In business, every decision you make is a risk. Some risks are small. Others have more serious consequences.

For example, before you spent millions of dollars designing and building a new car, it would be good to know if it’s the size and shape of car that people want or need.  Before you open a neighborhood po-boy shop, it would be good to know if people in that neighborhood eat poboys.

The best hedge against risk would be a time machine. You could go into the future and see how things turned out if you did “a” instead of “b.” Until that technology exists, we rely on other methods of prediction. These methods have various incarnations and names, from random sampling to A.I.

One of the country’s leading software companies specializing in this kind of predictive information- gathering is called Lucid. Lucid is right here in New Orleans. Lucid is also in New Delhi, London, New York City, Sydney Australia, Dallas, Singapore, and Sao Paulo Brazil. They have 330 employees. 150 of them are here in New Orleans. Including the Chief Revenue Officer of Lucid, Andy Ellis.

Even a software company that deals in information and knowledge, needs an office space and office equipment. And even when we talk about something that sounds as ephemeral as “the cloud,” what we’re actually talking about are pieces of machinery in physical spaces.

All of these physical work spaces need human beings to design, build, and maintain them. Some organizations do this themselves. Others out-source this to specialists. 

The world’s leading provider of physical resource management solutions is a company called Accruent. Accruent has over 10,000 customers in over 150 countries. As you might imagine they’re involved in every kind of business, including healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and even education.

In June 2018, Accruent opened an office in New Orleans. The Director of Accruent New Orleans is Johnny Culpepper.

Back in the early 2000’s, when the entrepreneurial tech boom started in New Orleans, we started making Out to Lunch, as a podcast. At that time, people would frequently ask us what we’re going to do after the first six shows. After we’d presumably talked to everybody with an interesting business.

Then, after the first year or so, they’d ask what we were going to do when the tech boom was over, and these entrepreneurial people moved on to other cities. The growth and success of Lucid is the best answer to any questions of doubt about the strength and future of New Orleans business. And the arrival of Accruent is a testament to the ongoing faith people in American business have in our city and the people here.

This edition of Out to Lunch was recorded over lunch at Commander's Palace. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website. And take the time machine back to 2014 to hear Lucid CEO Patrick Comer on Out to Lunch.

 

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