An interesting experience with the CEO of a very popular Flash Storage company

In 2009 I had an interesting experience and was very close to joining a popular Flash Storage company. I was talking to the then CEO and then CTO (David and David). I was in conversations for a potential VP of Engineering role with them but did not want to relocate to Utah. (I had done my time in Utah working for Novell and did not want to move back to run engineering for FusionIO).

Nonetheless, the important point was that I was telling my views of what the company should be doing for the next few years and the then CTO and now CEO was extremely impressed with me as I had his playbook open in front of him. He was not only surprised but also impressed as to how I could have known so much without working for the company.

To be honest, I did feel a little proud of myself as well.

Anyway, musing over some older memories. Have the snippet of email between me and the company execs below.

S


=======================================================



----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "David Flynn" < dflynn@fusionio.com >
To: "Sukanta ganguly" < sganguly@yahoo.com >
Cc: "David Bradford" < dbradfordvc@yahoo.com >, "Jessica Dunn" < jdunn@fusionio.com >
Sent: Sunday, February 8, 2009 1:31:40 PM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain
Subject: Re: Company lands the Woz as Chief Scientist; opportunities

SG,


I'm impressed... You've correctly gotten the long-term vision for the technology.


We should talk. We are scaling out our Redwood City offices. So, depending on role, there may be some options.


Jessica, my admin, can let you know when I'm out that way next, and help us set up a time to meet. I'd love to get to know you.


-David







---------------------------
David Flynn
CTO Fusion-io
dflynn@fusionio.com


"The performance of a SAN in the palm of your hand"







On Feb 7, 2009, at 11:06 PM, Sukanta ganguly wrote:





David,
Thanks for your note. Fulltime and Utah would not be possible for me.

Hi David Flynn (had to use your last since two David's on the same email...),
Very nice to connect with you. I read the specs on your 80/160/320 Gig SSD's. Some real interesting applications can be built with them. A high-end persistent shared disk subsystem (real-time cluster) for higher thought put can be built using your SSD's. With some clustered software running over an IP network it can be very cheap way to create a high throughput system for Web based infrastructures. Today's Facebook's Hi5 and other high profiled network with several million connections a day serve a lot of data over the Web and they have orders of magnitude more hardware and software combo to address them and even then theay can't address the market's need hence you see tons of replication and redundant data bases for network segmented solutions are offered.
Really interesting product and lots of exciting things can be done with it.


Warm Regards
SG


From: David Bradford < dbradfordvc@yahoo.com >
To: Sukanta ganguly < sganguly@yahoo.com >
Cc: David Flynn < dflynn@fusionio.com >
Sent: Saturday, February 7, 2009 8:46:02 AM
Subject: Re: Company lands the Woz as Chief Scientist; opportunities

The answer is Yes we are looking for people - but not necessarily as Consultants. I have copied David Flynn on this note and you can share your background and Resume with him. We need people to drive hardcore day to day development here in Utah. Regards, David b

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Book Review, titled "Django Javascript Integration: AJAX and Jquery"

Review for “Django Javascript Integration: AJAX and jQuery”

Author: Jonathan Hayward

The author has done a fine job of presenting a practical discussion of how to use a popular Python framework, namely Django and using another popular Javascript library, namely JQuery to develop a nice application through the chapters presented in the book. The AJAX usage within Django and client side JQuery to leverage the client-side Javascript is presented very elegantly. A simple explanation of AJAX and “how to use it” is shown earlier for an AJAX icebreaker. Later in the book the author continues to buildup the server side logic with database queries, showing how to AJAX a user interface, reduce traffic and UI churn on the front-end. The book starts walking the depth of Django and the backend framework to show the value that developers can get by using the framework. Albeit, this book is not about Python but strong understanding on Python as a programming language is strongly desired to understand all the details that are presented in the later chapters. Each chapter utilized the components that are required to build up the “Employee Photo-sharing” application that is developed during the course of the book.

I particularly liked the way the author presented details of the components when the application presented the necessity for it. The aspects of templating that Django uses and how one can plug their own templating is also touched up in the mid-chapters. Chapter 8 was a very interesting read as it explained the Django ModelForm at greater depth. It was also titled appropriately as CSS makeover.

Although the book surrounded itself around the application to bring the usage of Django and Jquery it did a decent job of covering many aspects of Django as well as Jquery. In short this book is not a dry Django tutorial but a more customized view of Django in a real-life application and the merging of JQuery to improve the application quality.

Techno-preneurship is raising its head back in the valley

Techno-preneurship is coming back, Welcome 2011. Yuri Milner confirmed at an unplanned YC session that he (i.e. DST) will invest $150k on all YC startups, and that too with very less strings attached. This can't be anymore exciting for entrepreneurs who love building evolutionary products, which is what 99% of the market needs.
I love it and love to live it. Being a small angel myself this is actually great. I invest and want to invest more in my affordable range and love these opportunities to actually help build these businesses.
Decent maturity in technology and more ways to get conservative investments, this is why I am in the Silicon Valley. Love it!

SG

Success in current day high-tech startup...

Wanted to voice my views about what I see happening in the high-tech space now. Success is built in multiple layers. All phases have to be successful in order to record a business success.
First, something new should be shown by the founders. These are classically the entrepreneurs, some lone range warriors, who want to change how things happen. Better user interface is the biggest focus making the trend alter in high-tech software products life cycle. Simplicity in getting things done is another driver. Lots of work is done in this space, take a look at most if not all YCombinator start-ups; that is the mantra. Programming languages and implementation strategy driven around interpretive realm have suddenly caught a lot of attention. Look at the absurd growth in JavaScript, Ruby-on-Rails, PHP, Python, etc. (Old school Java is also making moves in this space). They are easy to learn and quick to mock up. That is what most investors want now. Spend less, build quickly. If it has to fail then fail fast.
So the first phase of success is measured by showing something working. It don't matter if it is really relevant or not but show something working is key.
The second phase is the set of team-members who will build or at-least try to build the real business. This is where big money and serious commitments are required. Also, this is where real experience is required for success to materialize. Let me tell you that this is where lots and lots of money is required. Look at Twitter, Zynga, Linkedin, Facebook and I can go on and on and on. Between phase one and two most of the so called angels trade out of the market (Their are a few brave-hearts to hang onto their ownership, but the scare of getting diluted by the bigger investors are always the main worry). Angels are more like opportunistic stock traders, if you will.
The third and the most important phase is the exit. Two choices exists, IPO or buy-out. The last few years have shown us that IPO is extremely tough it his economy. You have show strong growth, multiple quarters and sometimes multiple years of profitability with demonstrations of gains in top-line as well as bottom-line revenues. So you have to be bought out. If you don't get bought out traditional investors don't get their returns.
A significant percentage of the entrepreneurs and their businesses die in second phase for a few reasons, the most important being their lack of experience and eal business know-how. Many have difficulties detaching themselves from the business and inviting more experienced doers. Doing a startup is like betting in Las Vegas most of the times. Their is only so many combination available to win. You don't hit the slot at the right movement, you lose.
Times are different and so we have to adapt and adjust to this model. Interesting times and interesting plays around for all of us.

Happy Holidays!

Skype's move to the Web

Skype is finally moving to the Web. The following link discusses these moves from Skype. The funny part is that Linkedin is supposedly in talks with Skype to integrate VoIP over Web. The funny part is that your's truly was trying to do the same with Linkedin in 2008 when I was heading Products and Engineering of a VoIP software startup. Linkedin's VP of Engineering then and CTO as well as then CEO Reid did not seem to get it then.
Hope they get it now.

Sounds like Facebook also is excited about this integration with Skype

Wow, may be we were a little early then. The likes of Twilio will get it now and more importantly go beyond the minute arbitrage.

SG

Novell bought out by private equity firm

Thus ends the era for Novell, sadden by the way the deal was done but I believe Novell needed a new face. Being an ex-Novellian and a strong well wisher for the company, I am unhappy to see the outcome. I do think a proper plan before the push-out would have been better received than what went through.
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/11/22/hedge-fund-forced-novell-buyoutbut-didnt-get-rich/

Also am hearing rumors of Novell selling off the Suse unit to VMWare. Why would a virtualization company need an Operating System? VMWare is a pure play; Microsoft is clouded (literally) with its bias from its own Operating System on its virtualization play.

So nontheless, no rants but a list of questions on what will happen with Novell's bits and pieces. Novell lost the IP battle a long time ago. It is a company where the sum of the pieces are not greater than the while entity. Novell's corp-dev would have done better justice if they had done a deal with IBM or Oracle (in either case it would have been a very good exit and a future for the existing Novell folks).

I will I had a deeper association with a large PE/Equity firm to make good on this deal.

My thoughts
SG

Seamless and Persasive Reach-ability

Connectivity and reach-ability is still limited today. Prime case and point; We have been spending the last couple days are Disneyland and I frequently find my cell phone running out of battery due to the emails that my devices keeps on polling and downloading. My wife has her cell phone and either her cellular device has better battery or she does not have an email over-load problem that I have. In either case she does not have so many emails to worry about.
I don't have any way to setup a control over my cellular system to transiently setup a reroute of my cell calls to her phone and it would be better if a selective reroute could be done while I am waiting in the queue for my Bob-sled ride.
I still need to have a secondary system that would reroute my call like Google Voice and then try to find the horrendous interface to easily help me set my reroute. Without so many location-based crap that multi-million dollars have invested upon people have still not identified that these would be more useful and of higher utility than telling people that I checked into a Winchill's Donut shop in Santa Monica Boulevard.
Communication and connectivity for business utility is still at its infancy.

SG

Tiered Internet Access

This debate has just surfaced. Can't understand why people making a living doing work using the Internet get it. When businesses have a need to send data faster than others data they should have the capability of paying more to get a better bandwidth consumption. Period.
Postal service has been doing this for ever and we have used it for a very long time. QoS of service within the network is happening, albeit in a very limited fashion and to some extent in a very poor implemented ways, but it has been a reality for over a decade.
Wake up. The question is not about Net neutrality, it is about letting the capitalistic cosmopolitan actually survive and grow for better services to be possible.
Tiered Internet is a need and we can't just kill this effort.

SG

Telephony: The best human invented social networking tool...

Phone is the most effective social networking mechanism invented by man kind. Second to in-person interaction, of course.
The social networking businesses have not yet been in the position to incorporate that amount of effectiveness in social communication platforms built by the likes of Facebook or Twitter.
I like both of them (although don't know what utility I draw out of either of them) but I still cherished the opportunity that I had to build an effective solution out of the VoIP capabilities. Albeit, I was trying to do this a few years ago and software capability and communicative modes has really evolved in the last three years. I also had the handicap of not being in control of my own destiny then.
Postings like the following "Phone Numbers Are Dead, They Just Don’t Know It Yet"/ make me laugh and wonder whether we have really evolved technically in the right direction. Predictions of phone disappearing is an urban myth. However, I do see that the reachability and connectivity is becoming more and more pervasive. Capability of talking would appear on devices that we don't consider today.
My iPad, iPhone, laptop, wrist-watch, etc will all be enabled and more importantly all of them would know how and when I can be reached. That is the most effective point hear that many may not get yet.

SG

Click 2 Call is back baby...

I could resist but write about this new startup from Germany called C2Call, funded by DFJ. What an idea; Web based VoIP calling, not download clients, no bloat-ware, can be integrated to any web site. Check this out http://www.c2call.com

This was done in 2006/2007. I was their doing it. Market did not get it.
Sounds like market will finally get it....

SG

Collaborative Technologies for the Enterprise: II

Following on to my previous blog post, the train of thoughts in the next generation collaboration of technologies for business consumers to gain is not going to come from the likes of Cisco, Microsoft or even Google for that matter. It is the small, new and the innovative startups that will seek new ways to merge pieces of technology components to come up with communicative methods to collaborate.

Email has already been stretched quite a bit in many areas and I strongly believe more will come. (Just connected with a new startup called Rapportive who are building a nice little plugin to Gmail and believe that they have plans to go to email software. They replace the Gmail ads with the social activities of the your contact. I think their is a lot of improvements and enhancements that they have to do to actually show value but they are on a good path ;-)). And their are many more ...

Presence has not been proliferated constructively and creatively yet. I think their are a whole bunch of applications that will benefit from them and probably another 5-7 startups that can be formed building applications in those areas.

Voice and Video are obvious ones and have been penetrated to a certain extent. Although the light and the obvious (with very less value) ones have been accomplished. More can be and will be done in the voice and video space.

Presence with voice is a key area where businesses will benefit a lot more and those areas still have a void. Lethargic companies like Oracle, NEC, Microsoft and even Google to some extent will not do much in that space beyond the obvious ones.

Another player that I feel very strongly about simply because they sit squarely in the middle of the business-consumer space is Amazon. They can do a whole lot although they don't do much. They are going after the mass market an mature segment only. (Jeff you were an innovator, what happened ???). Rackspace and GoGrid have just stopped doing anything innovative. Just email hosting and cloud-based server and storage hosting is not going to make you folks richer. Very soon cost differentials and the supposedly optimizations in operations is going to catch on and you folks will be one of the few hundred thousands out their.

Some of these players have potentials but either have slowed down due to the fears of the slow down in the economy or just can't figure out what next innovative and disruptive solution should be.

Chime in later for more data from yours truely.

Everybody likes to offer their 2 cents, I offer the remaining 98 cents to even out a dollar ;-)
SG

Collaborative technologies for the Enterprise....

The new rise of collaborative needs within the enterprise has awakened the creativity in me once again. I had sort of given up hope in the area's of unified communication and collaboration but it seems like a renewed interest has arrived. The opportunities and needs within an enterprise is even more now. I see more and more room to innovate in this area and build solutions that are needed for businesses. I strongly feel that the consumer networking or social networking has failed to develop as a business other than advertisement (Not the discredit what the likes of Facebook and Linkedin are doing with sheer ad based revenues but the sustainability of these businesses apart from advertisement just does not exist). The social/consumer networking segment is an effective but only a channel for advertisement. Difficult to build up a case of another advertisement based channel in this day and age.

Small, Medium and Large enterprise is where money and opportunity always existed and will always exist. Just different delivery mechanism is required and such is the need today.

Thanks
SG

MySpace Facebook showdown

Very interesting ( MySpace has to Facebook the Music ) about MySpace's current issues, namely Facebook. MySpace has the strengths of Music and the musicians behind it, which frankly it has dis'ed for a while now. The close door relationships with the labels may not be the most healthy thing for them. Many music startups who really want to survive in this new era of music related business are folding to their demands.
The article is a good hint for MySpace to address the important issues, seems like many outside know about it. What would be nice is to defy the pressure from the labels and create a new startup that actually address the musicians and help them increase the reach for their offerings. Great musicians and bands out their who don't like the labels but have to sell their soles to them.
Interesting idea, eh!

SG

Number Portability, Google Voice New Secret Weapon

Google announced number portability (all kinds of phone numbers, cell, land, VOIP, etc). The techcrunch article Google Voice’s Secret Weapon: Number Portability talks about how cool would it be to have numbers portability between carriers, but that already exists now among most carriers. The whole value posed within this article is so really not a value at all. I have used GrandCentral from its early days. Well they were my customers three years ago. Then Craig knew somebody at Google who had worked with him earlier and somehow Google ended up buying them.
Nonetheless, the real offering is still not there from their. Very surprised that Google has not over turned this and tried to be a middleman within the Telephony business.

SG

Real-time streams discovery by Facebook

Just read about this new discovery by Facebook.
Ok, no more sarcasm now. Let us think straight for this. What they have uncovered is that real-time streams between friends in private, when exposed to Facebook people internally, would know that you and your friend are actually connected to each other.
Also, advertisers would like this information.
Really folks, this was done quite a long time ago, albeit not at this scale and not by such a popular company.
Facebook presenting it publicly make it legit. Thank you.

Many including yours truely is waiting to make money of this.

SG

Skype goes SIP

Skype decided to accept SIP as the defacto to take the corporate route. They had resisted SIP for a very long time, probably the only company that grew to its impressive user base without any standards acceptance. Although, I do admire their sense of creative an preseverance in getting to this point, they did leave a lot of opportunities on the table. Also, one has to bring in the Ebay effect into it, sheer lack of understanding by Ebay hurt them (probably??)
Nonetheless, it seems like the right move for Skype atleast for the corporate side.
The movement of VoIP of the last six months has reinvigorated by belief in VoIP again and has created the motivation of directing some time in thinking of creating new things in that direction. Need to take this segment seriously once again. Sounds like it is 2006 again ;-)

SG

Enum goes live in UK

Enum is a technique of using the IP address of the VOIP end point that can be registered via DNS. With Enum now becoming a national movement VOIP will become mainstream reality. Like any other technology adoption US is lagging behind. In UK Nominet is running the Enum service which is a fantastic. The number is reversed and the 'e164.arpa' is added at the end for the node to be recognized with its IP address within the domain name system. A few more countries get involved in the Enum system and then you have a true PSTN parallel, reliable and affordable VoIP network that is truely reachable anywhere and everywhere and converged communication channel.

SG

What could the new things be in the VoIP and media convergence?

IP Telephony segment really did not see much revolution for the last four/five years. Most players have tried to make things simpler, cheaper and some claim that they have the QoS to offer better service. Simpler maybe, cheaper questionable but QoS really not. Service quality has really not improved. I am a Vonage customer for a long time (over six years). I have gone through four different VoIP switch that they have send me over the years from Motorola to Cisco (Linksys). All of them are dumb as a door knob. QoS over the Internet is an end-to-end problem and lots of unification needs to happen within the path of the packet flows for maintaining any kinds of QoS. I use Skype quite a bit and find that even Skype with innovation is codecs (they just released a narrow-band codec with network load feedback within their data-path for improvements in network path). If I used Skype and then do file I/O over my local LAN (I have a LAN with five computers on it) I see jitter and I am not talking about the WAN speed allocations that I or my Skype route having no control over.
Another thing that I am very excited about it the possibilities of presence based routing. Nobody talk about it, probably not working in that direction or even considering that to be a possibilities. This is a very interesting concept and has great applicability. Think about it!

SG

SuperBowl 2009 (Cardinals will win)

I could not help but write about this. 2009 has been a great start. First it is Obama (the Man who defines cool) and then Cardinals will make history. (It is a hour before the game and I am proclaiming Kurt Warner will bring the first championship to Arizona (My man, President Obama is rooting for Steelers, but I think will be wrong on this one, Cardinals will win).
With all the turmoils in the market and who knows what the recovery accounts for and when it will actually show up its head, 2009 will be a defining year.
I have been off topic today but could not help feel like it today. Love the day (I missed my all day Andy Griffith marathon, but as they say; Change is inevitable)
SG

Microsoft's Gurdeep Singh Pall's top ten UC predictions for 2009

I read a very interesting article on No Jitter about Microsoft's Gurdeep's top ten UC prediction for 2009. Although, I do agree with most of the elements that were mentioned, nothing was new to me and I am assuming that anybody who ready about UC around times in 2008 would know this. What would have been nice from somebody of his position would have been some more insights of where the UC segment is today (as it developed in the last three years) and then what were the drivers for those factors that would be mostly acted upon in the year 2009.
We all know that businesses small and large need unification of he communication model with collaboration being more intensely desired within the businesses. It is also inevitable that consumers have also started desiring some of these capabilities especially when related to mobile phones, IM and emails. But the problem for the businesses is to figure out a way to create a solution that customers are willing to pay for. Companies like Microsoft will focus on how Exchange is why this planet revolves around the Sun (no pun intended). It will also make a strong case of how OCS and HMC is a dire need for everybody. Some parts of it may be applicable but they have completely missed the whole aspect of unification where businesses are looking to unify what they have rather than a whole new set of tools and applications altogether. Needless to say some other leagacies have also being chompping on the bits like NEC, Alcatel-Lucent, Oracle, etc but the angle is the same.
What businesses really needs is something that works with the most common solutions out their, should work with their emails (Gmail and its derivaties, Exchange, Zimbra, etc), theit phones whether it is through AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Vonage, Comcast, etc and some of he applications which are mostly vertical domain specific.
Next when we get into collaboration we are in a different game. Now we starting picking apart the business productivity tools whether they are open source ones or from entreprise businesses and have them harmoniously interact with each other, happily understanding what each of them emit as output.
That is it.

SG