A Particular Set of Skills
Liam Neeson forged a late career pivot to action hero by leveraging "a very particular set of skills." In the 2008 film "Taken" Neeson plays a former CIA operative whose daughter is kidnapped. He delivers his iconic monologue — the one that launched his action renaissance and the revenge dad genre — to his daughter's kidnapper:
I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you...
Liam thought the writing was corny. It was. He thought it would go straight to video. It didn’t. It made $225 million in the box office on a budget of $25 million. It spawned sequels, copycats, parodies and a TV series. That dialogue earned it a place in the pop culture pantheon.
Anyway, here's a different corny dialogue:
Happy hour
After a bruising marathon meeting, two directors sit down behind the turquoise-tiled bar across from their company's headquarters.
One begins "AI is killing seats. Our customers only need to pay for one seat to do everything they need."
"It'll be fine." The other replies wincing at the odd hit of a Crush Cucumber Sour the bar served her.
"How?" her opposite spits back incredulously.
"We'll charge by usage.” She replies. After a blank stare, she continues “Even if there's just one 'seat', customers will pay for what they use."
"Maybe, but is the founder really the right guy to restart the business model from scratch?"
"Don't worry about that either,” she says with a knowing smile. “We'll move the founder to Executive Chairman. I know just the guy to bring in."
A few months later, Bill Staples starts his stint as CEO.
Executive function
Lamplighter talked about Bill before. He started at Gitlab as CEO in 2024. The Board brought him in to steward the company's transition from a seat-based model to a consumption-based one. The Founder moved into the Exec Chair role. The Board also set Bill to work with the mission to improve profitability.
Gitlab, though, famously doesn't have a headquarters. It lists its address as "NA" on its public filings. There's no bar across the street from "NA." And this conversation that I made up happened sometime in 2019, long before his stint at Gitlab. The bar talk happened when Bill joined New Relic.
New Relic measured software performance for companies once they shipped software. It brought Bill in under similar circumstances — to steward the shift from a seat model to a consumption one, to replace the Founder who would shift to an Executive Chairman role, to improve profitability.
New Relic hit its marks under Bill. Its operating margin went from -6% to 15% just after Bill left. Free cash flow went from -$15 million to $69 million. He drove usage-based revenue growth at a 30% pace while he was there.
Bill joined Gitlab at the end of 2024 hoping for a sequel to his New Relic release. Since then, Gitlab beat its revenue guidance in every quarter. After a hiccup in bookings last fiscal year — it grew slower than revenue — Gitlab posted record results this year. Bookings hit a new high and grew over 40%.
Bill's work is ongoing. Margins have slipped a bit as the transition to usage has bitten. The company has reduced staff to address this.
Gitlab had been generating cash before bill arrived. That's better than where New Relic was. It's still doing that, but it hasn't started expanding on that front yet.
Action
AI forced Gitlab into a transition. When its Founder had to step away for health reasons, Bill stepped in as an exec with a particular set of experiences that overlapped exactly with what the company needed.
Transitions are rarely seamless. Margins and cash flow are still looking for larger prints. But on the biggest fronts — the business model, the product, revenue — Gitlab is hitting its marks. Bill and the revamped executive suite have, so far, delivered exactly the results investors ought to want from the team. Its share price, though, still seems to have a lot of questions about the quality and effectiveness of the pivot. This leaves plenty of room for investors to benefit from Bill's good work.
Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. It's meant to illustrate ways LCM thinks about investing. Things that LCM decides are good investments for LCM and its clients are based on many criteria, not all of which are covered here. Some or all of LCM's ideas may not be suitable for other investors. LCM does not recommend investing either long or short any position mentioned. LCM may own positions in some of the companies mentioned. Some of its ideas will lose money — investing entails risk. See full disclaimer here.