Building One Of The World’s Biggest Tech Blogs From New Zealand: ReadWriteWeb Founder Richard MacManus (Part 1)

Richard MacManus is the founder and co-editor of ReadWriteWeb, which he founded in April 2003. Today ReadWriteWeb has millions of readers and is syndicated by the New York Times. Through his blog, Richard has become well known for forecasting technology trends and how they will be adopted or used throughout the world. Richard was born,

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Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 7)

SM: What is your observation about Silicon Valley in the era in which China has become such a big factor in the world economy? KX: In our space China is still a small market. Their IT assets are growing very quickly. In our space the key is to quickly do the innovation aspects of technology.

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Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 6)

SM: What was Fortinet’s revenue last year? KX: We had $250 million in revenue. We are as large as NetScreen was when Juniper acquired them.

Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 5)

SM: What was your per-share price for your C round? KX: Sequoia came in at $3.50. One of our investors introduced us to Sequoia. They became interested in us once we won the head-to-head evaluation against Cisco.

Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 4)

SM: Knowing you have a two-year run up front provides a lot of security. KX: It was. When we started NetScreen, the largest hurdle we faced was credibility. Even though we had a prototype developed, when we went out to raise money we did not have credentials behind us. We did not have business experience.

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Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 3)

SM: How were you living if you did not make enough money from Stanford Systems? KX: I also worked full-time jobs. My wife grew up here in Berkeley. I had a family, and I needed to make sure that I made a living. I made good money with consulting. The startup is great, but I

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Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 2)

SM: How long did you stay with the PC company doing network installations? KX: I was there for one year. I jumped around quite a bit, and sometimes I was working for multiple companies at a time. The second year I was in a grant program at Stanford. The electrical engineering program is very difficult

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Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 1)

Ken Xie started his first network security company, Stanford InfoSystem, Inc., in 1993. A few years later, he realized the performance limitations of a software firewall and started NetScreen. NetScreen later was acquired by Juniper for $3.5 billion. At the end of 2000, Xie founded Fortinet, which pioneered Unified Threat Management (UTM). Ken earned his

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