John Moores has successfully straddled the worlds of private equity investing and software development in a way that belies gravity.
Moores founded JMI Equity in 1992 and the firm has since become an investing powerhouse in the software, healthcare IT, internet and business services sectors. The firm has raised over $3 billion in committed capital since its inception in 1992.
JMI’s investment funds come from leading pension funds, endowments, financial institutions and family offices. Key investments have been Kronos, Doubleclick and ServiceNow. The company currently employs 31 investment professionals and has offices in Baltimore, Maryland and San Diego, California.
Moores has kept skin in the software game as an investor, which is true to his roots as a software CEO. He founded BMC Software in 1980 with two other partners who were his co-workers at Shell Oil at the time. Moores was the first CEO of BMC Software and the company went public in 1988.
To ensure maximum efficiency, BMC was broken out into two essential business units. The Mainframe Management segment tracks and reports on mission-critical business data, while an enterprise service management sector focuses on servers and networks.
Today, BMC uses proprietary software in a private cloud computing environment for developing applications. Alongside its software, BMC provides clients with consulting, implementation, integration, and educational services. In June 2018, BMC launched a new service-management package that employs cognitive computing to accelerate task execution.
The key to Moores’ success with BMC in the early days was a dogged determination to stick to growth fundamentals, such as sales commissions for developers and reinvestment in research and development. This commitment to research and development carried through to the early 2000s, when a string of high profile acquisitions helped the company grow quickly.
The company then privatized again in 2013 after a joint deal with private equity firms including Bain, Golden Gate Capital, Insight Venture Partners and others. BMC’s software is associated with what it dubs “digital enterprise management” and as of 2016, the company has shifted its approach from on-premises to cloud-based software as a service computing.
John Moores attended the University of Houston for both undergraduate studies and a law degree, graduating in 1975. In addition to his many business ventures, Moores has also had an ownership stake in the San Diego Padres from 1994 to 2012. In his private time he donates heavily to non-profit organizations like the YMCA and the University of Houston. It’s all in a day’s work for an executive and investor who has found success wearing many hats.
