Our tribute to RYMA Technology Solutions …
As our followers know, this blog is devoted to helping product managers and product team members become more effective by sharing thoughts, tips, tactics, and tools to help enhance your effectiveness. However, this week we want to pay our respects to one of our business partners RYMA Technology Solutions.
Members of the product management community this week witnessed the passing of RYMA Technology Solutions. For those of you who may not be familiar with RYMA they were a principle market player in automating many of the aspects of a product manager’s job.
Here is how RYMA described it’s offering…
“Our vision at Ryma is to provide every Product Manager with a platform where they can maintain all the latest and relevant information, align all the stakeholders across the company, facilitate collaboration between teams, and help individuals execute to the best of their abilities. By automating or eliminating repetitive tasks, we help them focus on driving innovation. By facilitating collaboration and access to information, we improve the communication channels and overall efficiency. By assisting in the process of developing a product, we ultimately help Product Managers optimize the quality of execution – which is much needed to deliver better products to market in a shorter timeframe. We want to touch the lives of all Product Managers and give them the tools that will allow them to develop innovative and great products.”
But RYMA was more than just their product offerings, they were professionals who understood product management and were doing their best to not only grow their company but help expand the reach of the market and enable product management’s success. Their Grandview program provided a forum for product managers to voice their opinions and to share their ideas. So RYMA was clearly more than the sum of their products.
Additionally, they worked closely with many product management training and consulting organizations as this snippet from their last press release on June 8th demonstrates “Ryma’s Affiliate Partner Program features some of the most prominent names in product management consulting, including the 280 Group, Lucrum Marketing, Hawthorn Consulting Group, Brainmates and Actuation Consulting.”
The first public message that we saw indicating that they were closing was from Kenneth Kunin entitled “The End of RYMA” on the Grandview message board. It was quickly followed by a slew of other comments from a variety of individuals commenting on the value of their offering, alternative market solutions that exist, and lamenting RYMA’s passing.
Shortly after this discussion began a tweet went out from RYMA’s CEO Michel Besner. It was short and to the point, “I guess 6 months was not enough to turn the company around…”. https://twitter.com/michelbesner/status/212894165846065153
I have had the privilege of getting to know several of the members of the RYMA team and I want to wish them the best as they move to the next phase of their careers. Particularly Mike Gero who I’ve come to both like and respect. And I’m sure that I’m not alone.
The true import of this change is that the entire product management community has lost not only a friend and vendor – but the ecosystem has shrunk as well. From our vantage point, we would have liked to see RYMA continue to be a robust market player in order to help ensure that the profession continues to expand.
I would like to thank our partners at RYMA for their past contributions to making the product management ecosystem a richer place.
You’ll be missed…
photo from freedigitalphotos.net
This seems to me a harbinger of change in the industry. The world has moved toward leaner, less expensive and complex tools. It’s sad to see a leader like Ryma fail to make the transition.
Thank you Greg, I think many of the Ryma people, myself included, will remain active in the product management community, no matter where we end up. Product Management is an evolving, maturing and continually redefining profession that many of us love doing, despite the churn and the stress.
Hakan, what do you think went wrong?
Hakan, I want to wish you the best as you step into your next role. Let us know what we can do to help you during your transition.
Ryma’s website has nothing to suggest that anything’s amiss. Also the entire Grandview discussion board appears to have been taken down in its entirety.
The GrandView LinkedIn group appears to be the only source of information right now.
Sam, yes it appears that events took place suddenly although I don’t want to speculate on what happened. No formal message has gone out from the leadership team that I am currently aware of other than the twitter posting.
I posted a summary of everything I’ve learned about Ryma’s passing here and elsewhere at http://www.userdriven.org/blog/rip-ryma-what-went-wrong.html.
I’ve tried to be respectful and I hope that comes though.
Thank you Greg, very nice post.
As one of the co-founder of Ryma I find it really sad to see it go, hopefully someone will pick up the pieces and move forward with the product. Very interesting features were in the pipeline, but like Michel said, 6 months was not enough to turn to company around.
Just a quick update on the status of Ryma, it is not bankrupted…
Ryma is currently in the process of changing owners. So far it appears that the new owners have intentions to maintain both FeaturePlan and Ideascope and keep them on the market…
Hi Yannick – thank you for your update on the status of RYMA and for your message on my post. I think a large subset of the product management community will be glad to hear that RYMA will live on in one form or another. In the absence of information people are prone to speculate so I’m glad to see that communication is starting to trickle out…thanks for your update!
UPDATE: I just spoke with a member of the RYMA’s management team who related more details about what transpired. (This information is no longer confidential according to the company).
Here’s the gist – RYMA was unable to raise needed capital due to a set of unfortunate financing circumstances. This forced the company into receivership and led current employees to seek new industry opportunities. It’s possible that someone will acquire RYMA (or its assets) but the outcome is uncertain. All of this happened very quickly which led to the abrupt closing.
There you have it. We wish everyone from RYMA the best…
If you are interested in ready the point of view of the last CEO of Ryma, check out my latest blog … http://michelbesner.com/2012/07/09/the-fall-of-ryma-technology-solutions/
Hope this will help clarify what happened …
Update: One Desk Aquires RYMA Technology Solutions – See attached press release from One Desk. http://www.onedesk.com/2012/07/onedesk-acquires-ryma/
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