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- The Startup Velocity Question
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- Man and Superman
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- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin (Part 7)
Sramana: What are some of the metrics of the business today? Chris Gladwin: We are doing many tens of millions of revenue. We have 130 employees and have raised over $100 million in total. We have built a very large patent portfolio. We have 186 patents. We had six issued last Tuesday. We typically get
Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin (Part 6)
Sramana: If you were to pinpoint the key positioning points in your approach that are dramatically better than your competitors, what would that be? Chris Gladwin: To summarise it succinctly, they don’t virtualize the data. They make actual copies of data, which means the data inherits the properties of the physical world. It can be
Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin (Part 5)
Sramana: How much money were you able to raise before you had revenue? Chris Gladwin: Something to the order of $10 million. Sramana: I talk with a lot of entrepreneurs and I have found that those who build capital intensive products requiring substantial capital investments were able to do it if they had either prior
Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin (Part 4)
Sramana: You said you funded the seed round yourself. What were the milestones and accomplishments of that seed round? Chris Gladwin: I used not only capital but in the early rounds I was also able to use equity as a way to compensate initial employees. You can provide equity to people when you form the
Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin (Part 3)
Sramana: What came next? Chris Gladwin: I started Cleversafe in 2004. Sramana: What was the core idea driving Cleversafe? Chris Gladwin: There were two aspects. First and foremost was the market. At that time, it appeared that the demand for data storage was going to grow rapidly and that has indeed been the case. It
Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin (Part 2)
Sramana: What did you do after Lockheed? Chris Gladwin: Lockheed was a very good experience because I got to learn what it meant to be a customer of technology products, particularly an enterprise customer. I essentially spent my time evaluating products. Eventually, I felt that I wanted to start building the technology instead of evaluating
Building a Fat Startup with a Massive Patent Portfolio: Cleversafe Founder Chris Gladwin (Part 1)
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. There aren’t many sub $100 million technology companies that can boast of a strong patent portfolio. Cleversafe is that rare exception, and hence, a tremendously valuable company with robust revenue growth in a $20 billion market. Sramana: Chris, let’s start with your background. Where are you
Bootstrapping a Web Hosting Company to $60 Million: Christopher Aker, CEO of Linode (Part 7)
Sramana: Why did you make the decision to build your business without external financing? Christopher Aker: Once we started gaining traction, and once the industry woke up and realized where things were going, we have had incredible interest from VC firms. There has been a constant stream of phone calls and emails since the very