Et Tu Philippe?

Over the following weeks, a number of meetings took place between our respective companies. Additionally, a trip to Detroit lead to a GM employee emphasizing their desire not to rock the boat and continue our relationship in a similar capacity. This came with challenges though as Big Fuel did not have a research discipline. Without understanding the data we pulled as we did for Digitas, we collectively felt the way the data was transitioned from us to client could be considered useless.

Bullish to take on a larger piece of the business, we had presumed our role would expand as both data coders and research analysts on the business. We rationalized – wasn’t this what we were discussing with Avi? They wanted to avoid the overhead of carrying a research team, we would provide the data and leave engagement solely to them. It sounded extremely complimentary and as luck would have it, were informed we would remain a part of the equation.

Hammering out an agreement took time however, and the murmurs started to bubble that Big Fuel was building out a research practice. Now nothing prevented Big Fuel from developing their own research discipline. In fact, it would almost seem criminal not to. However, after explaining that the research they were receiving wasn’t our work but the work of our partners, we were hoping to have an opportunity to show them what our analysts could provide. To no avail however, we concluded Big Fuel was moving towards an autonomous model – one that left us behind.

Further fueling our speculation, our contract was truncated, essentially providing us less than a year to prove our value to both themselves and our shared client. This made for tense conversation as we were aware of them building a competitive practice. “What choice do we have?” a senior member of our management team exclaimed.

We ended up signing the agreement under one condition: there would be no poaching of each other’s employees, assuring no direct transfer of IP. Sadly that didn’t last long. Within the first few weeks of the relationship, a young research analyst turned in notice, announcing he was going to Big Fuel. Our VP of Research, curious as to how they qualified him as a competent research analyst, the now ex-employee gleefully explained that their VP of Strategy had asked him to provide a sample report along with an explanation of his methodologies. Inexplicably, he was compliant, using an existing client’s data, which lead to one of the ugliest days of my career.

It started with a phone call from Converseon’s CEO to Avi. Restraining himself from outright fury, Rob calmly explained that the ex employee had violated policy and put himself in a legal bind. Subsequently, Big Fuel was in direct violation of our agreement. Unconcerned, Avi pleaded ignorance. He claimed he wasn’t aware of the hiring, nor aware of the method used to extract additional IP. At one point the discussion turned to them not hiring the employee at all, who as those witnessing the event in person explained, was “Freaking out to the point of tears.”

Sadly we lost the battle and the end result was our ex employee was now a research analyst at Big Fuel. They had our coded data, they had an idea through our former analyst how the reports were developed and above all else, they had our attention as a threat to our business.