I understand this would never be pre-announced, but
Given the tight development schedules and budgets, has Xojo ever considered going public to raise funds to help develop the ever-increasing array of products being supported? I would love it if Xojo could concentrate on multiple major areas for each release. I also understand that doubling the engineers does not double the output.
Well, I’d buy shares if someone sells them.
I would support them as well.
But somehow if Xojo should have gone public or been sold to some big company, I have the feeling that would have happened already.
A public company answers less to its customers than to its investors. I don’t know if we would get the same service in that case. Also, what would worry me is the drive towards specular announcements to keep investors interest rather than the patient grooming of existing customer base.
From what I understand, Xojo has been able all these years to finance itself organically. I like that.
Compare to other companies that tried to grow too big, too fast. Remember the Internet bubble burst ?
Um. No. I didn’t feel particularly groomed the last few years. Quite the opposite, actually.
Xojo has its strengths but there is a lot of new activity in x-platform with much larger companies offering solutions. I think we should stop expecting Xojo to take over the x-platform world and just appreciate it for what it is.
Obviously I don’t know, but the impression I get is that there is no significant investment from outside. That to me is understandable, but also the biggest failing of Xojo by a country mile, and it is maybe 10 years too late anyway. The basis of an amazing product has been there for a long time, but the product seems significantly under-resourced. With big backing ( maybe they tried and failed, I don’t know ) Xojo could have made huge strides, in IOS, in Android maybe, in paying proper attention to Windows and Linux, in putting out less buggy releases ( the story of RB/RS/Xojo except for a couple of releases since pa fell off the bus). Xojo could have become way more widespread instead of being marginally known outside of the Mac world.
For a few bucks you can groom all day 
http://www.philips.nl/c-p/TT2040_32/bodygroom-series-7000-bodygroomer?&origin=|mckv|sW2PwO8Ug_dc&pcrid=70126439584|plid|&trackid=
Agreed. Xojo is amazing…but seems to lack the backing and resources to make it really “big time”. This latest release 2016 in particular seems really buggy (6 threads now with odd slowdowns or crashes) which indicates perhaps that the testing just wasn’t there has made me wait to develop anything with it until the 20161.1 or R2 release.
Xojo is really awesome, flexible and easy to develop in, and should be better known than it is. Everyone who has developed in BASIC ever should have it on their front burner as a go-to tool. They don’t really, and it’s a shame. Hey, i’d invest in it given the opportunity. I renewed my subscription for that very reason, after considering not doing so.
If Xojo could update Web and iOS faster along with IDE improvements and moving Desktop and Web to the new framework, I’d love to pay more. Compared to FileMaker, Xojo is close to free.
Look at big time Apple systems which are released once a year, and you will find big bugs as well. Yet, Apple has hundreds of developers working on them.
The issue may be a cycle too short to really polish each version. At the risk of hearing outraged protestors, I would venture suggesting longer periods between releases. Every quarter could be too short. Maybe every 4 months would permit a better finish. That could eventually avert the decimal point releases.
If these are some bugs to fix, actually it’s not very serious. Most of us can wait a few weeks. But my concern is that the IDE is breathless, that its design consumes too many resources, and that it feels in some big projects or when a new feature seems to require more resources ( eg HiDPI ).
But like I said, its may in fact be just a few bugs to fix or some optimizations to do. In this case, it is the normal path of a big project like the IDE. But it is true that I am concerned with this IDE. In a way, I think Bob and Thom had guessed several problems of this IDE before most of us. I realized gradually.
Don’t forget… one year after IPO Microsoft would buy it and shut it down silently… or Apple… just to push us all to Xamarin or Swift…
[quote=258832:@David Cox]I understand this would never be pre-announced, but
Given the tight development schedules and budgets, has Xojo ever considered going public to raise funds to help develop the ever-increasing array of products being supported? [/quote]
Going public isn’t the only way to raise funds
Venture capital is one - and this often happens prior to going public
KickStarters or other crowdfunding is another
And going public isn’t necessarily a requirement for any company either
As others have pointed out doing so you often end up beholden to share holders etc and NOT customers
As customers we are already “beholden” to the owner(s) of Xojo, who do not make of Xojo what could be made of it, to the benefit of said customers. Probably very comfortable, but destined to play only in a minor league.
No more so than you are to any vendor of any other product in your life.
I feel Xojo is more dependent on its customers than its customers on Xojo. If I don’t like what they do or if they don’t provide what I want, I can easily switch to another development tool. As a private company, they heavily depend on their customers support, much more than a public company would.
I wonder how long this conversation will last before it gets locked for some reason…
interesting how these topics get started. Its like hosting Macrumors on apple’s website.
I think the basis of the original message is the idea of more progress on many fronts. We all LOVE the product we just want more faster. The Xojo Team rocks…
