How to Pay Cash for a New Car!

In July, 1993, Wonderware made its Initial Public Offering. At the Pacific Stock Exchange in San Francisco, CEO Dennis Morin and Controller Norm Farqhaur represented the company to investors.  Back at the Irvine office, Wonderware employees gathered around a live phone link to listen to the action, including VP of Human Resources, Beccie Dawson. Founding members Phil Huber, Cole Chevalier, Bill Urone, and Jerry Cuckler were in the room.  They were the moonlighting former Triconex engineers who helped Dennis build the first release of InTouch.   Peter Pitsker, the first Wonderware CEO was there, as were Diane Castignetti and Linda Ellison, who also worked at Triconex and followed Dennis to Wonderware.  Back then, everyone at Wonderware was a key employee. Chet Tomsick, the applications engineer who started the service and training departments for Wonderware and Hank Castignetti (Diane's husband), the building coordinator, were long-time friends of Dennis Morin who helped him build Wonderware. 


The excitement built with each trade during the live feed from the stock exchange.   The share price....kept going.....up!   At the end of the day the company had raised 32 million dollars from the market!  It would raise another 17 million in a second offering that year.
Robin Zappavigna, hired in December 1991 as a QA engineer, tells the aftermath of the IPO in a story about how to pay cash for a new car.  "You could tell from the Wonderware parking lot the following week that the IPO had been successful for employees, because the lot was full of new cars, paid for in cash, which was about the average cash payout for most of the non-executive employees."  Training instructor Richard English, employee number 21, bought a Pontiac Aztek.  Founding engineers Cole Chevalier and Bill Urone bought BMW's. 
Wonderware was number one, an amazing perch from a startup that began operations only 4 years earlier at the start of a recession.   In a survey of analysts the following year 1994, investors rated Wonderware ahead of Cisco systems as a buying opportunity. 
The day of the IPO was the most exciting time to work for a startup.   The hard work, long hours, now stood before investors worldwide.  What would the shares they were granted be worth?   Was the gamble going to pay off, or should they have stayed at their more comfortable and secure gigs prior to going to a startup?1995 would be a year of change for Wonderware.  But the new cars bought and paid for with the IPO would be a sweet symbol of success for those who joined the Wonderware family early.
Not everyone who came early and contributed greatly to the success of Wonderware cashed in what they expected, mostly stock options granted and priced as part of compensation packages. The History of a Safer World tells their stories.