Trilogy Software

Trilogy Software was founded by Joe LiemandtJoe LiemandtJoe Liemandt is a software entrepreneur and investor who founded the enterprise software company Trilogy Software and the software acquirer ESW Capital, and is principal of the AI-driven private school Alpha School.Open the full entry and several fellow students at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry. The 1999 prospectus of pcOrder.com, Inc. states that Liemandt founded the company in 1989 and that Christina C. Jones co-founded it in 1989. The company’s website says it was founded by Stanford dropouts in Silicon Valley.⁠[1][2]

Karen E. Starr writes in Selling Power that the company started in the summer of 1989; Liemandt, an economics major, left Stanford University in January 1990, at 21 and a few months before graduation, to build it; John Lynch dropped out with him, while Christina Jones, Chris Porch and Seth Stratton finished their studies while working for the company. The article adds that Liemandt’s research had found that salespeople at many companies placed incorrect orders, in some cases as many as 90 percent, and that companies spent more than 40 percent of their budgets on sales and marketing but only about 10 percent on automating those processes.⁠[3]

Jeremy SternJeremy SternJeremy Stern is a journalist, editor and podcast host. As editor-in-chief of Colossus, he writes long-form profiles of technology entrepreneurs and investors. He previously served in the U.S. Army, worked as a senior State Department adviser and held editorial roles at Tablet.Open the full entry writes in ColossusColossusColossus is a business and investing media company founded by Patrick O’Shaughnessy in 2020. It publishes podcasts, digital journalism and a print magazine, including Invest Like the Best, Business Breakdowns and programs made with independent creators.Open the full entry that Liemandt dropped out in the first quarter of his senior year to build a configurator product; the article calls Christina Jones, Chris Porch and Seth Stratton three other co-founders who stayed in school until they graduated, and Tom Carter another co-founder; Liemandt and John Lynch first worked out of a garage they rented from friends off campus for $50 a month.⁠[4]

A 1997 article in The Harvard Crimson writes that Liemandt left Stanford in his senior year, in 1989, to found the company; he and four friends had started it in their junior year, after an advanced computer class, to ensure jobs for themselves after college by starting their own company, and they had interviewed at MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry. The paper’s 1998 article writes that Liemandt started the company with four other classmates while still at Stanford in 1989. Nathan Vardi writes in ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry in 2018 that Liemandt developed the software with the other founders as undergraduates and dropped out in 1990, at 21, to build the company.⁠[5][6][7]

Selling Power writes that the company was bootstrapped with about half a million dollars financed over roughly 25 credit cards, through 1992. The Harvard Crimson’s 1997 article writes that venture capitalists would back only experience, so for four years the founders raised money through consulting and 25 credit cards.⁠[3][5]

Colossus writes that to fund the company Liemandt sold the Microsoft stock he had bought at its IPO a couple of years earlier with money earned from computer consulting; he had about 50 credit cards, which he pyramided to keep funding the company, and at one point the team’s credit card debt approached half a million dollars.⁠[4]

Accounts of the first big deal differ. The Harvard Crimson’s 1997 article writes that Silicon Graphics first withdrew, saying the team was too young, then came back saying no other company made the product and asked to buy it; Liemandt said the price had tripled by then and Silicon Graphics agreed. Colossus writes that Silicon Graphics executives first rejected the product at $100,000, after which the team quoted $300,000, which Silicon Graphics accepted.⁠[5][4]

Selling Power, by contrast, writes that the company’s first product was a configurator that ensures multi-part products work together, and that Hewlett-Packard initially rejected it in the fall of 1991; after a trade-show encounter and a three- to four-month evaluation, Hewlett-Packard signed a $3.5 million agreement by the end of March 1992, when the company had eight employees. The company then raised about $4 million in venture capital, selling less than 20 percent of the company, and grew to more than 50 people within six to nine months. Silicon Graphics and AT&TAT&TAT&T (AT&T Inc.) is a telecommunications company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Its predecessor was SBC Communications, a regional holding company created in the 1984 breakup of the Bell System; SBC merged with the original AT&T Corp. in 2005 and adopted its name, and it has since operated a nationwide wireless network and fiber broadband, at one time also owning DIRECTV and WarnerMedia.Open the full entry were the next big sales; an article in The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is a U.S. news publication founded in 1889, with a focus on business, finance and economics. It is published by Dow Jones, part of News Corp.Open the full entry in the summer of 1992 led AT&T to sign a large license agreement by the end of that year. Colossus gives the AT&T contract as $7.5 million.⁠[3][4]

Liemandt’s father, Gregory Liemandt, a former chairman of UCCELL who had made $30 million selling that company to Computer Associates, became chairman of Trilogy Software after the Hewlett-Packard deal, Selling Power writes; he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991 and died two years later. Colossus writes that he was chairman until he died in 1993, when Joe Liemandt was 25. Forbes writes that Gregory Liemandt had worked at General ElectricGE AerospaceGE Aerospace is the name under which General Electric Company operates, a jet engine maker listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker GE.Open the full entry and later ran a Dallas mainframe software company that Computer Associates bought in 1987.⁠[3][4][7]

Lori Hawkins writes in 2016 that the company moved to Austin in 1992 because doing business there was cheaper. Colossus writes that John Lynch first announced he was moving from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas, and that Liemandt then decided the rest of the team would follow, partly because of his father’s illness.⁠[8][4]

The prospectus of pcOrder.com, Inc. states that the company was established as a separate business unit within Trilogy Software on July 1, 1993, and incorporated in DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry on July 18, 1994. In August 1996 the two signed an Asset Transfer Agreement under which Trilogy Software transferred the assets and liabilities of its pcOrder.com division to the company in exchange for 900 shares, later split into 11,520,000 shares. Before founding pcOrder, Christina C. Jones was Trilogy Software’s Director of Marketing; she had been pcOrder’s president and chief operating officer since June 1996. Ross A. Cooley, who had worked at Compaq from 1984 to 1996, had been pcOrder’s chairman and chief executive officer since November 1996.⁠[1]

Colossus writes that the company’s configurator combined constraint-based equations, if/then rules and 3D object models and was perfected by 1994 under the name SalesBuilder, which the article calls “the world’s first commercially successful, industrial-scale expert-system technology.” It writes that the early large contracts were followed by BoeingBoeingBoeing is an American company that provides commercial airplanes, defense and space systems, and aviation services, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.Open the full entry, General Electric, Ford Motor CompanyFord Motor CompanyFord Motor Company is a multinational automaker headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, founded by Henry Ford in Detroit in 1903, with two vehicle brands, Ford and Lincoln. With the Model T and the moving assembly line it ushered in the mass production of automobiles. Its 2025 revenue was about $187.3 billion, it has about 169,000 employees worldwide, and as of October 2026 Jim Farley is its president and chief executive officer.Open the full entry and hundreds of other customers.⁠[4]

Selling Power writes that in 1994 the company signed its largest deal to date, $25 million with IBMIBMIBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is an American information technology company, renamed in 1924 from the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).Open the full entry, and began developing the Selling Chain software suite, covering quotes, proposals, catalogs, pricing, financing, configuration and ordering; a later web version let customers configure products and get quotes online. The Harvard Crimson’s 1997 article writes that the company made product-line configuration software with which shoppers type what they want to buy on the web and see a compatible product appear, and that its clients included many Fortune 500 companies.⁠[3][5]

Colossus writes that in 1995 Liemandt received 20 calls from investment bankers proposing an IPO at a $1 billion valuation, and that he always owned more than half of the company and never took it public. Forbes writes that six years after the founding, sales were about $120 million, and that in 1996 Liemandt, 27, appeared on the cover of Forbes and a few months later joined the Forbes 400 with a net worth of $500 million.⁠[4][7]

Selling Power writes that Liemandt, then 28, was chief executive of the privately held Trilogy Development Group, which had about 400 employees and revenues of about $100 million and which Wall Street analysts valued at about $1 billion.⁠[3]

Lori Hawkins writes that from 1995 to 2000 the company spent millions on college recruiting at Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry, MIT, Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It grew out of the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1900, which were renamed the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912 and took the present name after merging with the Mellon Institute in 1967. The university is known for computer science, robotics, engineering, and the arts, and has campuses in Qatar, Silicon Valley, and Rwanda. As of September 2025, it enrolled 16,582 students. Its current president is Farnam Jahanian. On September 30, 2026, the university announced a $3 billion gift from Ken Griffin and plans to build a new campus in Miami.Open the full entry, and that Liemandt estimated it brought 900 recruits to Austin over those five years.⁠[8]

A November 1998 article in The Harvard Crimson writes that two years earlier the company had offered jobs to 12 Harvard University seniors and one accepted, while the next year 21 of the college’s 24 top candidates accepted, turning down Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry and Microsoft. Graduates said a smaller company let them do substantial work and have direct access to executives. The company had no set schedule or dress code, took employees on trips to HawaiiHawaiiHawaii is a U.S. state consisting of a group of volcanic islands in the central Pacific Ocean; its capital is Honolulu, on the island of Oʻahu. Hawaii was admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959, as the 50th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 1,455,271.Open the full entry and Las Vegas, and gave them “cab cards” for free cab rides so they would not drive after drinking. It had not gone public; when it did, employees would be offered stock options that could be worth millions. Recruiting director Jeff Daniel called rapid growth the company’s biggest weakness, and analyst Jimmie C. Chang of U.S. Trust warned that the company also had to fight off other startups nipping at its heels and that people might cash out once it went public. The article ends with Liemandt’s remark “We’re Microsoft, 1984.”⁠[6]

Figures for 1998 hiring differ. Colossus writes that in 1998 the company spent about $10,000 per head recruiting roughly 300 new hires, and that Steve BallmerSteve BallmerSteve Ballmer is an American businessman and philanthropist who joined Microsoft in 1980 and succeeded Bill Gates as its chief executive officer from 2000 to 2014. After stepping down he bought the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, co-founded the philanthropy Ballmer Group with his wife Connie Ballmer, and founded the government-data website USAFacts.Open the full entry remarked that Microsoft was losing more recruits to Trilogy Software than to any other company. Silicon Hills News, describing a 2015 SXSW panel, writes that the company hired 262 people in 1998, including 22 from Stanford University and 14 from MIT.⁠[4][9]

In October 1997 Liemandt spoke to almost 100 students at Harvard University’s Sever Hall, urging them to believe in their ideas: “You must believe in your idea because nobody else agrees with you and everyone thinks you’re nuts.” He also advised building something customers have to buy by creating a new market, which removes competition and lets the seller set prices.⁠[5]

Colossus writes that in 1998 MacKenzie PriceMacKenzie PriceMacKenzie Price is an education entrepreneur and co-founder of Alpha School and 2 Hour Learning who promotes a school model in which students complete core academics in about two hours a day with AI software and spend the rest of the day on life skills; she also hosts the Future of Education podcast.Open the full entry attended a recruiting event at Stanford University put on by Trilogy Software, accepted an offer in marketing and business development and moved to Austin; on her first day, at Trilogy University, she was assigned to a supervisor, the chief financial officer Andy PriceAndy Price (executive)Andy Price (Andrew S. Price) is an American business executive who has long served as chief financial officer of Trilogy Software, founded by Joe Liemandt, and is chief financial officer of ESW Capital; he is the husband of Alpha School co-founder MacKenzie Price and one of the founders of Unbound Academy, an online charter school that works with 2 Hour Learning.Open the full entry, whom she married in 2004.⁠[4]

An overview presented at the CHI 97 conference by J. Epstein, E. Loh and J. Marks of Trilogy Development Group and J. Lilly of Apple ComputerAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry describes the company as a “250-person, privately-owned software company” focused on enterprise-wide deployments of sales and marketing software, with the mission “Trilogy is out to change the way people buy and sell.” Its chief executive was 28, just slightly older than the average employee, and the company was based on West Courtyard Drive in Austin. In the summer of 1996 the company reorganized from a functional structure into five cross-functional industry departments, such as automotive and computers. It hired its first graphic designer in late 1994, and its human-computer interaction group had seven people at the time of writing.⁠[10]

Figures for the late 1990s differ. The Harvard Crimson wrote in 1998 that revenue had grown from $70 million to $150 million in two years and that the workforce had tripled, to 600; Colossus writes that by 1998 revenue was $150 million a year and the company was valued at about $1 billion, and that its employee base was growing about 35 percent a year; Lori Hawkins writes that by the late 1990s the company had 1,200 employees and annual revenue of $250 million.⁠[6][4][8]

A 2018 opinion of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan states that in 1998 Ford Motor Company hired the Versata parties (the opinion groups Versata Software, Inc., Versata Development Group, Inc. and Trilogy, Inc. together as “Versata”) to develop software that would let Ford configure its vehicles more efficiently; the resulting configuration software was licensed to Ford together with other related software for millions of dollars a year in licensing fees, and from 2000 to 2015 Ford paid additional amounts for consulting and support.⁠[11]

pcOrder.com, Inc. issued its prospectus on February 25, 1999, offering 2,200,000 shares of Class A common stock to the public at $21 per share through Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse First Boston and SG Cowen, with an over-allotment option of up to 330,000 more shares and delivery expected on or about March 3, 1999, in New York. Before the offering Trilogy Software owned 12,757,000 Class B shares, about 98.3 percent of the outstanding common stock and 99.8 percent of the voting power; afterward it would own about 84.0 percent of the common stock (82.3 percent if the over-allotment option were exercised in full) and 97.7 percent of the voting power.⁠[1]

The prospectus refers to the parent as “Trilogy Software, Inc. and its predecessor entities, including Trilogy Development Group, Inc.” and describes it as “a leading provider of sales, marketing and business-to-business e-commerce applications,” with software covering pricing management, product management, sales, commissions, promotions, contract management and channel management. Liemandt was chairman and chief executive of Trilogy Software and a substantial stockholder, and a director of pcOrder. pcOrder held a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-bearing license to some of Trilogy Software’s front-office automation software, including its configuration and pricing engine, and Trilogy Software provided it with tax, payroll, banking, corporate finance, recruiting and training services; Trilogy Software was barred from competing with pcOrder only through June 1, 1999, and as of February 25, 1999, it had granted certain of its employees options on 155,000 Class A shares of pcOrder.⁠[1]

pcOrder.com, Inc.’s prospectus of December 7, 1999, offered 3,000,000 shares at $53.3125 each, the last sale price on December 6: 500,000 shares from pcOrder, 2,333,000 from Trilogy Software, Inc. and 167,000 from other stockholders. The stock traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol “PCOR,” and the underwriters were Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse First Boston, SG Cowen and Pacific Growth Equities. Before the offering Trilogy Software owned about 81 percent of the common stock (the cover page says about 79 percent) and about 97 percent of the voting power, and afterward about 64 percent and 93 percent. Forbes writes that Trilogy Software sold $124 million of pcOrder stock in a secondary offering and that Liemandt also set up subsidiaries such as carOrder.com.⁠[12][7]

On October 25, 2000, Trilogy Software and pcOrder.com announced in Austin a definitive merger agreement under which Trilogy Software would make a cash tender offer for all of pcOrder’s common stock at $6.375 per share; Trilogy Software already owned all of pcOrder’s Class B common stock, 62.5 percent of its outstanding common stock. Richard Black of InternetNews describes Trilogy Software as driving the e-commerce transformation of Global 2000 companies. Forbes writes that Trilogy Software could not go public before the internet bubble burst in early 2000, and that afterward it bought back the pcOrder shares it did not own at $6 each, for $32 million.⁠[13][7]

Lori Hawkins writes that after the internet bubble burst the company cut jobs in 2001 and regrouped with a much smaller headcount. Forbes writes that Liemandt shed most employees, outsourced the company’s U.S. workforce and took his public company private, and that he dropped off the Forbes 400 in 2001. Colossus writes that after the 2000 crash the company kept major customers such as Ford Motor Company, IBM and AT&T while cutting staff and costs, and that Liemandt bought out the other shareholders to achieve 100 percent control and then stopped giving interviews.⁠[8][7][4]

Colossus writes that in 2001 Liemandt started ESW CapitalESW CapitalESW Capital is a private equity firm controlled by Joe Liemandt that buys and runs mature enterprise software companies.Open the full entry (named for “enterprise software”), an investment firm that is a separate legal entity from Trilogy Software but in practice one and the same; ESW Capital buys struggling software companies, cuts costs, uses the tax benefits of net operating losses and keeps the companies rather than flipping them. The article adds that Trilogy Software and ESW Capital shifted hiring to overseas contractors, were the No. 1 U.S.-based recruiter at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and hired in Ukraine, Venezuela and Hangzhou, China.⁠[4]

The tender offer documents state that Updata Capital contacted Versata, Inc. on Trilogy Software’s behalf on September 15, 2005; the two signed a confidentiality agreement on September 19, Trilogy Software proposed $0.46 a share ($3.8 million) on September 29, lowered its price to $0.33 on October 12 and raised it to $0.35 on October 18 and to $0.37 on October 20; Versata signed a letter of intent on October 25, the price of $0.40 a share was agreed on November 30, and the merger agreement was signed on December 7. On December 16, 2005, Trilogy Software and its wholly owned subsidiary V Acquisition, Inc. launched a cash tender offer at $0.40 a share, set to expire at midnight Eastern Standard Time on January 17, 2006, with about $5.0 million estimated to complete the offer and merger and pay related fees. The purchaser named in the documents, Trilogy, Inc., was a Delaware corporation headquartered on West Courtyard Drive in Austin that described itself as providing “technology powered business services that result in transformational economic value for its customers” and sold enterprise software mainly through a unit called Trilogy Technology Group; Liemandt was its chief executive and a director. Versata had been incorporated in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry on August 27, 1991, and reincorporated in Delaware on February 24, 2000.⁠[14]

On January 23, 2006, Versata announced that Trilogy Software had held 81.5 percent of its stock after the tender offer, and that Trilogy Software had then exercised an option under the merger agreement to buy 7,637,349 newly issued shares at $0.40 each, for $3,054,939, raising its stake to 90.4 percent so that the merger could be completed without a stockholder meeting. The merger was expected to close on January 24, 2006, combining Trilogy Software’s enterprise software unit with Versata, which would operate as a wholly owned subsidiary headquartered in Austin. The release describes Trilogy Software as founded in 1989, with 15 years of work with Global 1000 companies, tying its own revenue to the economic value it delivers to customers, focusing on the automotive, insurance and consumer electronics industries, and counting Ford Motor Company, Nissan, Goodyear, Penn Mutual and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company among its customers.⁠[15]

Forbes writes that in 2006 Trilogy Software bought Versata, a struggling data management software company, for $3.3 million, merged parts of the company into it and then used Versata for acquisitions and for patent lawsuits against companies including Sun Microsystems, Sears and Toyota; Versata filed a flurry of patent suits between 2006 and 2013, most of which were settled, while Zoho CorporationZoho CorporationZoho Corporation is a privately held software company headquartered in Chennai, India, and the successor to AdventNet. It offers business applications and IT management software under brands including Zoho, ManageEngine, Qntrl and TrainerCentral. Its origins date to late 1995 and early 1996; Sridhar Vembu is one of its co-founders.Open the full entry successfully defended itself against Versata’s patent claims.⁠[7]

In 2007 Versata, which Trilogy Software had acquired, sued SAP America and its German parent SAP AG in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (case 2:07-CV-153), alleging that SAP’s pricing software infringed its patents. Chris Kanaracus of InfoWorldInfoWorldInfoWorld is a technology publication originating in 1978, serving enterprise developers, software architects and technology decision-makers as part of Foundry.Open the full entry writes that Versata’s pricing software had been sold to SAP customers in the 1990s for use with their ERP systems, and that SAP later built its own pricing software and bundled it with its products, hurting Versata’s sales. In August 2009 a jury awarded about $139 million (the law firm McKool Smith gives $138.6 million), a verdict later set aside; in May 2011 a second jury awarded $345 million under U.S. Patent No. 6,553,350, made up of $260 million in lost profits and $85 million in reasonable royalties; and in September 2011 the court entered a final judgment of $391 million, including more than $63 million in prejudgment interest.⁠[16][17]

In 2013 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the infringement finding and the damages award but vacated the permanent injunction as overbroad and remanded it (Neil McAllister of The Register writes that the ruling was issued by Chief Judge Randall Rader). In June 2013 the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, on SAP’s petition, found the patent claims at issue to recite unpatentable abstract ideas. In July 2015 the Federal Circuit upheld the cancellation of the patent. Forbes writes that the case was settled during SAP’s appeals.⁠[18][17][16][19][7]

Trilogy Software entities (Infield Acquisition, Inc., Trilogy Enterprises, Inc., Versata Enterprises, Inc. and Trilogy, Inc.) and Joseph A. Liemandt first filed a Schedule 13D on their holding in Autobytel on November 24, 2008; Versata had used about $1,540,519.37 of its working capital to buy Autobytel shares. On April 20, 2009, Infield Acquisition launched a cash tender offer at $0.35 a share. WardsAuto calls it a hostile takeover attempt at a 32 percent premium over Autobytel’s trailing 30-day average closing price, with Trilogy Software as Autobytel’s second-largest stockholder; Trilogy Software senior vice president Sean Fallon said Autobytel’s ability to turn itself around “is subject to significant and unacceptable risk.” The article adds that a lead-scoring tool Trilogy Software had developed the previous fall was used free by more than 300 dealerships and had scored more than 5 million leads. The offer expired at 12:01 a.m. New York City time on May 19, 2009; Infield Acquisition bought no shares under it, and tendered shares were returned.⁠[20][21]

In 2014 Ford Motor Company and Versata could not agree on the terms of a renewed software license (Versata had offered to license the configuration software and another related program to Ford for five more years), and Ford developed its own replacement software, PDO. On February 19, 2015, Ford sued in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan for a declaratory judgment that it had not infringed or misappropriated Versata’s patents, copyrights and trade secrets; Versata Software, Versata Development Group and Trilogy, Inc. counterclaimed for infringement and misappropriation, seeking more than $1 billion and alleging that Ford copied proprietary features of the configuration software in developing PDO, which Ford denied. On July 9, 2018, Judge Matthew F. Leitman granted Ford’s motions to exclude the expert testimony of James Martin and Christopher Bokhart, the trade secret damages opinions of Craig Elson and the copyright infringement opinions of Samuel Malek, all offered by Versata, and granted in part Versata’s motion to exclude the testimony of Ford’s expert Monty Myers. Forbes wrote in 2018 that Liemandt was suing Ford for $300 million.⁠[11][7]

Blake Brittain of Reuters writes that Versata says it licensed its automotive software to Ford from 1998 to 2015. In 2022 a jury in Detroit awarded $82.2 million for breach of contract and $22.4 million for trade secret misappropriation, a total of $104.6 million; in 2023 Judge Leitman overturned the verdict, finding that Versata had not offered enough evidence for the jury to calculate damages accurately. In May 2026 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reinstated the $82.2 million in breach-of-contract damages, saying the jury had calculated them with “reasonable certainty,” and sent the trade secret damages back for a new trial.⁠[22]

Lori Hawkins writes in May 2016 that the company provided software services to Global 1000 companies in the automotive, consumer electronics and insurance industries, that Liemandt remained chief executive, and that its headquarters was on West Courtyard Drive in Northwest Austin.⁠[8]

A November 2018 article in Forbes writes that Trilogy Software kept generating cash from software maintenance contracts, particularly with automakers such as Ford Motor Company, and held software patents; it says the “new version” of Trilogy Software is part of ESW Capital, which had acquired some 75 software companies over the previous 12 years and whose recruiting arm is Crossover (remote hiring platform)Crossover (remote hiring platform)Crossover (remote hiring platform) is a recruiting platform started by Joe Liemandt that hires remote workers worldwide for ESW Capital companies, Trilogy Software and other businesses.Open the full entry.⁠[7]

Colossus writes that after the generative AI boom of 2022 Liemandt took $1 billion out of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital to fund and incubate proprietary AI software products at Alpha School, and that the Timeback development lab has about 300 people, including longtime Trilogy Software programmers.⁠[4]

As of November 2026, Trilogy Software’s website says the company buys good software businesses and scales them by combining an “AI‑first operating system” with the top 1 percent of global talent recruited through Crossover (remote hiring platform). The site says that since 1989 the company has refined a single playbook, automating everything that can be automated and hiring elite people for the rest, and that its alumni seeded Austin’s tech scene. It says that by 2025 the company was no longer a single-product company but a portfolio of hundreds, with 15 years of experience in software turnarounds, and that every hire is sourced through the platform with transparent pay and fully remote work. The office address it lists is on Congress Avenue in Austin.⁠[2]

The website’s Clients page lists 37 brands: Aclate, Aurea, Avolin, BiznessApps, Bonzai, Cardinal Mark, Trilogy Innovations, Dev Factory, DevGraph, DNN Software, EngineYard, Exinda, FirstRain, FogBugz, GFI Software, IgniteTech, Infinio, Jive, Kayako, MBI Solutions, MobilogyNow, myalerts, Olive Software, one spot, postwire, Quark, ResponseTek, School Loop, Skyvera, SLI Systems, Sococo, StreetSmart, Symphony commerce, Versata, Virtasant, ZephyrTel and Zumobi.⁠[23]

The website’s Careers Center page says the platform is the company’s HR platform for recruiting and managing its worldwide workforce, through which it sources talent in more than 130 countries, with everyone in the same role paid the same rate. The Education page describes “Trilogy University: CNU Edition (Code Nation University),” a remote technical training program for software developers, as well as the one-day RemoteU for Individuals and the four-week RemoteU for Managers for leaders of remote technical teams, and recommends the Bloom Institute of TechnologyBloomTechBloomTech (Bloom Institute of Technology, formerly Lambda School) is a for-profit online coding school headquartered in San Francisco, founded in 2017 by Austen Allred and Ben Nelson; it came out of Y Combinator. It became known for income share agreements (ISAs), under which students study first and pay a share of their income once employed; it was later fined by a California regulator for operating in the state without approval, sued by students over its job placement claims and other issues, and in 2024 subjected to enforcement action by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over the loan nature of its ISAs and its job placement claims.Open the full entry (formerly Lambda School) as an alternative.⁠[24][25]

Versata’s website says its industry solutions group “is now called Trilogy,” with Automotive, Insurance & Financial Services and Telecom Technology & Media teams; the site calls DevFactory “the world’s first software factory” and links in its footer to eswcapital.com with the words “Learn more about our corporate group at eswcapital.com.”⁠[26]

The Harvard Crimson’s 1998 article writes that new hires first attended an extensive summer training program called Trilogy University (TU) so that they could work immediately on projects that could become products, led by company stars including the president and founder, Liemandt; graduate John R. Miri said that before joining he had been 99 percent sure he would go to business school, and afterward 60 percent. After TU the company held a retreat in Las Vegas.⁠[6]

Colossus writes that TU was a 100-day program of 100-hour weeks, running from 8 a.m. to midnight, often seven days a week; Liemandt judged the trainees’ projects and funded about 15 percent of them, and from 1995 to 2001 TU projects produced $25 million in revenue and formed the basis for $100 million in new business. The company held Friday night parties on the patio and charter flights to Hawaii or Las Vegas.⁠[4]

Silicon Hills News writes that at a 2015 SXSW panel former employees recalled that new trainees were housed separately and kept apart from other employees; each session began with trainees sharing their “Significant Emotional Experience”; trainees were given stretch goals that required them to rely on one another; Chris Taylor said he was on a plane to Las Vegas about two hours after arriving in Austin; and some employees became physically ill from fear before presenting to Liemandt.⁠[9]

Trilogy Innovations, which is listed on Trilogy Software’s Clients page, is based in Bengaluru, with Rahul Subramaniam as chief executive. Its website describes TU as a three-month training program for new recruits modeled on the “US Navy Seal Training Program,” alongside a two-month summer internship called Junior Trilogy University (jTU). The yearly TU figures it lists are: 2014, 12 recruits and 4 products developed; 2015, 17 and 10; 2016, 14 and 22; 2017, 10 and 25; 2018, 9 and 19; 2019, 10 and 22; 2020, 10 and 21; 2021, 17 recruits.⁠[23][27][28]

In March 2015 former employees Chris Taylor, John Price, Heather Brunner and Scott Francis spoke at SXSW on a panel titled “Trilogy: A Killer Network Can Transform Your Town.” Silicon Hills News writes that Liemandt made John Price vice president of recruiting after a Stanford University engineer the company had courted chose another startup; the companies founded or led by former employees named in the article include Square Root (Chris Taylor, chief executive), Vast (John Price, chief executive), WP Engine (Heather Brunner, chief executive), BP3 (co-founded by Scott Francis) and Bazaarvoice (founded by Brett Hurt, who posted a notice to his network of former colleagues when he needed a chief technology officer). John Price said the company never had a liquidity event; the panelists also said that leaving to start one’s own company instantly stirred bad blood, which they named as the company’s major failure.⁠[9]

Lori Hawkins writes that hundreds of the company’s recruits stayed in Austin and hold leadership roles at local tech companies, including Joshua Baer of Capital Factory, Heather Brunner of WP Engine and John Price of Vast. Forbes writes that companies spawned from it include Nutanix and SendGridSendGridSendGrid is an email delivery service for developers and businesses that was founded in 2009 out of the Techstars accelerator, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017, was acquired by Twilio in 2019 and now operates as Twilio SendGrid.Open the full entry and that it helped Austin become a tech hub.⁠[8][7]

In the 1990s the company operated as Trilogy Development Group; pcOrder.com’s 1999 prospectus uses “Trilogy Software, Inc.” and names Trilogy Development Group, Inc. as a predecessor entity. In the 2005 Versata acquisition documents the purchaser is Trilogy, Inc., a Delaware corporation; the 2009 Autobytel filing lists Trilogy, Inc., Trilogy Enterprises, Inc., Versata Enterprises, Inc. and Infield Acquisition, Inc. among its filers.⁠[10][1][14][20]

Trilogy Software: Official website: https://www.trilogy.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

Versata: Official website: https://versata.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[26]

Trilogy Innovations: Official website: https://innovations.trilogy.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[27]