startups

Personal stuff / startups / Web/Tech — 3 Comments
8
May 08

firedrop! zaplet!

In a weird blast-from-the-past moment, TechCrunch reported yesterday that hot mail startup Xobni has licensed the IP from Zaplet (nee Firedrop, and most recently bought by MetricStream), a company we started from Reactivity nearly 10 years ago. TC has bits and pieces of the story, and gets most of the basics of the history right. Seems like both yesterday and an eternity ago when Mike Hanson and Brian Roddy and I were brainstorming about live HTML in e-mail and when Mike mocked up the first one — as we were searching for names, we started with Zimlet or Zaplet or Zammogram, among many other very bad names. Then Brian Axe took it and started to build a business case, recruited Dave Roberts, got some mad Firedrop namage & logo help from Gentry, and was away to the races. (And IIRC, the Reactivity Austin team of Lynn and Dave and others built the screenshots showing up on TC now.)

Anyway, it’s neat to see that another piece of Reactivity technology is still breathing — and hopefully will be put to good use at Xobni.

Mozilla / startups — 4 Comments
3
Mar 08

AllPeers

It’s been a busy day, so I’m a little late to get to this, but I’m sad to note that AllPeers is shutting down. I’m bummed, of course, not just because a Mozilla-related startup is calling it quits, but also because it’s become easy in such a prolific startup era to be jaded about startups and not to notice when they pass. I really applaud what Matt and Cedric and the team have done, and am glad that they took a run at P2P in the browser. I have no doubt that they’ll all land happily and do great with their next thing — but I also have no doubt that it’s a trying time for them. So it’s with great respect for them all that I say congratulations for making the contribution they have (to Mozilla and the whole ecosystem) and that I’m looking forward to what’s next.

Personal stuff / startups — 4 Comments
2
Jan 08

10 years ago today

It was 10 years ago today that Brian Roddy and I drove to Sacramento to incorporate Reactivity (Bryan Rollins, our 3rd founder, wasn’t here yet). Seems like a lifetime ago — I wondered when we did that whether we’d make it 10 years, since the vast majority of new enterprises fail much sooner. We didn’t make it all 10, but we made it more than 9, with Brian and Mike and Peter and others selling the company to Cisco a little under a year ago now.

I spent a lot of time thinking about those 10 years on my run today — it was such an important period in my life I don’t know that I’ve really been able to process it. What I do know is that starting Reactivity and working on it with Brian, Bryan, Mike and many, many others over the years is something that I’m very proud of, and I know that it’s shaped much of how I think about the world in general, and the tech biz specifically.

Anyway, nothing profound — just thought I’d note the anniversary.

Mozilla / nerdTech / startups — 2 Comments
14
Aug 07

Awesome opportunity mixing mission, impact & business

Nicholas Reville, executive director of one of my favorite non-profit tech companies, the Participatory Culture Foundation, has just posted on their blog that they’re hiring a West Coast business person.

This is a special opportunity, I think. I joined Mozilla 2 years ago when we were just 15 or so folks, and my title was Business Development lead — even though we didn’t really know what it meant. But in the 2 years since then, I’ve been fortunate to be part of something unique & great — the growth of Mozilla.  FWIW, I had only generic business/entrepreneurial background before joining to do BD — but was able to work with Chris Beard, Mitchell Baker and others here to build something of an ecosystem of partners, and to help make our economics more sustainable.

At PCF, there’s a similar type of opportunity — but even more at the ground floor — the opportunity is to figure out open video from the beginning, and to mix the business, open source, and non-profit angles all together.

If you’re interested in making sure that the future of video on the web stays open, I’d encourage you to take a look.

Mozilla / nerdTech / Personal stuff / startups — 1 Comment
19
Jul 07

Miro!

Couple of days delayed, but the very good folks at the Participatory Culture Foundation have just relaunched the awesome Democracy Player as Miro! They’re on preview releases now, and just about ready to release 1.0.

For anyone who’s interested in high quality video online, it’s something you should check out. Great stuff, with even some bonus Mozilla juice baked in.

[I'm very proud to be on the Board of Directors of PCF.]

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