> and Jill Braff&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/moconews.net\/article\/419-industry-moves-glu-mobiles-svp-of-global-publishing-jill-braff-leaves-t\/\">fairly sudden<\/a> exits and the persisting rumours of financial frailty, many were waiting for Glu Mobile to fall.<\/p>\n<p>However, at least in revenue terms, they seem to be doing OK: according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mobile-ent.biz\/news\/34762\/Glu-impresses-in-Deloittes-Technology-Fast-500\">reports<\/a>, Deloitte has put them at #129 in the fastest-growing US technology firms in their &#8220;Technology 500&#8221; list. The results, alas, are based<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>on fiscal reports between 2004-2008, during which time Glu grew by 1,000 per cent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All good but let us remind ourselves what happened in those years: Glu acquired Macrospace (which was founded by Kristian Segerstrale, now of Playfish fame), iPhone, <a href=\"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/01\/super-glu\/\">Superscape<\/a>, MIG (did I forget anyone?). They went public, splashed out on licenses (much to the dismay of competitors who often felt priced out of the market) and <a href=\"http:\/\/moconews.net\/article\/419-earnings-glu-mobile-exceeds-own-expectations-achieves-postive-cash-flow\/\">only just managed to achieve positive cash-flow in Q2\/2009<\/a> (i.e. <strong>not<\/strong> in the period covered by Deloitte <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and<\/span> on decreasing revenues <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and<\/span> with negative US-GAAP results).<\/p>\n<p>What does it tell us then? That this strategy worked in terms of revenue growth? Yes, certainly. And I have often paid tribute to that. That it is a good company in terms of putting its working capital to good use? This is &#8211; although I truly and sincerely wish them really well &#8211; at best doubtful. What more? Ah, well, that Deloitte&#8217;s Technology 500 list is probably as trustworthy as the banks they audited&#8230; Ouch, did I just say that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After Greg Ballard&#8217;s announced and Jill Braff&#8217;s fairly sudden exits and the persisting rumours of financial frailty, many were waiting for Glu Mobile to fall. However, at least in revenue terms, they seem to be doing OK: according to reports, Deloitte has put them at #129 in the fastest-growing US technology firms in their &#8220;Technology [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[756],"tags":[858,248,787,861,862,859,860,404,621],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-756","tag-deloitte","tag-glu","tag-greg-ballard","tag-jill-braff","tag-kristian-segerstrale","tag-macrospace","tag-mig","tag-mobile-games","tag-superscape"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paSwZv-ad","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}