Anaplan's engine held a company's entire plan in memory, so one changed assumption flowed through every number in seconds. That speed was the pitch. Big companies planned in thousands of disconnected spreadsheets, and Anaplan let finance, sales and supply chain teams work from one live model. When it filed to go public in 2018, cloud software was the market's favorite category. Investors paid rich prices for any subscription business with steady growth and loyal enterprise customers.

A Calculation Engine from Yorkshire

Anaplan began in Yorkshire, England, where Guy Haddleton and Michael Gould built a new calculation engine for business models. Gould had worked on planning software before. He thought the older tools were too slow and too rigid. Their engine held huge models in memory, so a change in one assumption could flow through the whole plan in seconds. The company later moved its headquarters to San Francisco to be closer to customers and capital.

A Fight Over Employee Pay

Anaplan priced its shares at $17 in October 2018, and the stock jumped on its first day of trading. Revenue kept climbing over the next few years. Losses stayed large. In 2022 Thoma Bravo agreed to buy the company. Then the two sides fought over employee pay, and the price was trimmed to about $10.4 billion. Anaplan became a private company again.

Cover: Plan of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Diagram Showing City Growth, Daniel Hudson Burnham. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a city plan (planning).