concise reports filled with provocative views rather than dissertations. In his words, "If what you’re writing about isn’t controversial, don't write about it." He would serve as the group's CEO and chairman through April 1991. At the time, other advisory firms usually sold to only computer hardware, software, and services vendors. Exceptions at that time included Dataquest (selling a service for investors), and Input Corp. (selling a service for users). Gartner sold to vendors, plus users (generally large enterprises and other organizations, such as government agencies), plus investors and consulting firms. Investors were among the first targets, as Gartner had just resigned as partner of Oppenheimer & Co., but at Oppenheimer he had also begun servicing a group of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of large corporations, which became the base for Gartner's enterprise activities. As Gartner Group's coverage of IBM was deep (IBM was the primary industry vendor at the time), other vendors desired to be tied into Gartner’s research network. Thus, the market Gartner addressed was unusually broad, and each constituency provided insights and information which benefited others, arguably creating market advantage. Very soon the group became the preferred place a corporate client went when it had any question about the IT industry. Gartner's venture capital financing was unique among advisory firms at the time. Gartner Group was initially financed by Bessemer Venture Partners and E.M. Warburg Pincus, with Bank Paribas joining a year later. This led to the firm being the first in its field to raise public capital in a 1986 offering, supporting its growth. Raising capital from venture firms allowed Gartner to build a nationwide sales organization, the first of its kind in the industry. Gartner instituted a sales measurement and compensation scheme, based upon how IBM had measured its rental sales, but novel when applied to consulting/advisory firms: since Gartner Group sold annual renewable contracts and recorded "Contract Value", it based progress reporting and compensation (commission for sales personnel and bonus for analysts and managers), on the growth of appropriate Contract Value (CV) during a period of time; this was called Net Contract Value Increase (NCVI). Uniquely, compared with all prior consulting and advisory models, all variable compensation was based upon growth and not on revenue from renewals, an important factor in developing a strong growth culture. Having come from Wall Street, Gartner adopted the idea of employing senior industry people, who were in fact