valuations will revert to the mean at some point but sorry I just don't know when; we are still actively doing deals at all stages so it's not holding @neavc back there are too many great opportunities every day
To the points being made earlier. You want to invest in something which will gain customer adoption. We as customers want you to invest in something we will USE vs dollars thrown at a pipe dream which will never see the light of day.
we spend a lot of time speaking with customer prospects before investing in any deal; its the most important data we can act on. And conviction around entrepeneur's ability to execute is part of the same conversation. each time.
I'd hope so too. But (not your fault) I see a lot of dead weight try to come to market with Ill-equipped mgmt and can't help but feel, wow. What a waste.
@datacenterdude this is best time ever in the enterprise imo; fake products get dumped fast; and startups are being welcomed into the Enteprise with cloud
@datacenterdude yes nick but how often do we see major enterprises not listen to their customers. I bet VMware customers were hankering for a price increase which flew below the radar. :)
IPO markets need to cool down for private M&A to pick up. Multiples in private markets are just too far ahead of historical M&A multiples. Acquirers need to justify M&A through ROI and high multiples means longer paybacks.
Given how consistent the enterprise space is with, "me too" solutions which are essentially carbon copy of everyone else, what kinds of offerings do you see proposed based on customer problems and not competitively similar proposals.
can you elaborate on this more...not sure I see the enterprise as me too at this point; investing might be a bit too "dockerish" right now but software SaaS is a greenfield.
Well take your docker scenario. Once Docker started to gain adoption you get things like Rocket and CoreOS, and who knows how many others will be propping up to say, "I have an idea which is already rehashed and out there! BUT MINE IS BETTER"
And Software SaaS is as much a green field discussion today as it was in 1999 when we had his very same discussion laying the initial groundwork for the first dotcom boom. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm saying its not new.
. @cxi Scale is the new "lock in" spec - doing something unique isn't the value anymore it's scaling it - that is the new differentiation imo; winners keep moving the chains and the goal posts
@furrier whether better mousetrap, or least worst mouse trap. I mean look at Backup today and Enterprise Mgmt suites. It's not who is best. It's who is least worst.
How much effect do the big companies (NetApp, EMC, HP, IBM, etc) have on getting a BigData startup off the ground? Is there active vetting to insure a new MVP is not something that is already being done elsewhere? Curious on how gaps are presented...
we safely assume that the big dogs just can't respond fast enough these days. So long as the trend is very contemporary we don't worry much about them. They are just too stuck in the mud to respond.
In most exciting storage markets today, big vendors are held back by cash cow legacy products. They may have a competing product for a new use case, but have a limited ability to put sales, marketing, and engineering $ behind it.
That's a common perception. It's also on us to market our solutions better. There are certainly times when we have existing solutions that are comparable/similar, but no one is excited about them yet.
@psonsini How about vmware finally waking up in storage - how does that affect for example a Tintri who started when vmware storage was totally broken? - is there still plenty of white space
@dvellante Execs wholesale bailing out at Tintri says something. I'm not sure what, but they either figured out how to do something better, or lost faith in the product(s).
@dvellante Can you define "VMware waking up in storage?" Is this a VSAN reference or are you specifically referring to architecture changes like policies and VVols?
With @nebula going under last week, what's your temperature on OpenStack, and the various distro's offered? Are companies going to be able to monetize it properly/enough to support a business built around the development, implementation, and support of it?
We've historically avoided #openstack deals. Many vendors with unclear business models vying for small $ software revenues. Services like @MirantisIT likely to be the winners here.
Hey @psonsini thanks for doing this crowdchat - I saw Andreesen tweeted out the other day that raising $ is harder than securing customers or hiring new employees. Do you agree and can you elaborate either way...thx
another thought on informatica - co's like Dell and Informatica w/viable strategies that need patient capital should run like the wind fm public markets. We've seen this work before (e.g. seagate)
big distinction between legacy companies that can't respond to new web cloud world and need to go private to take cover vs new web cloud companies that are riding these waves and should go public
