Building Fat Startups: Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In modernizing the enterprise storage using cloud principles, was there any other competitor or were you the first to come into that space?

Andres Rodriguez: When we came out, we thought we were the first but there are always competitors in the space. We have competitors today.

Sramana Mitra: Big opportunities tend to have competitors and that’s not a bad thing.

Andres Rodriguez: Absolutely. If you’re not chasing an idea that another company is chasing, you should be worried.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Tidemark CEO Christian Gheorghe (Part 4)

Christian Gheorghe: Revolutions do not just happen within an institution. They are always due to outside influence because people demand better experiences with involvement, empowerment, and engagement. The same thing is seen in the enterprise space right now. In the past, you’d always go to IT for a better report, a different report or cube, which is no longer feasible. People at the edge of the organization are demanding experiences that are self-reliant, easy to use, and that do not require the same level of reliance on IT.  With this, they can get empowered to participate on the overall performance of the business.

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Building Fat Startups: Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happened next in your history?

Andres Rodriguez: After we sold Archivas, we had all the top venture capitalist wanting to fund the next project.

Sramana Mitra: I’m sure. What’s good with being an entrepreneur is, capital follows you.

Andres Rodriguez: Success breeds capital.

Sramana Mitra: However, let’s talk about the investment pieces that you explained to the investors? What year was this when you started on Nasuni?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Tidemark CEO Christian Gheorghe (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s understand Tidemark better. I think the best way for us to understand Tidemark would be through your customers. What is your target customer segment and then explain to us how you’re delivering value in Tidemark.

Christian Gheorghe: One of the main challenges our customers are trying to solve is business transformation. Sometimes by their own volition, competition, or the market environment, they are forced to transform their businesses. Now, what does that mean? The metrics by which they used to run their businesses no longer apply. They are changing because there is a greater degree of requirement to look at how the business is doing and plan and model the business on a much higher frequency. For example, moving from doing a revenue plan once a year to achieving revenue targets monthly by trying to understand the profitability.

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Building Fat Startups: Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you start Archivas?

Andres Rodriguez: Towards the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002.

Sramana Mitra: Was it the same team that you had in Abuzz?

Andres Rodriguez: Some of the engineering team was the same, but a key ingredient was missing. This is happens often when you shift industries. With Archivas, I was moving from application layer of the stack down to the infrastructure layer of the stack. My team was exceptionally good at doing rapid amplification of distributed system layer. Now, we were going down to the storage layer, which requires a great deal of attention to quality and quality assurance.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Tidemark CEO Christian Gheorghe (Part 2)

Christian Gheorghe: We’re seeing a transformation towards a much more volatile type of risk environment where there’s more global competition and where the user base is changing significantly to a prosumer market – where consumer experience is demanded at work. Furthermore, the mobile platform is starting to have a big impact on the enterprise space. With respect to these trends of user communities and cloud and mobile platforms, we need to answer how companies can manage their businesses in terms of performance, financial analysis, planning, and predictive analytics.

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Building Fat Startups: Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What were the mechanics of Abuzz? Was it a venture-funded company?

Andres Rodriguez: Yes, it was a classic Series A venture funded company. It was funded by SoftBank, Brad Feld, Solstice Capital, and Flatiron Ventures, which is no longer around. I was very lucky to have good guys. They were especially good with young entrepreneurs. They knew how to work with teams that did not have a lot of experience. They coached young entrepreneurs through the process of building companies very early on.

It was also a great time to build a company. I think we are in a very similar time today where young people’s ideas can get a lot of support and a lot of money behind them to make those ideas happen.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Tidemark CEO Christian Gheorghe (Part 1)

This discussion focuses on the evolution of analytics in the cloud era. Christian Gheorghe is a serial entrepreneur and a domain expert in the analytics field.

Sramana Mitra: Christian, introduce our audience to you as well as to Tidemark.

Christian Gheorghe: My name is Christian Gheorghe. I’m the founder and CEO of a company started four years ago that’s called Tidemark.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you located?

Christian Gheorghe: We are located in Redwood Shores in California.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you from? You have an accent, so I’m thinking you’re not from Redwood Shores.

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