Legendary Entrepreneur and Author Judy Estrin (Part 4)

SM: You merged with 3Com, which has a completely different dynamic and culture. JE: The biggest mistake is that we merged with the notion there was going to be an office of the president. Bill Carrico and Bill Krause were sharing the key roles. Bill Carrico was chairman and president and Bill Krause was CEO, or

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Legendary Entrepreneur and Author Judy Estrin (Part 3)

SM: Tell me some about how VCs received your concept when you were starting Bridge. JE: Bridge started in 1981 and we spent six months trying to raise money. We raised $1.8 million, and I remember one VC asking why we needed $1.8 million for a modem. I looked at Bill and said, “He doesn’t get it”. We

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Legendary Entrepreneur and Author Judy Estrin (Part 2)

SM: I have never even thought of myself as a woman. I have thought of myself first as an entrepreneur and a professional. JE: I thought of myself as a technologist first. When I became a leader and manager I thought of myself as a business person first and a woman second. Now when I

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Legendary Entrepreneur and Author Judy Estrin (Part 1)

Estrin has been named three times to Fortune Magazine’s list of the 50 most powerful women in American business. She sits on the boards of directors of The Walt Disney Company and FedEx Corporation as well as two private company boards – Packet Design, Inc. and Arch Rock. For more background review her bio. SM:

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Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 7)

SM: Based on your core market where you are selling into the $350 million install base, how far can you go? Can you double that? MB: Assuming a $1 billion business, I would like to see the Internet as 40%-50% of my business. The remainder should come from a mixture of other businesses.

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 6)

SM: Are you going to take it to the enterprise data center? MB: Actually we won’t. We do not focus on running SAP, Oracle or databases. We are trying to take all the redundancy out of hardware that we can. We know servers are going to fail. Our view is that you should let them

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Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 5)

SM: Your retirement became more of a sabbatical. MB: It sure did. I thought I was retired, but in Silicon Valley there is no such thing as retirement. I decided to sit on the board of a public company. I was looking for smaller public companies or for troubled companies that I could help.

Enabling Ecological Data Centers: Rackable Systems CEO Mark Barrenchea (Part 4)

SM: From your perspective, what does it take to become a $1 billion+ company? MB: When you have your core, you need to identify key elements and prepare for the transition. You need to bring your install base with you and make sure you transition them. You need it to have multiple geographies and routes

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