Opportunities At The Cusps: FireEye CEO Ashar Aziz (Part 6)

SM: Let’s talk about the specifics of FireEye. What is the marketplace like?

AA: When I started FireEye I was looking for the boundary of change. I was really looking for a big problem, and getting infected by malware via the Internet is a global problem. I read a lot of literature about how malware could evolve and make traditional defenses obsolete. The blueprint for the bad guys was out there on the web. There was no blueprint for the defenders. >>>

Opportunities At The Cusps: FireEye CEO Ashar Aziz (Part 5)

SM: How do you, as an entrepreneur, follow your own advice? How do you pursue new opportunities?

AA: I actually maintain a notebook of ideas. I develop multiple ideas in parallel in that notebook. FireEye is one of the ideas from that notebook. >>>

Roundtable Recording

Thanks for attending the roundtable this week. For those who missed it, here’s the recording. We need your feedback, so please feel free to comment here – did you like it, what could we do better, should we do more of these?

Opportunities At The Cusps: FireEye CEO Ashar Aziz (Part 4)

SM: What are the positives you can take from the first venture?

AA: I am gratified now to see that our idea was not stupid. When the company was sold I sent a note to all of my investors thanking them for their support. I told them that whether we were the ones doing it or not I firmly believed our method was how computing was going to happen in the future, and I see that happening now. >>>

Forbes Column 08: Capitalism Revisited

Zero-In this week poses a framework question about the incentive structure of its various constituencies. Take a look at Capitalism Revisited.

Related reading:

*In Defense of Capitalism
*An S.O.S. To Silicon Valley
*The VC-Entrepreneur Compensation Disbalance (great comments/discussion)
*Will Capitalism Survive an Obama Administration: Q&A on LinkedIn

Opportunities At The Cusps: FireEye CEO Ashar Aziz (Part 3)

SM: A $100M education? Wow! You better have learned the lessons very well!

AA: You can’t get that at Harvard or Stanford! The interesting thing was not necessarily about learning what to do, rather it was about learning what not to do. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: Local Marketers

As startups invent new business models to monetize their offerings, one that has become popular is the Cost Per Action (CPA) model. Here’s a company that is trying CPA in the local advertising market. >>>

Opportunities At The Cusps: FireEye CEO Ashar Aziz (Part 2)

SM: How did you finally gain that confidence you were talking about to launch your startup?

AA: It is completely fortuitous how I finally got off the ground. One of my VPs at Sun became a venture capitalist. >>>