I was reading a thread on Hacker News this morning and came across this gem of a comment:

One of the consequences of a public transaction chain is the great potential for witch hunts. Here’s one of the first examples, but it surely won’t be the last.

The backstory here is a couple researchers posted a paper suggesting that Satoshi (the inventor of bitcoin that nobody knows) had done a large transaction with the founder of Silk Road. That was picked up by the New York Times last weekend. Well it turns out that was not what happened. What happened in fact was this.

When things are public, like the bitcoin block chain where all the transactions clear, then people can and will look at the public data and speculate on what it means. We saw this happen as well with all the public smartphone photos that were taken and published during the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this year.

I realize that the collateral damage from this activity is the potential for reputations to be smeared and real damage to be done to entirely innocent people. But I think radical transparency is, over the long term, a force for good and not evil. And I believe we will see more of it not less.

In our weekly meeting on monday, my partner Brad suggested we start looking for accounting systems that allow businesses that operate entirely on the web and mobile to start publishing their financial data publicly in real time. His assertion was that by making your business totally and completely transparent to users, customers, employees, and suppliers, you will increase trust and that will lead to a more sustainable relationship with all those parties over time. So we are looking for that now. If you have something like that or have seen it, please leave a comment here.

But more than just accounting and payment systems, I think we will see all the systems we use in our lives become more transparent over time and the data that becomes public as a result will provide countless opportunities to be analyzed, optimized, and yes, sensationalized. No good comes without some bad. That’s the way forward progress works.

Check out Fred’s articles here at AlwaysOn and at A VC.

“Invisible Man” photo by ollyy from Shutterstock.

One of the unavoidable realities of building a startup is having to fire people.

In a normal business you can often sweep bad performers under the rug and not deal with them. When you have millions or billions of dollars of revenue you can suffer a few bad performers or bad apples. You can miss a quarter’s target and not cull the inefficiencies. I’m not saying you should, but you could.

But in startups this equals death.

Death because just 3 extra non-performing employees in a company of 15 can either accelerate cash out date or can dramatically lower your productivity.

I’ve spoken about this before and my mantra, “Hire Fast, Fire Fast.”

When I first started my career I came across a term for this that has always stuck in my head and serves as a useful reminder of this mantra.

We called it “PURE.”

Previously. Undetected. Recruiting. Error.

My premise with “hire fast, fire fast” is that some companies over-analyze potential recruits and therefore chew up valuable months with functions unfilled. Most (whether they hire quickly or slowly) are very slow to deal with problems once they have them.

I have sat through scores of board meetings in the past year and in at least 25% of them the topic of a senior employee we hired that hasn’t worked out comes up. Almost always the CEO is defending why he or she has to hold on to that employee for an extra 6 months until they can fix a,b and c before letting them go.

I have never (literally not once) heard a leader later tell me, “I’m glad we waited.” Universally after the shock of letting somebody go and the reverberation in the company is felt a sense of relief and well-being ensues. Teams are organisms and they detect bad cells even more quickly than leadership does. Failing to act undermines confidence.

Yes, PURE employees have allies so it’s never simple. But when you make a mistake you need to own it and fix it ASAP.

This came up in the reverse last week when I spoke with a friend who has an asinine recruiting policy. He told me that everybody who joins must first have a “temporary contractor period” almost like one is on probation before she joins.

I say asinine because that has the likelihood of turning off some potentially great prospective employees and there’s zero reason for the probationary period. In the US you have the right to terminate almost any employee at will (subject to your not giving them a contract to the contrary and of course you should always consult a lawyer before implementing a firing or layoff) .

Thus everybody is implicitly on probation anyways so making it public does you no good and potentially limits some people who may join. I have come across several companies who have this probationary period over my years and I always try to talk them out of it.

Anyway, to the point of this article if you make a mistake in recruiting – if somebody is PURE – deal with it quickly and surgically. The longer he persists in your organization the more the badness metastasizes and the larger the treatment later.

Check out Mark’s articles here at AlwaysOn and at Both Sides of the Table.

“Recruiting” photo by BlueSkyImage from Shutterstock.

Let’s face it, over the years I’ve been pretty hard on the public cloud dream and the vision of running production apps exclusively in the cloud. I’ve been critical of Amazon “over marketing” the public cloud and promoting the idea of the enterprise w/o data centers.

Events in the last few months have started bringing me around much closer to Amazon’s vision, albeit I still think that hybrid cloud will win over the next 5-10 years. I think the cloud battle could come down to Amazon, Google and Microsoft with VMware and perhaps a dozen service providers competing based on specialized services and geographic/regulatory footprints. Then there is the rise of OpenStack as a more agile upgrade to virtualized private clouds, not to mention CloudStack for service providers.

What has changed my mind, after years of data center-centric thinking? A company called QL2 Software has shown me the light when it comes to public cloud for the enterprise.  Disclosure: Yes, I came across QL2 because they are a CloudVelocity customer.

QL2 was running 5+ racks of server in colocation, which they had calculated was costing them about 20% more than AWS, because the apps and databases running in the environment were spikey.  QL2 wasn’t looking to AWS for cost savings, even though they were notable. They were looking to enhance agility and shift their IT team from being rack maintenance/upkeep-centric to focusing on new product and service development.

Earlier this week I spoke to QL2’s Operations Director Samir Bhakta and he mentioned how his team was now more strategic and developing new products versus simply keeping IT running. Reducing costs was simply the gravy.  I’ll let him tell the story soon in an upcoming webinar we’re planning. Stay tuned. It is a pretty impressive testimonial about the transformative power of the cloud. AWS… you’ve come a long way.  I’m still a hybrid cloud believer but what QL2 has demonstrated in a matter of weeks thanks to your cloud is mind-blowing. You can read more here at the CloudVelocity blog.

Check out Greg’s articles here and at Archimedius.

“Cloud Computing” photo by Hyena Reality from Shutterstock.

I like being a contrarian.  As a kid, if a certain TV show was popular amongst my buddies, I’d purposefully ignore that show and search for other shows that were less well known (e.g., Hogan’s Heroes was a personal favorite that never hit mainstream).  When someone declares something is conventional wisdom, I look to poke holes and challenge the underlying assumptions.

Recently, the conventional wisdom in Startup Land has been that young, technical founders are the prototype for creating valuable companies.  The formula, this theory goes, is to find a hacker in a hoodie and bring out the wheelbarrow of cash to back them.  Think Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook, Drew Houston/Dropbox, David Karp/Tumblr and – the most recent poster boy darlings of Startup Land – the SnapChat founders.

I have always thought that stereotype was skewed. Don’t get me wrong – I love young founders.  At Flybridge, we have invested in many of them (e.g., Eliot Buchanan and Dan Choi at Plastiq) and we plan to continue investing in many others.  But in my twenty years living in Startup Land, I have found that there is no single model or archetype for success.  Success comes in many flavors and combinations.  And, in my last five years on the HBS faculty, I have become more convinced of the value of the MBA entrepreneur.

Thus, I was thrilled to read Aileen Lee’s terrific analysis of unicorns (companies that have been created in the last 10 years worth more than $1 billion) and have it shatter this piece of conventional wisdom.  Aileen systematically analyzed the common characteristics behind this cohort of 39 companies and found that “inexperienced, twentysomething founders were an outlier. Companies with well-educated, thirtysomething co-founders who have history together have built the most successes.”

Aileen’s analysis didn’t provide any data on the role of MBAs in the unicorns.  So, in partnership with HBS second year Juan Leung Li, we did some of our own digging.  Here’s what we learned:

• 33% of the Unicorns had at least one founding member who had an MBA. Examples include Kayak (Steve Hafner/Kellogg), Workday (Aneel Bhusri/Stanford and Dave Duffield/Cornell), Yelp (Jeremy Stoppelman/HBS) and Zynga (Mark Pincus/HBS).
• 82% of Aileen’s Unicorns had at least one founding member or current executive team member with an MBA. Examples of unicorns where MBAs were hired to help build the company include Evernote (COO Ken Gullicksen/Stanford), Facebook (COO Sheryl Sandberg/HBS), Twitter (COO Ali Rowghani/Stanford).
• Of those that had MBAs, the leading schools represented were: HBS (21%), Stanford’s GSB (17%) and Wharton (10%).

This week, John Byrne of Poets & Quants published a complimentary analysis, ranking the top 100 MBA Start-Ups.  In this analysis, he found some terrific companies that have been MBA founded in the last 5 years, such as Okta, Rent the Runway, Warby Parker and Wildfire.  Among this MBA founder list, HBS (34%), Stanford (32%) and MIT (11%) came out on top.

Why all the momentum with MBAs and start ups? Simply put, the major schools have radically changed their curriculum. These schools and others have become super-focused on training their MBAs to be effective executives across a range of company sizes, from start-ups to large enterprises.  For example, HBS now teaches two courses to help train students to be effective start-up executives:  Launching Technology Ventures (which I teach) and Product Management 101.  MIT is considering offering their own version of these classes in the spring or next year and Stanford has a plethora of strong course offerings for future start-up executives.

So the next time someone tells you that you need a hoodie to be a great start up entrepreneur, don’t be afraid to flash your MBA diploma with pride.

To see the detailed spreadsheet that Juan Leung Li did, click here.

Check out Jeff’s articles here at AlwaysOn and at Seeing Both Sides.

“Unicorn” photo by Sari ONeal from Shutterstock.

LPs, the investors in VC funds, have a difficult job to do, largely because they have to work with poor quality data and only a small fraction of VCs deliver the returns that make them worth investing in. The problem is made worse by the fact that LP demand to invest in the handful of serially successful VCs well outstrips supply and most LPs have to invest most or all of their venture allocation in other VC funds.

The CB Insights Investor Mosaic sets this out very well. They also describe the factors that they think LPs should use to make those tough decisions:

• Past performance – unlike most other asset classes in venture capital past performance is a good predictor of future performance. CBInsights calls this ‘Performance Persistence’.
• Network centrality – “how connected a VC firm is with other VC firms in the industry, as networks have been proven to be a critical driver of VC performance”
• Brand – “brand is important in venture capital as firms with great brands and reputations see higher quality dealflow, gain entry into emerging industries and can also achieve better economics because they are a preferred source of capital for company founders.”
• Investment discipline – “VC returns have been shown repeatedly to be tied to discipline. Discipline spans fund size as well as sector, geographic and stage preferences. Disciplined stage and sector investing fosters learning opportunities and the development of stage and sector specific knowledge and skills. Discipline also helps to keeps a venture fund’s loss ratio low which is important as they are ultimately stewards of LP investment funding.”
• Selection aptitude – “a measure of dealflow quality and selection prowess for each investor. It highlights each investor’s ability to source and ultimately select high quality investments and then shepherd them to favorable outcomes. While the platitude that 1 of 10 VC investments is a homerun is often thrown around, the reality is that some venture capital firms are significantly better at hitting homeruns then the rate of 1 in 10. Conversely, several VCs are much worse.”
• Illiquid portfolio strength – “this score measures the quality of current, non-exited companies in an investor’s portfolio and also looks at the investor’s entry point into the company.”

This is a really good list and at Forward Partners we aspire to be great on all these dimensions, but for me selection aptitude stands out above all the others as a driver of success. It is the least measurable (aside from looking at past performance) and as a result LPs often focus more on the other drivers. To my mind that’s a mistake. The analogue with VC investing is being comfortable assessing entrepreneurs without a track record of success, and getting that right is one of the best ways to get big wins.

Check out Nic’s articles here at AlwaysOn and at The Equity Kicker.

“Evaluate” photo by Dusit from Shutterstock.

OnHollywood 2013 represents the second time this year that AlwaysOn’s Tony Perkins and I decided to eschew the traditional conference format of many people seated in rows for cabaret-like intimate seating. Sitting in the main room of the beautiful Bel Air Bay Club in subdued lighting with the view of the ocean and a plethora of picture windows made me feel like I was hanging out at the Hotel California (or at least, hanging out in Joe Walsh’s living room, getting ready to hoist a gigantic cocktail or three).

Instead, I was a witness to the ongoing marriage between the Valley and what is euphemistically referred to as Silicon Beach. As a quick aside, given that most of the innovations being realized today are software related, and the nearest geographic example of an inert silicon component ends in an E and is a key part of the Hollywood hardware, can’t we come up with a more original name? How about Media Beach or the Southern Mediasphere… but I digress.

One of the great things about such a setting is that you feel like you can actually meet everyone and share thoughts or ideas&emdash;or at the least exchange cards and interact another day. In fact, I am pretty sure I got to meet darn near everyone who came. This not only included a lot of old friends and the usual allotment of kool companies, but I also got the opportunity to meet some fascinating local people, including the fabulous owner of the Bel Air Bay Club itself.

There were many highlights to share, between the panels and those companies who presented. The variety of media content, engines in which to disperse it, platforms in which to share it, and methods with which to make sense of where it went, is staggering&emdash;both in terms of offerings and also in terms of the great people who are here from all over the world to plant their flag.

That being said, after a week of reflection, the idea that has stayed with me the longest was presented in the last panel. Among the many subjects covered, the idea of there being another bubble coming was discussed&emdash;at worst, one like the Armageddon Internet Bubble of 2005, or at best, one like the small random series of little bubble pops and bursts that have happened ever since. Like most of the folks at the event, I do not buy into that scenario.

Instead, we have built strong, geographically interconnected relationships between companies, such as those Silicon Valley, that are purveying innovative ways to collect and act upon data, and the ad companies centered in New York City and other parts of the country. The panel was composed of CEOs of companies from Northern California and Southern California as well as other parts of the country who are generating revenues and increasing market shares by collaborating and joining forces on all forms of content in all formats to find as many social networking ways in which to share them.

Relationships notwithstanding, I do see a bubble, but not a bubble as we know it&emdash;an intellectual bubble. This bubble is characterized by the dumbing down of content, as producers attempt to address the attention deficit disorder epidemic besetting humanity, while attempting to assuage our human need to be the center of attention. I believe that the end of this cliff is exemplified by Twitter, which allows no more that 140 characters in making a statement and has enjoyed one of most monumental IPOs in history.

It’s frankly hard to believe that you can go with a significantly lower range than 140 characters to get your idea across, and it makes no sense to assume that those points should have a pre-ordained shelf life. But the basis for the Intellectual Bubble is now here. Going over the cliff and hitting the floor is exemplified by Snapchat, a company that provides a platform for sharing content sharing for a maximum of 12 seconds before disappearing. Snapchat recently turned down $3 billion from Facebook, which is trying to remain relevant, and $4 billion by a Chinese consortium that is surely run by the ruling body who wants to make sure that even 12 seconds of thought exchange are controlled by the state.

I have the same perception and respect for the inventors of Snapchat that I do for Justin Bieber&emdash;damned if I can understand the attraction, but totally respect the guts it took to put it out there and congratulations on succeeding. But, when I see the huge number of eyeballs that Snapchat can justifiably point to as engaged, I also understand the implication if the downward spiral in intellectual discourse continues to run unchecked&emdash;a blip that disappears in one second, but is seen by 3 billion eyeballs? Is it truly possible to break down anything, no matter how mundane, into such short bursts without resulting in collateral intellectual damage and ultimately even more indifference to the world and all that is going on that demands actual time, care, and thought to make relevant?

The challenge I lay at the feet of the attendees of OnHollywood 2013 is to provide an intellectual offset. If nature abhors a vacuum, then create content that stimulates a discussion or awareness of an issue, event, or art form and share that content with an underappreciated and underserved market: People who would not only appreciate such content but would in all likelihood be a huge set of eyeballs who control far more money than is currently perceived and who may even be compelled to subscribe to such a quality product. Become a Comcast, with more than a couple of good programs vs. 150 bad ones.

Happily, I have seen such companies at this event and look forward to working with them all. If we cannot stop the downward intellectual slide on one hand, we can surely provide an offset that provides an oasis in a growing intellectual Sahara.

“Thinker” photo by ollyy from Shutterstock.

The OnMedia 100 represents the top emerging companies that are creating new business opportunities in the world of media, advertising, marketing, branding, and public relations. The winning companies are staring down the entrenched, legacy institutions that have long dominated Madison Avenue and creating new ways of reaching their sophisticated and increasingly mobile audience.

Today’s digital media, advertising, and marketing startups are shifting to take advantage of the trend toward both socialization and personalization. Consumers are demanding a new type of advertising—one that brings the products and services they want to them. Legacy remnant advertising solutions and other broadly focused delivery mechanisms are giving way to extremely sophisticated solutions based on aggregating consumers’ desires and turning them into meaningful, actionable messages.

Each year, the AlwaysOn editorial team, along with investment and industry experts across the globe scour the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 100 private digital media companies that are creating high-growth businesses that offer huge upside potential for investors. The OnMedia 100 companies are leaders amongst their peers and developing radical new approaches and technologies that are likely to push outside the bounds of existing markets. Companies are selected based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

The Eighth Annual OnMedia 100 Competition Has Begun!
To help identify this year’s hottest digital media startups, we’d like your help. We’re looking for the top emerging private companies that are creating new business opportunities in world of media, advertising, marketing, branding, and public relations. To nominate a company to the OnMedia 100, please fill in the qualification form. After successful submission, companies will be notified if they meet our criteria for the next step in the process, the CEO interview.

We look forward to sifting through the nominees to find the most disruptive entrepreneurs who are shaking up online media world and creating opportunity and revenue. Let the competition begin!

The companies that have been nominated to the 2014 AlwaysOn OnMedia 100 so far are listed below by category.

B2B: Advertising Analytics

Baynote
www.baynote.com
San Jose, CA

Collective[i]
www.collective.com
New York, NY

Compass Labs
www.compasslabs.com
San Jose

Conductor
www.conductor.com
New York, NY

Covario
www.covario.com
San Diego, CA

The Echo System
www.theechosystem.com
New York, NY

Flurry
www.flurry.com
San Francisco, CA

InfiniGraph
www.infinigraph.com
Menlo Park, CA

Marin Software
www.marinsoftware.com
San Francisco, CA

Monetate
monetate.com
Philadelphia, PA

Quantcast
www.quantcast.com
San Francisco, CA

STELLAService
stellaservice.com
New York, NY

Visible Measures
www.visiblemeasures.com
Boston, MA

Webtrends
www.webtrends.com
Portland, OR

WideOrbit
www.wideorbit.com
San Francisco, CA

B2B: Advertising Networks

33Across
33across.com
New York, NY

Adap.tv
www.adap.tv
San Mateo, CA

Adconion Media Group
adconion.com
Santa Monica, CA

Adknowledge
www.adknowledge.com
Kansas City, MO

AppNexus
www.appnexus.com
New York, NY

BlackArrow
www.blackarrow.tv
San Jose, CA

BlueKai
www.bluekai.com
Cupertino, CA

BrightRoll
www.brightroll.com
San Francisco, CA

Collective
www.collective.com
New York, NY

CPX Interactive
www.cpxinteractive.com
New York, NY

Criteo
www.criteo.com
Paris, France

DataXu
www.dataxu.com
Boston, MA

DOmedia
www.domedia.com
Columbus, OH

Dynamic Signal
www.dynamicsignal.com
San Bruno, CA

eXelate
exelate.com
New York, NY

Extreme Reach
www.extremereach.com
Needham Heights, MA

HubSpot
www.hubspot.com
Cambridge, MA

inPowered
www.inpwrd.com
San Francisco, CA

Integral Ad Science
integralads.com
New York, NY

JiWire
www.jiwire.com
San Francisco, CA

Media6Degrees
www.media6degrees.com
New York, NY

Medialets
www.medialets.com
New York, NY

MediaMath
www.mediamath.com
New York, NY

Moat
www.moat.com
New York, NY

OpenX
www.openx.org
Pasadena, CA

Rocket Fuel
www.rocketfuelinc.com
Redwood City, CA

Smaato
www.smaato.com
Redwood Shores, CA

SponsorPay
www.sponsorpay.com
New York, NY

Spruce Media
www.sprucemedia.com
San Francisco, CA

Tapad
www.tapad.com
New York, NY

Tremor Video
www.tremorvideo.com
New York, NY

Turn
www.turn.com
Redwood City, CA

Undertone
www.undertone.com
New York, NY

YuMe
www.yume.com
Redwood City, CA

B2B: Technology Enablers

AddThis
www.addthis.com
McLean, VA

Aereo
aereo.com
Long Island City, NY

Datalogix
www.datalogix.com
Westminster, CO

Evidon
www.evidon.com
New York, NY

FanBridge
www.fanbridge.com
New York, NY

FreeWheel
www.freewheel.tv
San Mateo, CA

Get Satisfaction
getsatisfaction.com
San Francisco, CA

Kaltura
corp.kaltura.com
New York, NY

Kargo
www.kargo.com
New York, NY

Marketo
www.marketo.com
San Mateo, CA

Merchantry
merchantry.com
New York, NY

Sailthru
sailthru.com
New York, NY

ShareThis
sharethis.com
Mountain View, CA

Silverpop
www.silverpop.com
Atlanta, GA

Simulmedia
www.simulmedia.com
New York, NY

Spiceworks
www.spiceworks.com
Austin, TX

Square
squareup.com
San Francisco, CA

Touchstorm
touchstorm.com
New York, NY

Consumer Services: Community Platforms

AdKeeper
www.adkeeper.com
New York, NY

DailyWorth
dailyworth.com
New York, NY

Foursquare
foursquare.com
New York, NY

MyCityWay
www.mycityway.com
New York, NY

MyLife.com
www.mylife.com
Los Angeles, CA

Pinterest
pinterest.com
Palo Alto, CA

Quirky
www.quirky.com
Headquarters: New York, NY

Quora
www.quora.com
Palo Alto, CA

Shazam
www.shazam.com
London, U.K.

Consumer Services: Online Content Publishers

BlogHer
blogher.com
Belmont, CA

BuzzFeed
www.buzzfeed.com
New York, NY

Complex Media
www.complexmediainc.com
New York, NY

Everyday Health
www.everydayhealth.com
New York, NY

Knewton
www.knewton.com
New York, NY

Martini Media
www.martinimediainc.com
San Francisco, CA

NewsCred
www.newscred.com
New York, NY

Consumer Services: Social Commerce

500friends
www.500friends.com
San Francisco, CA

Beyond the Rack
www.beyondtherack.com
Montreal, Que., Canada

Birchbox
www.birchbox.com
New York, NY

Cartera Commerce
www.cartera.com
Lexington, MA

chloe + isabel
www.chloeandisabel.com
New York, NY

Etsy
www.etsy.com
Brooklyn, NY

Fab.com
fab.com
New York, NY

Kiip
kiip.me
San Francisco, CA

Moda Operandi
modaoperandi.com
New York, NY

One Kings Lane
www.onekingslane.com
San Francisco, CA

Poshmark
poshmark.com
San Francisco, CA

Rent The Runway
www.renttherunway.com
New York, NY

RichRelevence
richrelevance.com
San Francisco, CA

Shopify
www.shopify.com
Ottowa, Ont., Canada

Uber
www.uber.com
San Francisco, CA

The OnDemand 100 represents the top emerging companies that are creating new business opportunities in the world of on-demand, cloud computing, and SaaS. The winning companies are creating a complex world of interconnected business intelligence, merging valuable legacy data and systems with vital new streams of information. New application developers, especially those serving the expanding mobile market, now rely on cloud infrastructure to create, deploy, and manage their apps.

Only a few short years ago, the cloud was being warily considered as just another clever marketing buzzword being used to describe something that sounded too good to be true. It’s clear that the buzzword has become reality—and lived up to its promise. Cloud infrastructure is expanding into and enhancing every sector of the technology world. In turn, SaaS and on-demand apps are becoming the norm, letting consumers and business users use technology in even more creative, efficient ways.

Each year, the AlwaysOn editorial team, along with investment and industry experts across the globe scour the entrepreneurial community to identify the top 100 private on-demand, cloud, and SaaS companies that are creating high-growth businesses that offer huge upside potential for investors. The OnDemand 100 companies are leaders amongst their peers and developing radical new approaches and technologies that are likely to push outside the bounds of existing markets. Companies are selected based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

The Fifth Annual Demand 100 Competition Has Begun!
To help identify this year’s hottest on-demand, cloud, and SaaS startups, we’d like your help. We’re looking for the top emerging private companies that are creating new business opportunities in world of cloud infrastructure, software-as-a-service, and on-demand computing. To nominate a company to the OnDemand 100, please fill in the qualification form. After successful submission, companies will be notified if they meet our criteria for the next step in the process, the CEO interview.

We look forward to sifting through the nominees to find the most disruptive entrepreneurs who are shaking up the on-demand world and creating opportunity and revenue. Let the competition begin!

The companies that have been nominated to the 2014 AlwaysOn OnDemand 100 so far are listed below by category.

Cloud—Application Platforms

AirWatch
www.air-watch.com
Atlanta, GA

Appcelerator
www.appcelerator.com
Mountain View, CA

Big Switch Networks
www.bigswitch.com
Mountain View, CA

Engine Yard
www.engineyard.com
San Francisco, CA

Hortonworks
hortonworks.com
Sunnyvale, CA

July Systems
www.julysystems.com
New York, NY

Kaltura
corp.kaltura.com
New York, NY

MuleSoft
www.mulesoft.com
San Francisco, CA

SoonR
www.soonr.com
Campbell, CA

ThingWorx
www.thingworx.com
Downingtown, PA

Zend Technologies
www.zend.com
Cupertino, CA

Cloud—Infrastructure

Aerohive Networks
www.aerohive.com
Sunnyvale, CA

AlienVault
www.alienvault.com
Campbell, CA

Box
www.box.net
Palo Alto, CA

Coraid
www.coraid.com
Redwood City, CA

Cyan
www.cyaninc.com
Petaluma, CA

Dropbox
www.dropbox.com
San Francisco, CA

GoGrid
www.gogrid.com
San Francisco, CA

Joyent
joyent.com
San Francisco, CA

LiveOps
www.liveops.com
Santa Clara, CA

Midokura
www.midokura.com
San Francisco, CA

Nimble Storage
www.nimblestorage.com
San Jose, CA

Panzura
panzura.com
San Jose, CA

Pertino
pertino.com
Los Gatos, CA

PLUMgrid
www.plumgrid.com
Sunnyvale, CA

Pure Storage
www.purestorage.com
Mountain View, CA

RingCentral
www.ringcentral.com
San Mateo, CA

Skytap
www.skytap.com
Seattle, WA

SnapLogic
www.retailsolutions.com
San Mateo, CA

Spiceworks
www.spiceworks.com
Austin, TX

Violin Memory
www.violin-memory.com
Mountain View, CA

Virtela
www.virtela.net
Greenwood Village, CO

WhiteHat Security
www.whitehatsec.com
Santa Clara, CA

Zetta.net
www.zetta.net
Sunnyvale, CA

Cloud—Management and Tools

AppDynamics
www.appdynamics.com
San Francisco, CA

Cloudera
www.cloudera.com
Burlingame, CA

CloudFlare
www.cloudflare.com
San Francisco, CA

Embrane
www.embrane.com
Santa Clara, CA

ExtraHop
www.extrahop.com
Seattle, WA

FireEye
www.fireeye.com
Milpitas, CA

Good Technology
www.good.com
Sunnyvale, CA

MapR
www.mapr.com
San Jose, CA

MobileIron
www.mobileiron.com
Mountain View, CA

Mocana
www.mocana.com
San Francisco, CA

New Relic
www.newrelic.com
San Francisco, CA

Okta
www.okta.com
San Francisco, CA

OneLogin
www.onelogin.com
San Francisco, CA

Ping Identity
www.pingidentity.com
Denver, CO

SOASTA
www.soasta.com
Mountain View, CA

Symplified
www.symplified.com
Boulder, CO

vArmour Networks
www.varmour.com
Santa Clara, CA

On-Demand Software—Business Mangement Applications

Adaptive Planning
www.adaptiveplanning.com
Mountain View, CA

Anaplan
www.anaplan.com
San Francisco, CA

Appirio
www.appirio.com
San Mateo, CA

Apptio
www.apptio.com
Bellvue, WA

Aria Systems
www.ariasystems.com
San Mateo, CA

Asana
asana.com
San Francisco, CA

Atlassian
www.atlassian.com
Sydney, Australia

Badgeville
badgeville.com
Menlo Park, CA

Coupa Software
www.coupa.com
Headquarters: San Mateo, CA

Domo
www.domo.com
American Fork, UT

FinancialForce.com
www.financialforce.com
San Francisco, CA

Gigya
www.gigya.com
Mountain View, CA

InsideSales.com
www.insidesales.com
Provo, UT

Intacct
www.intacct.com
San Jose, CA

Kenandy
www.kenandy.com
Redwood City, CA

Lattice Engines
www.lattice-engines.com
San Mateo, CA

Moxie Software
www.moxiesoft.com
Mountain View, CA

PivotLink
www.pivotlink.com
San Francisco, CA

Retail Solutions
www.retailsolutions.com
Mountain View, CA

ServiceMax
www.servicemax.com
Pleasanton, CA

Xactly
www.xactlycorp.com
San Jose, CA

YouSendIt
www.yousendit.com
Campbell, CA

Zuora
www.zuora.com
Redwood City, CA

On-Demand Software—Customer Relationship Management

Five9
www.five9.com
San Ramon, CA

HubSpot
www.hubspot.com
Cambridge, MA

Lithium Technologies
www.lithium.com
Emeryville, CA

Marketo
www.marketo.com
San Mateo, CA

Nimble
www.nimble.com
Santa Monica, CA

SugarCRM
www.sugarcrm.com
Cupertino, CA

Veeva Systems
www.veevasystems.com
Pleasanton, CA

On-Demand Software—Tools

Acquia
www.acquia.com
Woburn, MA

BrightEdge
www.brightedge.com
San Mateo, CA

Conviva
www.conviva.com
San Mateo, CA

Mediaocean
www.mediaocean.com
New York, NY

oDesk
www.odesk.com
Menlo Park, CA

Tableau Software
www.tableausoftware.com
Seattle, WA

Zendesk
www.zendesk.com
San Francisco, CA

On-Demand Software—Vertical Applications

Achievers
www.achievers.com
San Francisco, CA

Birst
www.birst.com
San Francisco, CA

Cvent
www.cvent.com
McLean, VA

DocuSign
www.docusign.com
Seattle, WA

Evernote
www.evernote.com
Mountain View, CA

Hearsay Social
hearsaysocial.com
San Francisco, CA

hybris
www.hybris.com
Munich, Germany

Opower
opower.com
San Francisco, CA

Palantir Technologies
www.palantirtech.com
Palo Alto, CA

RetailNext
www.retailnext.net
San Jose, CA

SilkRoad
www.silkroad.com
Chicago, IL

SurveyMonkey
www.surveymonkey.com
Palo Alto, CA