Tracelytics is presenting at this week’s Under the Radar.  Before you see them pitch their performance solution technology, get to know them on a more personal note.  We asked co-founder and CTO, Spiros Eliopoulos, give us a few insights on his company culture.

1.    If your company was a movie, which one would it be and why?

There Will Be Blood, for obvious reasons.

2.    If you could give a TED Talk, what would it be about?
I would possess Danny Hill’s body and give an updated talk of the one he did in 1994: http://www.ted.com/talks/danny_hillis_back_to_the_future_of_1994.html

3.    What Hollywood star would play your CEO?
Bruce Campbell because he looks good both in a smoking jacket and with a chainsaw for an arm.

4.    What one piece of advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?
B2B is where it’s at.

5.    Who’s the most impressive founder you’ve ever met and why?
I can’t choose between Ron Wayne and Pete Best. They both kindof got screwed by Ringo.

6.    What’s the first website you check out every day?
http://economist.com

7.    What’s your company’s theme song?
Wu-Tang Clan – C.R.E.A.M. (Cache Rules Everything Around Me) This is a nerdcore cover of the Wu-Tang Clan’s original, written by yours truly. Music video is forthcoming.

8.    Whose Twitter feed inevitably makes you laugh?
What’s Twitter? A new-fangled flying machine? Some sort of internet portal?

9.  What’s been your favorite moment since starting your company?
The moment I realized that the first 400 lines of code I wrote are virtually unchanged after almost two years, and are run by every single one of our customers.

As a special thank you to our blog readers, enter promo code: “utrblog” when registering to receive $100 off your ticket to attend UTR and see Tracelytics and others present on stage!

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As we’ve always said, it’s not the size of the data, but what you do with it.  Chart.io is once such company that helps businesses analyze their data.  They are presenting at this week’s Under the Radar.  Dave Fowler, Chart.io’s CEO told us a few things about their culture.  Read on to see what a big data company is like.

1.    If your company was a movie, which one would it be and why?
Probably Tron.  We’re always trying to figure out how to immerse our users in their data.  One day we might literally succeed…

2.    If you could give a TED Talk, what would it be about?
The current and future effects of computers and humans making decisions together.  The way we make decisions and the amount and quality of the information we have to make those decisions is about to change.  The movie Moneyball was a great example of how computers changed the way decisions were made and completely changed an industry.

3.    What Hollywood star would play your CEO?
I’d probably get stuck with Shia LeBeouf.

4.    What one piece of advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?
Spend a lot of time researching and vetting out your ideas before you choose one, and constantly be examining.  Starting in a good position and market is perhaps the best thing you will ever do for the success of your company.

5.    Which other internet startup do you respect the most?
Definitely Pinterest.  Chartio and Pinterest grew up together in the same office/house.  Its been really incredible to see how they handle things and accomplished everything they have so far.

6.    Who’s the most impressive founder you’ve ever met and why?
Ben Silberman of Pinterest for reasons stated above.

7.    What’s the first website you check out every day?
I check our Chartio dashboard! Specifically our user acquisition dashboard to see how many new projects we signed up while I was asleep and how engaged they are.

8.    What’s your company’s theme song?
We couldn’t decide on anything with a title that was publicly appropriate, but it would definitely be a rap song.

9.    Whose Twitter feed inevitably makes you laugh?
We actually maintain this one: @WalrusProTips https://twitter.com/#!/WalrusProTips I sit next to him.  He cracks me up.

10.  What’s been your favorite moment since starting your company?
One that stands out was when we got our first paying customer.  That was a pretty exciting and validating moment.

As a special thank you to our blog readers, enter promo code: “utrblog” when registering to receive $100 off your ticket to attend UTR and see Chart.io and others present on stage!

Follow us on Twitter @dealmakermedia

Can mobile security companies really overcome all odds to save the day for the Enterprise?  We think so!  We are pleased to have the team at Framehawk present their revolutionary technology at Under the Radar next week.  However, before we hear them pitch, we thought we’d ask a few questions about their ‘life saving’ company culture.

1. If your company was a movie, which one would it be and why?
Apollo 13 – whereby some highly skilled and dedicated NASA engineers overcome seemingly impossible odds and save the day. Of course, in our case we bring the enterprise back from the brink of failing at using mobile devices with their most important applications. Which is still sweet.

2. If you could give a TED Talk, what would it be about?
“If you want to use your iPad at work, you need to know how to talk to spacecraft” or “Using your iPad for work *is* rocket science.”

3. What Hollywood star would play your CEO?
Sir Patrick Stewart of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame in the role of Framehawk CEO Peter Badger. Because what we’ve built for the Enterprise is enabling you to go where no one has gone before. We could even picture writing Patrick a whole new intro to read overthe opening credits. Something like: Mobile: the next frontier. This is the challenge of the modern…Enterprise. The Framehawk mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new apps and new implementations, to boldly do what no app has done before. Cue the memorable theme music and starship fly-bys.

4. What one piece of advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?
Ask for lots of advice. There are a lot of people who have been entrepreneurs before with incredibly valuable insights. Figure out a way to hear that advice, decide what pieces of it are relevant, and follow it. It’s always hard to know which things are relevant now and which things must wait for another day, but having the best people to help poke at your ideas and approaches gets you pointed in the right direction at least.

5. Who’s the most impressive founder you’ve ever met and why?
The lead partner on our board from Alsop Louie Partners is Bill Coleman. He’s the ‘B’ from BEA. He was the founding CEO at BEA and took that company from zero to a billion dollars in revenues, while creating a market that no one else saw until much later. And all of it was focused around the plumbing – the IT infrastructure that most people never see, but yet is the critical, underlying component for every bit of commerce over the Internet today.

6. What’s the first website you check out every day?
ongo.com – An editor-picked news site with a great user experience on the new iPad. After all, everything’s about great content *and* great user experience these days.

7. What’s your company’s theme song?
I guess it’s not so much a theme song as something that got stuck in our heads. It’s a Britney Spears song: Toxic. We were using it to test some of the capabilities of our underlying technology and needed some data that included audio and video. Someone picked Britney and she and her song stuck around. We’re hoping to hit the big time soon enough to be able to have her play at our IPO party, but not so soon that she’s too expensive. Who said enterprise technology isn’t sexy?

8. Whose Twitter feed inevitably makes you laugh?
Definitely @GSElevator. Because as you know, things heard in the Goldman Sachs elevators do not stay in the Goldman Sachs elevators. Maybe they’re real, maybe they’re not, but it’s on the money.. so to speak.

9. What’s been your favorite moment since starting your company?
The moment early on when we brought the company back to life as we received our Series A funding. After 2 years of bootstrapping through 2 of the worst downturn years ever, we finally ran out of cash on a Tuesday and funded payroll out of our personal bank accounts until we received our Series A funding in the new bank account the following Friday. We survived on belief, vision, dreams, and dedication. Every great start-up has one of these events. If you don’t, you aren’t trying hard enough.

As a special thank you to our blog readers, enter promo code: “utrblog” when registering to receive $100 off your ticket to attend UTR and see Framehawk and others present on stage!

Follow us on Twitter @dealmakermedia

Everyone is talking about mobile security and ionGrid’s Nexus helps enterprises get there.  We are pleased to have the CEO and founder, Nick Triantos, present the technology at Under the Radar next week.  However, before we geek out how ionGrid secures documents, we thought we’d ask him a few questions about the company culture.

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Because every day is a fun adventure when you’re doing something you love.

2.    What Hollywood star would play your CEO?
Tough question. At first we thought William Shatner (the insane young one, not the even more insane old one), but then we realized that Sacha Baron Cohen had the breadth of skills to be an entrepreneur. From Borat to King Julien. He’s the man.

3.    What one piece of advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?
It’s a lot harder than you think. But when your first huge customer tells you they love your product, it’s one heck of a great feeling!

4.    Which other internet startup do you respect the most?
Atlassian would have to be our choice. They make enterprise wiki and collab tool Confluence, and issue tracking system Jira. The founders are really incredible entrepreneurs. No salespeople. No marketing. Consistently amazing products. They’ve donated tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of days of time to charities. But most important, they’ve built one of the greatest corporate cultures I’ve ever heard about. Scott and Mike are incredible.

5.    What’s the first website you check out every day?
After our daily stats dashboard, I go straight to GigaOm. Their staff really understand mobility, they write well, and I learn things that make our company stronger all the time.
6.   Whose Twitter feed inevitably makes you laugh?
@sarahpalinusa. She’s even funnier than Tina Fey, though I would have been very scared if she had access to the launch codes.

7.  What’s been your favorite moment since starting your company?
November 15, 2010. Presenting Nexus for the first time ever to a customer. In the Situation Room. In the West Wing. Of the White House. Great group of people, and a very technically bright group. A close second was a few weeks ago, when the CIO of one of the largest financial institutions in the world agreed to start paying for Nexus.

As a special thank you to our blog readers, enter promo code: “utrblog” when registering to receive $100 off your ticket to attend UTR and see Ty and others present on stage!

Follow us on Twitter @dealmakermedia

DataSift is one of our big data companies presenting at our Under the Radar Conference on April 26th, 2012.  Before you come and see them pitch their technology, get to know them on a personal note.  Rob Bailey, DataSift CEO, answers the following questions about his company’s culture.

1. If your company was a movie, which one would it be and why?

Rocky I Read more

We’ve been running a few features on partnering with the enterprise from creative agency CP&B to Visa to Levi’s.  We all know it is challenging and every executive has different want lists.  In case you are interested in doing a deal with Nike, learn a few tips from Art King, Nike’s Global Infrastructure Architecture Lead.

Art will be judging emerging technologies at our Under the Radar Conference on April 25-26.

1.    What do you wish startups did in their first meeting/call with you?

Be clear on what they are doing and why so we can jointly verify role/interest. Know and explain who their competitors are so I can see the landscape from their perspective and, if I have knowledge/exposure to the competition, to integrate the pitch against that knowledge.

2.    What’s the number one thing you look for when considering a partnership?

It’s dependent on the stage the potential vendor is in their lifecycle, how their product(s) fits into the ecosystem, and risk.

3.    What main new technologies are you looking to invest in/develop?

I live in the mobility infrastructure space so we tend to look at finished products and services not development. The general themes inside the Enterprise are investing in things that “make life better for the people” and “bring it to my phone.” We are facing a change hurricane where many architectural approaches have been dead-ended by a lot of factors. You have to be comfortable with making faster decisions with less information and adjust the approach as you go with the vendor ecosystem.

4.    What’s the turn around time for a partnership from pitch to completion?

It varies. Some products are expansive and can take years to be mature enough for a large Enterprise. Other products are point solutions that are somewhat ready to go with minor adjustments.

5.    How many partnerships do you do in a year?

1-2 directly. They are limited to folks with a shared user experience vision that are working towards satisfying unmet needs that we have identified or they educated us on.

Now that you know what Art is looking for come meet him and other enterprise executives at our Under the Radar conference on April 25-26th.

Register here.

Hear tips on partnering with a creative agency from Crispin Porter + Bogusky Creative Technical Director, Corey Szopinski.

Corey Szopinski is on the hunt for innovative solutions that his firm can use to drive their creative execution with large clients like American Express, VW, Anheuser Busch, Estee Lauder, Nikon, and more.  Corey is currently leading projects based on Node.js and NoSQL as well as the development of tools and processes for managing projects with highly unpredictable traffic patterns.  When it comes to partnering, he looks for passion, disruption, and someone who has ‘done their homework.’  Read our interview with him for tips on working with his creative agency.

What should companies do in their first meeting with you?

The number one thing is to do the research. Before someone reaches out, it pays to do some homework: Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the best way to get to know someone. When you set up your first meeting, keep in mind that you’re talking to a person, not the entire company. Each person in the company has a unique set of challenges they’re dealing with, which you could potentially help. But it’s a mistake to make a sales pitch too broad. Tailor it to the person you’ve reached out, based on their interests and responsibilities within the company.

What do you look for when considering a partnership?

We look for partners that are passionate about what they do, and professional enough to pull it off. For us, we tend to start a new vendor relationship with a small engagement, and see how it goes. Are they cool to work with? Do they love the work as much as we do? If that goes well, then we roll into larger, more complicated projects.

What new technologies are you looking to invest in/develop?

Since our output is creative concepts and executions, we are uniquely positioned to tap into a limitless array of new technology. Recent projects have used facial detection, sound and image pattern matching, robotics, RFID and cloud computing. This year we’re focused on key processes within our interactive department: deployments across many virtual machines, automated regression testing, monitoring and cloud-scale load testing, just to name a few.

How many partnerships do you do in a year?

It’s a constant balancing act of working with 3rd party companies, or developing skill sets in house. Overall, we work with hundreds of vendors, and the high value, long term skills come in house over time. But outside companies generally have the advantage of specializing in an expertise that we need, and make it available when we need it.

If you are interested in meeting Corey and other corporate executives seeking new technology solutions than come to our Under the Radar conference on April 26th.

Tom Peck, Levi’s CIO, talks about what he looks for and how to be prepared for the first conversation toward toward working together.

Levi’s, like many other large corporations, is looking to complement their existing technologies with cost and time saving innovations.  However, they are inundated with new technologies to consider.  If you are a startup vying for time with a large company you often only have once chance to get your foot in the door.  Hear from Tom Peck, Levi’s CIO, on what he’s interested in so that you can start off strong.

1.    What do you wish tech companies did in their first meeting/call with you?

Do your homework.  Understand our company, our markets and our needs.  Bring a value proposition with you.  Too many tech companies come unprepared, view it as a sales call or simply hope I will inform them of my needs.  The first meeting should be focused on starting a longer term relationship focused on solving business challenges … not on closing a sales call.

2.    What’s the number one thing you look for when considering a technology partnership?

There are many things I consider ranging from product to corporate talent and R&D to innovation mindset.  But the number one thing I look for is access to thought leaders who can collaboratively work with us and brainstorm how to collectively solve our business challenges.  We want contact beyond simply sales, marketing and services.  We want collaboration with execs, product engineers and general managers to better understand where we can go together.

3.    What main new technologies are you looking to invest in/develop?

We must carefully balance building out our core ERP systems with other newer, more innovative technologies.  Anything “new” must work within the confines of our existing technology stack and ecosystem.  We are always exploring new developments in mobility, analytics, social shopping and ways to speed-up infrastructure provisioning while reducing our storage and physical footprint.

4.    What’s the turn around time for a partnership from pitch to completion?

I define a “partnership” as a relationship between two entities – often customer and supplier – where there is opportunity for joint “wins.”  Partnerships must have collaborative road mapping, co-development or co-testing opportunities, exec-to-exec relationships, regularly recurring discussions, joint access to thought leaders and joint accountability for success.  Those companies that provide compelling solutions, have strong talent, understand the business and our technology ecosystem and are willing to co-share risk and accountability are more successful.  Rather than put a time on this, I would prefer to put it within the context of milestones.  Milestones can include, but aren’t limited to, successful proof-of-concepts, jointly developing annual budget and technology roadmaps and much more.  This can takes months or even years.  Regardless, the key is trust and having a strong relationship.

5.     How many partnerships do you do in a year?

We have partnerships already in place for several of our key, large incumbent solution providers.  Few new partnerships are added annually but we are always talking.

Come and meet Tom and other CIOs speak about their technology needs at Under the Radar on April 26th in Mountain View, CA.

Chris Weitz, Deloitte Director of Technology Strategy and Architecture, is no stranger to technology innovation.  He has over 25 years experience advising global software vendors, hardware companies, service providers, enterprises, and government agencies on disruptive computing solutions.

He is currently focused on all things cloud, claiming it as a major game changer.  In a way, it is disruptive to computing in a way much like the AK-47 changed the military balance across the world . Read on to find out how.

Is Cloud Computing Changing the Balance of Power?

Sophisticated computing isn’t just for large enterprises anymore. “All of a sudden computing is for rent,” said Weitz. “Before you had
to buy and run it by yourself.  Now you can just pay for what you use.”    Cloud computing is part of a “mega-trend” in which business, political, and social power is moving from large institutions to smaller, more agile organizations.

This means that garage start-ups can try out their technologies on a shorter innovation cycle without heavy infrastructure investments.
“The cloud is like the AK-47 – a cheap, effective weapon that is widely available to any small group, which allows them to compete against the world’s most sophisticated organizations on an equal or better footing.  Computing is now available at low costs  at a mass scale,” he said. “With its ability to improve agility and reduce the need for capital expenditures, it’s becoming a competitive differentiator
against the ‘old guard’ tech companies.”

What are the challenges the ‘Old Guard’ Face in Cloud Adoption?

New companies frequently start with a cloud computing model and never look back.  For established tech companies, services providers, and enterprises, however, switching to cloud computing is a big change, and challenge.   “ It becomes a business risk calculation for older companies,” said Weitz. “They have to think through what level of risk they are willing to take to change their business model.”

Transitioning established services to achieving new efficiencies and flexibility with cloud is complex in itself.   Key risk areas also include new issues with data privacy, security, and resiliency, with different risk exposures and tolerances in each industry.  There is also trust issues when it comes to the public versus private cloud.  “You must trust that the vendor‘s security is better than your own.”

Where Does the Cloud Offer the Biggest Potential for Disruption?
“The computing pie is being chopped up by cloud vendors,” Weitz said. He mentioned that servers, storage and networking are all at an
inflexion point, especially as more and more data transfer happens over mobile devices.  “We are gravitating away from corporate data
centers to smart phones.”

Is OpenStack All That?
“OpenStack has potential but it’s still early, like Linux was five to ten  years ago.”  Weitz explained that it might be some time before it
achieves “enterprise class” and has the stability that many large enterprises require.  “If you are a large financial firm you cannot
take the risk of a server failing for a day,” he said.

However Weitz does think that OpenStack can create major opportunities especially in how it affects hardware.  “Companies won’t have to be locked into a specific hardware player and thus can pick from multiple (sometimes cheaper) vendors,” he said. “The market has been over served. Not everyone needs the fancy gold plated options, but rather one that is good enough.”  Thus CIOs are being incented to move away from high-cost best of breed component products, and toward cloud services whose “parts” are unknown and undifferentiated.

If you want to meet Chris Weitz and learn more about what he’s working on he’ll be at our Under the Radar Conference along with other IT
executives on April 26 in Mountain View, Ca.
About Chris Weitz: Chris Weitz is Director of Technology Strategy and Architecture at Deloitte Consulting LLP, and also serves as the global leader in Deloitte’s Cloud Computing practice. He works with clients to develop new computing solutions using leading processes and technology.

The word ”scale” to startups typically means rapid growth after launching their product.  “Scale” progress is measured by subscribers per month or transactions per second. However, Yobie Benjamin, Global Chief Technology Officer of Citigroup ICG/GTS says “scale” has a much wider definition when applied to larger enterprises like financial service companies.

What can we learn from industry leaders in massive scaling? What technologies do you need to provide in order to partner with the global leaders like Citigroup?  Read our interview with Yobie to blow your mind on a whole new type of scaling.

Q: What is scale in your world?

A: In most large financial institutions, number of users, concurrency, and response time are just the beginning — table stakes.  Now add on:

1. Response to compliance matters in near real-time

2. Pronounced security for the entity, its regulators and customers

3. Reality that the world is not America and that each and every country no matter how small can affect global operations.

Think of a single multi-national client that operates in over a hundred countries that includes unstable governments. Now pretend that the financial company takes in and makes payments in massive retail volume. Now multiply that multi-national client by thousands and then by an extension of their customers in the hundreds of millions of individuals.

Q: What key things do companies need to address to scale globally?

A: Regulatory issues are at the top of the list but can be broken down into other matters that are no less important.   For example, in the EU privacy is a serious matter and is very different from the American point-of-view.

Another example are the discreet laws of individual countries — The crime of insulting a monarch, a throwback to a bygone era of absolute
sovereign power is still very much in force in Thailand. In a leading large important Asian country, promoting or “seen as facilitating” an “outlaw group” can lead to charter revocation.

Q: You mentioned latency challenges when companies try to scale in countries that have intense regulatory issues and government filtering.  How does a company best plan to expand in those types of countries?

A: Almost all countries monitor most communications that cross through their digital borders.  Some look at everything, every word, bit and
byte.  Some look for key words.  Financial transactions are generally tracked, particularly those that cross a threshold that triggers AML
(anti-money laundering), monitoring of terrorist financing, etc. Some filtering technologies used by countries are better than others
and inevitably affect response time performance. There is no way around it in some countries. In others, one can use adjacent networks
but it’s not easy and it can be construed as a violation of regulations.

Q: Many startups in the infrastructure and cloud services space are targeting financial institutions as partners and customers.  What do they need to address to meet your particular scaling needs?

A: Automated KYC (know your customer) and AML solutions would be an area of extreme interest.  It has to be in real time.