By the time David Keane started Bigtincan, he was no beginner. He had already built two companies of his own, and neither of them was a software darling.
His early career was in networking. He began at Novell, then ran Asian marketing for the Boston networking firm Wellfleet Communications. Later he founded Quadtel Asia in Singapore and Veritel Wireless in Australia. These were the years of boxes, cables and carriers, not apps.
Sales enablement became a crowded category with well-funded rivals such as Seismic and Highspot.
That history matters, because it explains the bet he made around 2011. Salespeople were carrying phones and tablets into meetings, and the documents they needed were stuck on laptops and file servers. Bigtincan started in Sydney as a way to put the right content in a rep's hand, on the device they already had. A second name appears beside Keane's in some accounts, Geoff Cohen, as co-founder.
The company went public on the ASX in the mid-2010s, and it grew the way many Australian software firms do: by buying. It picked up smaller tools for coaching, content and analytics, and bundled them into one sales enablement platform sold to large customers in the United States. The centre of gravity shifted from Sydney to Massachusetts.
Then came the harder years. Sales enablement became a crowded category with well-funded rivals such as Seismic and Highspot. Bigtincan's operating revenue and other income slipped from about A$123 million to about A$117 million in the 2024 financial year, and the share price sat far below where investors had hoped.
In December 2024 the American private equity firm Vector Capital offered A$0.22 a share in cash, roughly A$183 million for the whole company. Keane, as co-founder and CEO, was expected to stay on. The deal closed in April 2025, and the stock left the ASX. Within months Vector had also bought Showpad, and the two businesses were combined under the Showpad name, so the Bigtincan brand itself faded.
For a founder, the lesson is in the order of things. Keane's earlier ventures taught him how to sell to big buyers and how to run across continents. The mobile-first idea gave him an opening, but categories fill up fast, and a first-mover lead is only worth what you do with it before the big players arrive. Sometimes the best exit available is the one that keeps the product alive under someone else's roof.