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Personally, this trend isn’t all that surprising to me. I suspected that there might be a shift in this direction - to more aggressive marketing - when they hired a CEO who is a former Symantec executive: “vice president of worldwide consumer sales at Symantec, running it’s international sales organization.”
It wasn’t hard to predict a similar focus from him at avast!. This is not to suggest that he’s imposing his will on the company - more likely that he’s fulfilling his mandate from the Board of Directors.
While there’s often focus on the growth in numbers of end users of avast! products over the past few years, it’s not often mentioned that the company itself has undergone significant personnel growth at the same time. This takes revenue.
Go to the “About Us” → “Company” link from the avast! home page. Look at the “History” timeline at the bottom. Clicking on each yearly node will give a brief highlight of that year. In 2007 they had 38 employees. In 2008 they had 60 employees. In 2009 they had 100 employees. In 2011 they had over 150 employees. In 2012 they had over 200 employees. In 2013-present it’s over 300 employees.
The company has had financial partners pour money into the company’s coffers. Such backers expect their investments to pay off - they’re not altruistic. See these:
Growth Equity Investor Summit Partners Invests $100M in AVAST Software
Leading Antivirus Software Developer Positioned for Continued Growth
August 23, 2010
http://www.summitpartners.com/Growth-Equity-Investor-Summit-Partners-invests-100-million-in-AVAST-Software.aspx
AVAST expands into the USA (with a little help from our friends!)
https://blog.avast.com/2014/02/07/avast-expands-into-the-usa-with-a-little-help-from-our-friends-2/
Security Software Firm Avast Gets CVC Capital Investment, Now Valued At $1B
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/05/security-software-firm-avast-takes-cvc-capital-investment-at-a-1b-valuation/
It’s not “the little company that could” anymore - it’s a major corporation. Expect continued emphasis on aggressive growth - in users, customers, and revenue.