Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sebastian Stadil, CEO of Scalr (Part 1)

This discussion explores how cloud entrepreneurs can identify open problems and opportunities that warrant building a new business.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about yourself as well as introduce our audience to Scalr.

Sebastian Stadil: I’m the founder of many things, among which is the Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Group, which is a cloud computing user group that has a little over 8,000 members. We meet every month to discuss technology and industry challenges. I’m also the founder of Scalr, which offers an open source enterprise cloud management platform to over 700 customers. >>>

May 10,000 Cloud Startups Bloom

The cloud services market has fueled a boom of immensely successful startups, most of which have raised millions in venture funding. Take analytics platform company Birst, which started off in the high-end financial sector, raised $64 million in venture capital, and is now growing fast as a regular Silicon Valley-style pre-IPO company. Technology Business Management solutions provider Apptio raised a $7 million series A to get started and within the year got to $6 million in annual recurring revenue. Its customers include 29 of the Fortune 100 companies and has to date raised a whopping $136 million.

Business analytics provider Adaptive Insights raised $100 million in funding and has over 2000 customers. Huddle, enterprise collaboration service provider, raised $38.2 million in funding and now has close to 80 percent of the Fortune 500 as clients. Email marketing company iContact bootstrapped for three years to $1 million using services and then raised $53.4 million in three rounds. They eventually got acquired for $169 million. Mobile website maker DudaMobile bootstrapped using a paycheck and then went on to raise $18.6 million.

However, not all cloud startups have gone the heavy funding route. There are many under-the-radar cloud/SaaS startups that are also developing as bootstrapped businesses. Analytics company DataSong has bootstrapped all the way—for 11 years—and expects to do $6.5 million in revenue in 2014. Another such company in our 1M/1M premium program is Happy Grasshopper, which has chosen to bootstrap so far, and is approaching a $3 million run rate in 2014.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ajit Gupta, CEO of Aryaka Networks (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I think we understand what you’re doing. I’d like to lift us to a higher level – the industry level. What is going on as far as the speed of the Internet is concerned? There are a lot of issues that are coming to the fore right now. Even though you are working on a B2B network problem, I’m sure you are perfectly on top of the issues around net neutrality. Where do you see all the speed of network issue going and what are the key drivers and resolutions that you expect to see?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ajit Gupta, CEO of Aryaka Networks (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Does this mean that you are running the private network for these companies?

Ajit Gupta: Yes. We run a private network, which is essentially the Aryaka network, with a lot of intelligence built from the ground up. We have built a lot of technology along with the network and points of presence around the world. It’s as if we have built these airports with really fast methods of transportation. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO of Clarizen (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Is this a venture-funded company or did you take the proceeds from the SmarTeam acquisition and build this organically?

Avinoam Nowogrodski: When it started, I was funding this company myself. We have raised $90 million today from VCs. The last round was $35 million that was announced two weeks ago. We got $35 million from Goldman Sachs to continue scaling our business.

Sramana Mitra: Who are the other VCs in the business?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ajit Gupta, CEO of Aryaka Networks (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You started off by saying that the distinction between Speedera, which I actually followed quite closely at that time, and this one is that instead of accelerating B2C content, you are accelerating intra-enterprise content.

Ajit Gupta: That is correct. You can say that it’s B2B traffic.

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO of Clarizen (Part 5)

Avinoam Nowogrodski: Many people have tried to fix this issue of how to drive collaboration that matters. As you were saying, technology has changed a lot. The real impact of cloud on companies is that it makes companies real time. If I go right now to Salesforce and I look at the report, I will understand now what the status is for this specific second. This was not there before. Of course, there was CRM system. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ajit Gupta, CEO of Aryaka Networks (Part 1)

Ajit Gupta is one of the world experts in the domain of networking, in general, and content acceleration, in particular. Prior to Aryaka, which he founded in 2008, he founded Speedera in 1999, and eventually sold it to Akamai for half a billion dollars. Here, Ajit and I discuss the future of the public and private internet.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to you. Tell us a little bit about your background and also, tell us about Aryaka.

Ajit Gupta: I’m the CEO and Founder of Aryaka Networks. Aryaka is a company based in the optimization space. You can think of us as an intelligent network for the enterprise. Essentially, we bring geographically-dispersed companies together. We make the headquarters talk better with the branch offices in much faster and simpler ways. This is all done in the, so-called, cloud. We have points of presence around the world. Enterprises connect to these locations and then the magic happens within our data centers. >>>