Now on his own, Bernard pitched the initial version of Business Objects to his former coworkers; while Marketing had panned the idea, Sales was willing to listen. Oracle was in a fierce battle with Sybase, and they were hunting for any edge that would allow them to corner the French market. Sales leadership found the pitch compelling; Business Objects would provide a novel “self-serve” analytical capability that extended the core value proposition of the relational database - and critically, for the time being, it only worked with Oracle. This clear alignment produced a half dozen quick sales for Bernard’s fledgling team.

As sales begin to flow, Bernard needed additional funding to properly build out the initial team. In 1991, Business Objects became the first French software company (as far as they knew) to get seed funding ($1MM) from Silicon Valley investors. With the money, they were able to hire ~eight people in France, and critically, prove that they could sell to the American market. $1MM in sales in ‘91 gave way to $5MM in ‘92, and $14MM in ‘93. The value proposition was extremely legible, and their complementary relationship with Oracle continued to provide strong avenues for growth.

In 1994, after four years of growing at 150-200% YoY, Business Objects went public. Bernard and the board elected to debut on the NASDAQ, rather than a smaller European exchange. The drumbeat of being a public company then followed; product lines expanded, along with geographic presence. Bernard recalled that it was fairly smooth sailing for the first 18 months; growth continued at a steady pace. By the end of 1995, the market cap had grown 10X.

Around this time, Bernard and team felt a growing need to revamp the core product. Competitors from North America were gaining serious momentum, and Business Objects’s core analytics and reporting capabilities were becoming less differentiated. The company reorganized around a massive internal R&D project, which they intended to completely replace the existing product line. They were specifically betting on the launch of Windows 95, which promised to bring sophisticated GUI-based computing and a host of new features to desktops around the world.