In a little-noticed press release two weeks ago, the board of directors at the software company Good Technology announced that CEO Brian Bogosian was out “effective immediately,” replaced by a board member, King Lee. To many, Bogosian’s ouster marks not only the end of a seemingly interminable chapter in the history of Visto, which was renamed Good Technology last year; it may also signal the beginning of a new era for the company, one that already has private equity firms including Silver Lake and General Atlantic interested in becoming major stakeholders, say sources. Whoever strikes a deal will be joining an astonishingly long line of previous investors. “ is like the Baskin-Robbins of venture capital,” says one of them, noting that the company has already attracted more than 30 different firms over its now 14-year history -- most of them washed out.
4 min read · 18 August 2010
It's August. You've either been checked out or you are about to check out for the next couple of weeks. It's not a crime to say so. Today, I've received numerous email replies to press requests along the lines of: I will be out of the office from August 16 through August 20 with limited access to email. I look forward to catching up when I get back. Look, you have full and complete access to email, to which you are completely addicted. What you really want to say is: "I'm on vacation. I won't answer your email, so don't bother me."
1 min read · 17 August 2010
4 min read · 16 August 2010
2 min read · 16 August 2010
3 min read · 30 July 2010
Just seeing this; if you missed it, too, it's good stuff. Colbert's first question to Elon Musk, the glamorous and controversial cofounder of Tesla Motors and PayPal, as well as founder of SpaceX: "When do you find time for your secret identity as Batman?" The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Elon Musk www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News
1 min read · 29 July 2010
3 min read · 29 July 2010
It was nearly five years ago that Founders Fund -- led by four entrepreneurs with deep ties to PayPal and Facebook -- burst onto the venture scene, promising founders more autonomy than traditional VC firms and promising investors that it would transform its connections, including to former PayPal executives, into rich returns. So far so good, apparently. Despite a sluggish fundraising environment, Founders Fund, which has already seen a handful of its portfolio companies acquired -- CoTweet, Mint, Powerset, IronPort, and CyberTrust -- announced last week that it had closed a $250 million “oversubscribed” third fund, its biggest to date. In a wide-ranging discussion earlier today, managing directors Ken Howery and Luke Nosek talked about that new fund, along with some of the firm’s highest-profile investments; notable companies they haven’t backed; and the nerdy -- and potentially lucrative -- areas that interest the firm today.
8 min read · 27 July 2010
Right now, military investigators are examining computers used by Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking thousands of military documents published Sunday by WikiLeaks. In part, they may be using technology of Solera Networks. The Salt Lake City-based startup has been selling its real-time network forensics and network monitoring platform into federal agencies like the CIA and Department of Defense for several years. Its pitch? That it’s virtually impossible to stop hackers, but dissecting how a crime was committed can prove exceedingly helpful in its immediate aftermath. Indeed, like a growing number of security startups, not only can Solera pinpoint precisely what information was stolen, but its newest technology enables customers to recreate Web pages visited on their networks. “Now, if you visit a Website and send information you shouldn’t have, we can visually reconstruct Web pages exactly as they were when you went there and show what you typed,” says CEO Steve Shillingford, who joined Solera in 2007 from Oracle, where he’d been a sales executive.
5 min read · 27 July 2010
2 min read · 23 July 2010
