Autodesk CEO Carl Bass (pictured) kicked off his company's Press Day event today with a little joke... a way to get everybody in the right mood before a long CAD day! Bass was remembering the worst day of his life, while growing as a kid in New York City!

"The absolute worst day of my life was when I was about 13-14 year old boy and walking into the class and finding your science teacher is not there but your Mom is going to teach the class! And trying to calm the friends there from the stuff you usually led the activity in!!!"

Evidently, those days are over for Bass. The 25 year old company is now exceeding $2 billion in revenues per year and has been growing over 20% a year for the last 5 years and is expecting about 15% growth for the next 5 years. I know a lot of companies in Silicon Valley, large and small, that would love to enjoy that kind of growth.

Some other facts on Autodesk, Carl Bass mentioned during his presentation:

- More than 40 products;
- More than 9 million "paid" users of Autodesk software;
- 750,000 new users per year;
- Customers spend $4B/yr on Autodesk software. And the ecosystem exceeds $10B.
- AutoCAD is the most pervasive engineering software in the world;
- 1,700 channel partners;
- 2,700 development partners;
- 4,500 instructors;
- More than 1 million of students trained every year.