coreos: the os of warehouse-scale computing

Posted on June 30, 2014 by mabb0tt

sometimes as a VC, you can start to feel overwhelmed by all the old and new business and technical acronyms you hear. it’s a new language, of sorts. well, i just happened to find one that sounds like music to my ears:

“OSaaS”

try saying that out loud. there are a few variants. the version i’m most partial to is “operating system as a service.” OSaaS. now, is that even possible?

turns out, it is. the folks at CoreOS know a thing or two about this emergent field, and they have built the world’s first “operating system as a service.” that’s the kind of creative, technical breakthrough that gets me excited and reminds me of my time as an infrastructure engineer — at composite, microsoft, but especially my days at twitter.

one of CoreOS‘ key innovations is providing updates and patches without the need for major operating system migrations. for some enterprise Linux customers, this will be the last integration they’ll ever need. this is the type of solution i would have given my right arm for in previous roles, and i’m excited to be representing my colleagues at kleiner perkins on the board of CoreOS as we lead a Series A investment into the company and it’s CEO, Alex Polvi.

when i started in venture a few years ago, i did not envision doing a deal like this, largely because i didn’t expect a team to be tackling this. i should’ve known better…as i got to know alex and his team during their time in ycombinator, it was quickly apparent to me that tech was moving even faster than i was in industry. in a relatively short period of time, the CoreOS team has created a foundation for the next generaiton of warehouse-scale computing.

the “s” in SaaS can now mean many things…even entire operating systems. i’m excited that even after my days as an operator, i get the chance to partner with alex and his team at CoreOS, to dust off my knowledge of infrastructure and my days at twitter and microsoft to learn more about the next wave of technologies and help the team take the company to the next level.

the bigger story behind ClearStory’s Data Intelligence

Posted on October 28, 2013 by mabb0tt

i know what you’re thinking — “another big data startup.” yes, it’s true, but beyond the cliche, there is truth and opportunity, and when it comes to larger enterprise businesses, small decisions can have tremendous effects — good and not so good — on the trajectory of a business. that’s where a company like ClearStory Data comes in. as i wrote about earlier at the time of our investment, larger amounts of data will undoubtedly lead to more noise, so businesses may place a premium on harnessing deep machine learning technologies to not only help with data sifting and analysis, but to also facilitate discovery of insights that the human eye may be incapable of observing.

ClearStory’s approach, announced today, is novel. by combining the power of its platform with various data sources and collaboration, Data Intelligence is enabled via a simple and intuitive user experience. up to this point, while decisions in the enterprise were often in consultation with the data, the data itself may not have been so good or as good as it could be – let alone collaboration around the data. here, there’s a larger trend afoot in the market for data intelligence and relative implications for how this data can inform decisions which directly tie to real returns on investment decisions within the enterprise.

the discovery from harnessing big data in the enterprise will spawn many new opportunities. as an investor, i’m obviously excited to meet founders who are thinking about using data to architect new systems and solutions, as well as new business models. it’s the deep learning from the data which excites me most — as the saying goes, “in God i trust, all others must bring data.” well, i’d put a spin on that — others may also want to bring data analysis tools and systems that can answer questions about the data in a collaborative manner in real time. in other words, the data is great, but not good enough anymore. it’s this “anymore” which creates the opportunity for the next set of founders to build something new, backed by hard data, which couldn’t have been known before.

proud to partner with Nivi, Naval, and the AngelList crew.

Posted on September 24, 2013 by mabb0tt

well, summer vacation in technology is certainly over. it’s already been an exciting month with news from apple, news from twitter, and as i’m writing this post about our investment in angellist — blackberry is being taken private. and it’s only monday!

back to angellist. as you may have seen, nivi and naval announced a new funding round for angellist, and i’m proud to be leading the investment in nivi, naval, and their colleagues on behalf of kleiner perkins. i’ve known naval for a number of years (back to when he was starting vast an early investor in composite software jim armstrong introduced us) and we have always wanted to work together. so, when this opportunity developed, there was no way we were going to miss out on partnering.

everyone by now knows that a platform like angellist democratizes financing for startups. it also saves founders time. it enables investors outside of the valley to get access to early-stage deals and helps companies outside the valley echo chamber gain visibility. at kleiner, (like many other firms i imagine) we watch the angellist newsfeed and network with other peers.

on a personal level, as a former seed investor (before joining kleiner), i find the concept of syndicates to be incredibly compelling, both as a follower or the lead on an opportunity. if this existed years ago, maybe i would’ve started my own fund for syndicates!

again, i am very excited to work with nivi, naval, and the angellist crew!

data and the virtualized datacenter

Posted on August 14, 2013 by mabb0tt

hello folks. it’s been a while since my last blog post about an investment, but there’s a good reason for that. and, yes, this is about another “big data” startup, but allow to me explain why i’m so excited to announce our latest investment: cloud physics

“big data, again?” you ask. it’s a fair question. big data exists everywhere, really…on twitter, on instagram, or inside AWS and other places you may not think of right away. well, what about the the data sitting inside data centers at the systems level? what if a group of highly experienced hardcore technologists left their cushy jobs to form a voltron-like team of exceptional engineers tackling hard problems around data and simulation?

it’s my job now as an investor to help identify, back, and in a small way, help guide the people and technologies that can breakthrough enterprise technology, and with cloud physics, i feel on the right track. led by john blumenthal (ex-VMware) along with irfan ahmad, jim kleckner, xiaojun liu, the leadership has built a team that can focus on making their customers’ virtualized data centers more efficient not only through software, but by finding patterns inside the collective data of across large numbers of virtualized environments. as new technology companies emerge and scale, virtual data center operations become significant costs, but necessary — therefore, finding improvements in those operations directly effect the bottom-line, and john and his colleagues from VMware had a great view into this opportunity given their experience.

i am very fortunate to partner with a team like cloud physics along side exceptional investors like (diane green, peter wagner and robin vasan from mayfield fund) makes my job easy and fun! what investor wouldn’t jump at the chance to help out the team who helped build the hypervisor and had the depth of operational experience to identify a big whole and market around managing virtualized environments? people want to simulate changes in an virtualized environment before deployment and/or capital expenditures, and set against the backdrop of a world where hybrid cloud management systems need continuous operational maintenance, a team like cloud physics is the type of team i want to back. you can read more about john and his team here.

if you have a deep insight into a market (with a novel technical approach) please drop me a line (regardless if its consumer or enterprise-oriented) . i can guarantee a quick response!

learning about programming through my daughter’s eyes

Posted on July 29, 2013 by mabb0tt

i am a valley kid, born and raised. now, as a parent living in the valley, i wonder about my five-year old daughter and how she will be able to pursue an interest in computers, mathematics, programming, and hacking — if she so desires, of course. what my daughter doesn’t know is that, not too long ago, her dad (me) was hacking on computers not too far from where we live today as a kid. during that time, working on computers was far less trendy and romantic. i first taught myself basic on an apple 2+ then later on pascal. i was then taught turtle logo as a part of a special program at school, which while it felt a bit of a regression from basic i could see how it was a decent environment to teach others to program. for me, during that time, the motivation was to write games.

now, fast-forward to today, i see my daughter use an ipad effortlessly. and, i want to make sure she has access to resources and tools to experiment with, should she be so inclined to go beyond using the apps. i’ve checked out hopscotch. there is scratch from mit. there are local groups who are providing a space for kids to explore. whatever my daughter chooses, my hope is that there’s creativity — in art, or athletics, or music….or computers.

how will kids today learn how to hack? while games were my motivation (as well as breaking the security on the games in order to copy them and exchange with friends), it provided a discovery platform. there were no limits. no directions (at least from my parents). yet my friends and i would spend hours removing the copy protection and then adding a “cracked by…” as the game loaded.

legos today have directions – legos when i was a kid did not. in our current environment, how do we maintain that environment of endless possibilities? in the near future, i believe everyone will need to be able to program – much like learning another language. obviously, there will variations of the depth of this learning – but the ability to apply logic/reason and assemble a set of commands/functions to perform an activity is great on many levels.

my daughter was also an inspiration for me to initiate the women in engineering effort while i was at twitter – which has been amazing to see grow and flourish with each passing month. so awesome! we need to get more women in computer science and math – so i am at least going to expose my daughter to what can be done – if she so choses that path. ironically for me – because i spent so much of my childhood on a computer i rebelled in high school a bit and wanted to check out biochemsitry/molecular biology. but over time….returned to my roots and frankly i was better at programming than primary research. the current app that i am working with olivia on an ipad with is hopscotch – http://www.gethopscotch.com – she loves the idea of building her own game. and, as she gets older, i’ve heard of slightly older kids messing around with raspberry pi projects. and, there’s this whole subculture of kids playing minecraft and hacking those games to bend to their tastes.

i’m curious, if you have young kids, how do you seem them interacting with computers, and what sites, programs, resources, or groups have you seen? what are folks doing with raspberry pi and minecraft? i’m eager to connect with folks who are interested in this and to learn more, and of course, to help come up with more and more creative ways for the youth in the area to be exposed to this new language.

the long slow flip

Posted on June 21, 2013 by mabb0tt

“whatever good things we build end up building us.” -jim rohn

in the tech world today, value is being created so fast, it can feel like it’s just overnight. it’s exciting. from palm to twitter to sand hill road, it’s an electric time to be a builder and investor, no doubt. while the pace of value creation ticks up, i do wonder what we may lose as a result, the risk that used to be associated with joining a startup — the stigma, even. i wonder if startup jobs are the new corporate jobs, as former colleague @al3x provocatively articulated. but mostly, i wonder if the long years of pain and suffering even the successful companies of old experienced may be lost on a generation.

i’m uncharacteristically nostalgic today because i have some uncharacteristic news to share: a company that i founded in 2002 — 11.5 years ago — is finally going to have an exit (and an exit that provides a strong return for investors and a great outcome for colleagues and team members). back in 2002, i had a simple premise that the standardization of interfaces to data would enable a new layer of processing to be created — data virtualization. thankfully, i convinced other people the idea had merit: the engineers, investors, executives, and customers that would come to form the nucleus around the company. today, i’m excited to announce that composite is partnering with cisco to take data virtualization to a grander scale. building composite was the roller-coaster everyone talks about, but it was also a blast, mostly because of the people involved. since 2002, composite “alums” have gone on to big things, such as founding or being on the starting team of Adchemy, Marin Software, Ludic Labs (Groupon), Reverb, and Hortonworks, to name a few. saying “thank you” on this blog feels a bit inadequate given the blood and sweat of the engineers who worked out of my house to build the initial version, to the many advisors and friends who helped me as a first-time founder/CEO, to the investors who believed that in 2002 startups could still deliver venture-scale returns, to jim green who left his public post to become ceo when i wanted to return to doing technical work, to stephen ahuero/will lam/wilson yu who have worked at composite since it started in my house and are still employees today, to the countless employees who helped build a real enterprise business that generates real, sustainable value, and to my friends….i will be forever grateful.

i normally wouldn’t boast about an exit, as it’s not my style, but the main purpose in writing this is for the founders and future founders out there — to point out that i started composite software almost twelve years ago — 12 years! — and finally today got to the elusive exit all founders seek. it didn’t happen in one year, or within a venture cycle, or even within a decade :-)….it took a lot of sweat, patience, low moments, fear, drive. there’s a great post by ben sesser on pando, “it’s damn hard to build an enterprise business.” go read it. it strikes a deep chord with me. and it takes the commitment of scores of believers — not just the founder — to carry the company through. while it all may sound cliche, i’ve lived it, and it’s true. we all have the scars to prove it, which is why today tastes so good.

my friend and mentor: rajeev motwani

Posted on June 5, 2013 by mabb0tt

four years ago today, rajeev motwani passed away, but his spirit lives on.

a few weeks ago, i was emailing with a friend in the valley, about mentorship and our times through the valley. we may be young, in one sense, but we’ve been around the valley and technology now for some time. as we discussed mentorship, my friend asked a curious question: “who filled the hole once filled by rajeev?”

i didn’t have an answer. there isn’t an answer. there is only one rajeev.

the “rajeev” he meant was rajeev motwani, famed professor, mentor, investor, and advisor to some of the valley’s biggest and brightest computer science minds. like many others, i was lucky to not only call rajeev a friend and mentor, but had the added luxury of having him as an investor and advisor in my first company, composite software. it was funny how we met — when i was raising money for composite, three different venture firms asked rajeev to conduct tech due diligence on my work.

i was intimidated of rajeev’s intellect at first, but as we spent time together, rajeev invested in me and, in the process, i got to know him and his family very well. he was a very trusted advisor. he helped me think through financings. he encouraged me not to bring in an external ceo. he also encouraged me later on to move on from the company, as i’d lost control of composite and needed to move on. those were tough decisions, but having rajeev there made them much easier. i went up to microsoft, and rajeev connected me with great folks there. when i’d come back to visit, i’d always see him.

a good number of people reading this will know rajeev and probably nod their head as they’re reading this. they’ve felt his mentorship and, in some way, still do. and, there’s a younger set of you who will have to google him and read his wikipedia entry. but, those entries don’t do him justice. he was taken from us too young, and i still think about him when i’m driving home on el camino. and, i wonder who does, in fact, fill rajeev’s shoes these days? who is out there mentoring for the sake of giving back, for the sake of pushing talented people to the limit, to achieve their potential and be there when things aren’t rosy as it all seems. can anyone fill his shoes, let alone just one toe?

how did rajeev have all this time to help me and countless others? i’m trying to fill in a small part of the hole left by rajeev, just a little. it’s impossible to do so, to the level he did. i’m hoping more of my peers do as well. and i’m hoping that, somewhere, out there in the world, the next rajeev — if that’s even possible — graces us in the valley with his or her presence. these days, we need it more than ever.

observations from office hours@stanford

Posted on May 2, 2013 by mabb0tt

i am going to try to increase the frequency of posts to my blog for the rest of the year (2013 has had a slow start!) so feedback on topics etc is welcome!

for the past year, i’ve had the good fortune of conducting office hours in the cs dept at the gates building on the farm. once a month for an afternoon, i’ve been hanging out with swarms of students. while it may appear that they are asking me for knowledge and information, the truth is that it is me who is learning from them — and, learning a lot!

like many of you, over the holidays a few months ago, i read the brilliant medium post by branch co-founder josh miller, in which he catalogued some of the observation his sibling (who is a teenager) made regarding consumer tech products. in that same spirit, inspired by josh’s post, i wanted to share the trends i’ve observed in spending lots of time with engineering students on campus:

video is in its early days: for these college kids, firing up a video on any mobile device happens all the time, even to listen to music via youtube. i do this on my laptop when i’m working and/or want to listen to a specific song or catch up on on a technology video talk, but the manner in which they discover, share, and communicate about videos they find — from every content vertical — is something many of us probably don’t understand. that’s not to say i understand it either, but with the recent success of vine and the popularity and ease of youtube, i think we should expect more live-video user-generated content apps (like daily booth, for instance) to sprout up.

linkedin as a platform: we are all on linkedin and monitor the activity, but probably very few of us spend lots of time there. students don’t either, but they look at linkedin in a slightly different way — they see linkedin as a platform they can build new apps and services on top of. to date, companies in this category have tried to build slightly competing businesses to varying degrees of success, but the students i’ve seen want to create new things leveraging the network data locked in all of our work connections. i don’t know what the future looks like here, but i’d love to see someone bring me a product idea based on this.
founder drama begins early: perhaps this is just a reinforcement for us all, but one of the biggest risks in startups is co-founder risk. i can already see brilliant teams coming together to show me something or test a hypothesis, but the drive of competitiveness can sometimes also push back the hard, human work of trying to form and become a “team.” people use the word “team” as a given, but there’s a reason parents want their kids to play sports or other organized group activities — it instills the spirit of team that helps later in life in other pursuits, and no more so than company founding. having the (at times difficult) discussion around topics like equity splits is key to do early on.
scaling matters: a tricky situation for me is when a student proposes a great idea for a product or company, but when we dig into the plans, the initial team requirements pose an issue. salaries (and rents) are the two biggest things investment dollars are allocated toward, so investors who are like me are very sensitive to hiring projections because these impact burn rates the most. many of the students i’m meeting will be great ceo’s one day, but they also haven’t run a business yet, had to make payroll, had to fire someone, and all those hard things. they will, i’m certain they will soon, but they aren’t oftentimes exposed to these P&L realities in the classroom.
it’s not a race: at a place like stanford, right now it’s incredibly competitive. yet, at the same time, it’s not a race. there’s really plenty of time. it’s ok for some students to go into big successful tech companies, or to join a startup, or to go into vc — the real motivation should be to go to a place where they can continue to learn and drive their passions deeper. it’s hard for me to convey this because i respect and feed off of their enthusiasm, and while there are many technical and other problems in our world that need creative solutions, everyone will move on their paths at different speeds — that’s ok, and i hope people gain the maturity to make the decisions that are best for them as individuals.
our immigration policy is lame: i‘m not one to jump into political debates, but i do know this — when really talented engineering students from other countries approach me and are concerned about staying here, i can literally see the concern and dread in their eyes. they want to stay here and work. they are more than fully able. and, we have invested our own resources in continuing their education. forcing them to go back home against their will is a shame.

investment stakes

Posted on December 21, 2012 by mabb0tt

after about one year on sand hill road, there are a series of learnings that i would like to share with founders. 2012 has been a terrific, fun year. the valley and platforms are changing really quickly. at times, it feels hard to keep up with it. everyday, i get to meet people who are trying to do new things, or trying to make subtle improvements on existing things. it’s all really inspiring, i’m very lucky, and i’m having a blast.

and now, as 2012 closes, and i’ve led a few investments at kp now, i wanted to write this post to share a bit more about what my investment style is. of course, it can change over time, but knowing me, i’m sure it will stay roughly the same. people often ask me: “what do you like to invest in?” usually, that’s a hard question to answer, given my range of interests. and yet, i find myself thinking about it over and over again as the year ends, perhaps because i may finally have an answer.

here’s how i’d describe myself as an investor: “i’m a stage agnostic investor. for the right person (usually a former colleague), i’ll make a seed investment. for a later stage deal, i’ll get involved in a growth investment, especially if i can help the company or team scale faster. and, of course, my natural preference is to play around the edges of series A, because this is where i like to apply leverage, lead the round, and help the founders cross the first big divide.”

i’ll briefly explain this, as i think it will better help entrepreneurs understand what i’m looking for.

in series a, i like to lead. by nature, i want to find investments and founders where i can effectively lead a deal, participate on the board in some way, and really put my muscle into recruiting, technology development, and other key considerations. this means that you’ve already been working on something for a while, perhaps taken seed funding to begin with, and now are looking for a real investment partner. i’m lucky to be at kp, with a wealth of resources the firm as to offer, as well. basically, i want to find situations where my presence and kp’s presence could lead to outsized success and possible breakthroughs.

there are exceptions, always, right? at the seed stage, i will definitely consider outstanding individuals, especially those i have worked with and/or managed or recruited in the past. this is what i did with apcera, led by a brilliant technologist who i am privileged to support in this small and special way. i’m always happy to meet folks just starting out, especially if there’s a connection between us, but generally, i’m more likely to intro you to seed investors i respect that may fit. of course, i’m an email away, and if you’re building something great, chances are i’ll find you, too 🙂

this is who i am. it’s pretty simple. looking back a year ago, when i wrote a letter to my future self, i think largely i’ve kept true to that ethos. i hope so. and, from an investment point of view, whether it was gumroad or more recently, clearstory data, (and one coming soon, stay tuned), i find myself leaning in most at the series a investment level, and generally the question is simple — does it make sense for me to join this board, and would the founder benefit from it? in the rare cases where the answer is yes on both sides, i lean in, bring out the pen, and partner up to go to war. that’s the only way i know.

announcing the investment into clearstory data

Posted on December 11, 2012 by mabb0tt

i’m proud to announce kp’s investment in an exciting young company, clearstory data. you may have read about it last week, clearstory is an innovative company with seasoned people at the intersection of some pretty massive trends, so we are thrilled to be involved. i am leading this series A investment for kp and will join the clearstory board — and am also excited to work with investing partners andreessen horowitz and google ventures.

it’s no secret data is becoming more important. it’s past cliche, right? data impacts the large social networks. it impacts ad networks on the web and mobile. and, it even impacts governments and political power. we all know this. but if we focus on the realm of software for a minute (and there are many great data startups also working on hardware, servers, storage, etc.), the software opportunities in big data, especially at the infrastructure and application layers, are massive. with clearstory, the focus is on business analytics — itself a big category within data software applications — and fits alongside other great startups in this space, such as domo, platfora, and kaggle, among others.

the great coverage of clearstory data’s launch and announcement go into the product details quite well. on top of this, i’d like to personally highlight one dimension that excited me as an investor in the space. in addition to backing a great, small, lean, seasoned team with lots of experience in data, i’ve seen over the years, from my time at composite software to palm to twitter, and even at kp, that companies desperately want to leverage their data yesterday, but there aren’t many people with the requisite data science and computer science skills to help them. as a result, data functions and the data itself becomes put in a silo, accessible only to a few people. and, the most sophisticated tools in the space come at a cost, a cost that some larger companies aren’t as willing to incur. add to this security issues of larger companies, and most platforms run the risk of being stuck.

the reason i’m interested in a company like clearstory is because they’ve built out a product and modeled it to allow companies to simultaneously secure their data while allowing their people to leverage it with dead-simple interfaces. think of all the inefficiencies in modern work. the constant reporting, or seeing troubling trends too late. the data doesn’t lie, and a company like clearstory is on a mission to make data transparent, accessible, and actionable in today’s work environment. and, for me, that’s something i want to be involved with.

uncapitalized

helping engineers engineer their companies, helping designers design their companies

Category Archives: Uncategorized