4. The Oasys solution is so different from existing synthesis solutions that it is a new product category: Chip Synthesis.
5. The founders felt they could develop the product with a limited investment. That was key, given that EDA had fallen out of favor with Sand Hill Road.
6. There was a large addressable market. If you don’t see a path to a $100M business for a start up then you should not do it in my opinion. It is as hard to build a $10M company as it is to build a $100M company. But your chances of success are much better with the $100M play.
I cannot argue with any of the points, aside for questioning the choice of "Chip Synthesis" to describe the market segment. I am sure that since Logic Synthesis and Physical Synthesis were already taken, the task was demanding. But the Chip is the final result, it is not what is being synthesized. Did anyone propose Design Synthesis?
I was really interested to discover what could possibly convince Joe Costello to re-enter the EDA industry.
How did they get Joe back into EDA?
The Oasys founders began talking to Joe after his keynote at the DAC in San Francisco in 2006 and kept the discussion going until he was convinced it was real. Once that happened, he got involved.
According to Joe Costello: “The RTL-to-GDSII flow is not meeting the needs of design teams doing chips larger than 20M gates. They can get their design done but it is too painful, and we all know that customer pain is a market opportunity!
“The Oasys team had an exciting approach that I was attracted to right away and so I watched them over the years. What was impressive about them was that they were able to not only deliver a breakthrough product but do it under a very difficult environment. I felt compelled to work with them.”
The bottom line is that benchmark results are great, even if they cannot be taken as pure numbers and must be judged according to the nature of the design being benchmarked. And reality in EDA is unlike any other reality in the financial world: here success is relative, and a company with $100 million in yearly revenue is a great success, since there are less than a dozen around.
What are the prospects for a one market segment company?
What the Oasys founders want to do is audacious. The Oasys story is still being written, but the prospects for RealTime Designer are great. Design teams are looking for differentiated platform delivering productivity in multiple dimensions.
"Synopsys started off as a one market segment company. Cadence and Magma were the same. If the one market segment company has a highly differentiated and valuable product then it can build a solid business and go from there." My advice to Oasys is: stay focus, forget Synopsys as a model for now and forever. The market is no longer the same and the segments that have the greatest opportunities for growth may require a significant departure from the one the company serves today. When the time comes, will Oasys be willing to challenge its existing market in order to grow, or will it become just like the rest of the "successful" EDA companies?
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-- Gabe Moretti, EDACafe.com Contributing Editor.
