Rockin' Robin: Robin Goldfarb Wilensky's Weblog

I attended an interesting event yesterday. It's called the Gauntlet and it's kind of like American Idol meets Venture Capitalists. Sun Microsystems sponsors the Gauntlet, run by The Hatchery, a customer of Sun's. This event brings together pre-selected entrepreneurs with a wide range of investors and they have 7 minutes to pitch their business plan. The panel then asks questions of each presenter, followed by 2 audience questions and then the panel has 1 minute each to critique. Each Gauntlet has a different theme and this month's theme was the Social Web.

The three presenters were:

• Magnify is a consolidator, if you will, of videos on the net. You can add user-generated video to your website or blog or start one from scratch. It is community based so you start getting more and more visibility to your site. Representing Magnify was Alan Medvin, Director of Corporate Development.
  
• Sparta Social Networks is like Ning on Steroids. It lets you develop your own white-label social network and runs entirely on Java and PHP. They are also a MySQL customer! Representing Sparta was Jerry R. Sheer, CEO and Neil Schaffer.
  
• Wizi is like Dash for cellphones. Wizi is a free location sharing application and traffic network. Your phone does not require GPS capabilities although if you have it, you can participate in sharing live traffic data. As your network grows, it will get smarter. Representing Wizi was Paulo Dimas, CEO from Portugal.
  

I also met a few people during the networking prior to the start of the Gauntlet. One of which was Mor Sela the founder of ProCompare, a collaboration site for IT professionals and business decision makers to meet. He is also the Meetup Organizer for NY IT Professionals and is very much interested in having Sun present at the next meeting. He did not know that Sun has solution offerings for small and medium businesses and is excited to learn more.

Which brings me to the conclusion. Why does Sun sponsor this event? Well, a big part of Sun's strategy today is to reach these small and mid-size business, up & coming startups and Web 2.0 focused companies. It's one of the reasons that we acquired MySQL and it is definitely the reason we created Startup Essentials, a program designed to lower the entry barriers for startups. Other ways that Sun is thinking about small and medium business include:

• Our Eco-friendly products and solutions lower your power, space and cooling requirements and costs.
  
• Our Virtualization solutions help you do more with less.
  
• Our Web Infrastucture offerings help you build a better web faster and cheaper with lots of Open Source tools like Java and Glassfish, LAMP and AMP support, and optimized hardware designed for the web.
  
• Our Product line focused on small and medium businessesoffers choice of operating systems including Solaris, Linux and Windows! Yes, I said Windows. And VMware. Sun also has a full line of x64 hardware servers and blades.
  
• Our Web 2.0 Solutions add value with things like the Sun Web Analytics solution and more...
  
• Our Desktop Virtualization solutions saves you money on expensive desktop fat clients, offers you anytime anywhere access and offers alternative productivity software.
  

So, that's why Sun is a sponsor of the Gauntlet and why the Gauntlet is such a cool event. I'm definitely looking forward to the next one!