Startups : Rajesh Ramchandani's Weblog

Startup Essentials momentum update

     We launched Sun Startup Essentials program almost 11 months ago and I am happy to announce that it has been a great success so far. By success, I mean, it has achieved and continues to achieve the main objective of the program - to help early stage startups and provide them an enterprise grade scalable platform at a price which doesn't bite into their funding. The program started out as US only program through which startups (less than 4 years old and less than 150 employees) could get deep discounts on Sun's hardware, now offers discounted web hosting, free email based technical support and highly optimized AMP stack for Solaris platform. The program is also available for startups in India and China since May 2007 and will launch in few countries in Europe by Nov/Dec this year and additional countries in early 2008.. Stay tuned.

Till date, the program has had over 900 applications and applications in India and China are just pouring in - at even higher rate than those in US. We've had hundreds of web 2.0 startups join the program (including some of the hot web 2.0 startups ) and many have rave reviews some of which you can read here and here.

   The small startup essentials team is mostly seen at several bay networking events such as STIRR, SF New Tech Meetup, Silicon Valley Meetup and Plug and Play Expo. Along with Joyent, we sponsor Tuesday Tacos and we are also proud sponsors of Plug and Play Expo and Startup camp. We are sponsoring Startup Camp3 this time in New York city. So if you are going to be in big apple, please drop by and say hello to the team and find out how we can help your startup. You can register for Startup Camp here

If you don't see what you want in the program , get in touch with me and lets discuss how Sun might be able to help.

Posted at 04:23AM Oct 02, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  |  Comments[1]

Is you Social networking site Eco-friendly?

What do cars and shared photos have in common? They both increase carbon emissions!. It's simply not easy for all of us who like to socialize on digital communities (read FaceBook, Myspace, Orkut, etc.) or share photos and videos (on Smugmug, Photobucket, flickr, etc.) that every web page we create, every picture we upload, every blog we write and every single comment we leave for our friends and every single text message we send on twitter  contributes to higher carbon emissions (unless your sites are eco-friendly or hosted in eco-friendly data centers of course). Think about this, millions of pictures uploaded every single day require several hundreds and thousands of disk drives and servers which increase the carbon footprint of the data centers and web sites serving these photos. I am not suggesting we stop sharing pictures and videos or stop socializing online, Just some food for thought so each of us can write to our favorite web sites and companies to start considering building out eco-friendly data centers. Today, Sun launched an online community where enterprises can discuss, measure and share greenhouse gas emissions data. Openeco helps companies to collaborate on strategies to reduce carbon emissions. Check out the website for details and see if we can all influence your digital communities to take the first step in becoming a true green social network.

Posted at 11:45AM Sep 24, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

TechCrunch40

It was great to be at Techcrunch40 last two days - a lot of amazing startups with lots of bright ideas and tons of smart people! It truly was a Techcrunch party (above expectations!) and loved to be there as a sponsor. Thanks to Mike and Jason for doing a wonderful job in organizing an event like that. Its certainly great for companies who were selected to present, but I think it was beneficial for the ones in the DemoPit - who got a chance to demo their products and/or launch their products as well. Here's the list of companies who were selected to present and here's the list of companies who were at the DemoPit.

I didn't really  get a chance to sit through al the 40 presentations and panels, but some of the ones that I did get a chance were just amazing - some of my favorites were musicshake.com (online music creation. BTW, the presentation and demo were fabulous but too bad it works only with Internet Explorer), powerset.com (Natural language search or some people say its what will kill Google!), casttv.com (Video search engine. Alex your presetaton was great!), mint.com (Online personal financial management. I don't know if I'll use it yet), flock.com (Social web browser - I had a similar idea couple of years ago) and befunky.com (online tools for cartoon creation or personal digital representations for blogs and websites).

Demopit was full of startups with good ideas and concepts an some of them very promising (and I don't understand why there were not selected for presentations although they were better than the ones actually presented). Guys like aviary.com, lineupnewyork.com, zoho.com, kaltura.com, ekkotv.com, and vidora.tv have good products and services that could be really big. A lof of others had good concepts and services but not very big in themselves and I wish all the luck to them. In general, looks like the trend in web 2.0 sees to be companies starting to provide tools or music creation, video creating and editing, tools for people to create games, 3D models, etc. I can see how these tools may be useful in social networks but only time (and people) will tell communities will be created around these tools.

Posted at 11:47AM Sep 19, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  |  Comments[1]

"For us, Solaris was a no-brainer,"

   Check how Solaris and CoolThread server T2000 helped Real Time Matrix (RTM) scale to millions of transactions. Real Time Matrix runs a web site at http://ij.am and matches users preferences of data through hundreds of web sources such as blogs, news feeds, and classified listings and make it available to the users in RSS format.  Jeff Whitehead, RTM founder calls it as a Internet Router. They process over 2 million articles per day. Read more about Real Tme Matrix at http://www.serverwatch.com/hreviews/article.php/3696256

Posted at 10:43AM Sep 03, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

Get your hands on Free Hosting for one Full Year

Yesterday we announced free hosting for one full year through Sun Startup Essentials Program. Of course you need to be a SSE member to take advantage and this is how it works:

1. Refer

Submit the names of the companies you're referring here...increase your chances of success by referring as many as you can!  We will only contact these companies based on your referral if they apply and are approved for the program - no spam.

2. Persuade
Talk to them and make sure they apply by September 30.  To make it easy, I've included below an email you could send them, but you might want to personalize it.

3. Collect
If you are one of the first 20 to refer 3 new approved members, we will contact you by October 15 and you may choose between Joyent or NaviSite to receive your free hosting.

Find out more, including terms and conditions.

Posted at 05:19PM Aug 31, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

Sun Startup Essentials goes global

Sun Startup Essentials goes to China and India today http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070808/aqw059.html?.v=22. We've got over 700 startups interested in the program in the US and looking forward to explosive interest from startups in China and India. This program shows our commitment to startups - in helping them get jump-started and save $$ on infrastructure. If you are a startups, come on board and we'll help you as much as we can and remember your success is ours too!

Posted at 10:39AM Aug 08, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

Cheap web hosting gets cheaper for Sun Startup essentials members

As a continued effort to expand the Sun Startup Essentials members program and bring more services and offerings available to the startups approved in the program, today we announced the availability of Web Hosting service. The same high class web scale infrastructure for web 2.0 types from Joyent and Navisite, only deeply discounted for program members. Check out the offer details here , here and here...

Posted at 09:40AM Apr 30, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

We'll be here for your help - PlugandPlayTechExpo

After meeting with Syed and Kayvan (PlugandPlayTechCenter) at STIRR a few months ago, we have become good friends - friends for a reason. They have the same mission as we do - work with startups, help them in the early stages of development and see them succeed and grow. I have always been amazed by PlugandPlayTechCenter - their facility, their services and of course the people who run the incubation company. They are organizing a Expo on May 1st, 2007 and we are glad to be the Gold sponsors. 

This will be another great opportunity for startups looking to seek funding and Sun will be there (as always) to help with development tools, systems, storage, software, Free engineering support and web hosting.

Posted at 09:16AM Apr 24, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

VC funding and Web 2.0 - Michael Arrington and Tim Bray debate

We have organized a networking event for Startups on March 19th at Sun's Menlo Park Campus (Building 15). Michael Arrington and Tim Bray will kick-off the event with a debate on VC funding and Web 2.0. I am sure its going to be interesting debate, especially when you see hundreds of web 2.0 companies been funded with hundreds of millions of dollars each year, most of the business models are around advertising and exit strategy of selling to Google. yahoo and Microsoft. Does it all seem like a bubble (or may be not?). We'll find that out someday but it will be good to hear their perspectives.

Posted at 08:59AM Mar 16, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

Startups Ask Sun

On Feb 13th, we launched enhanced Startup Essentials Program and added offers such as deeply discounted storage, Free Sun software including Solaris + AMP stack (Apache, MySQL, PHP, PostgreSQL) optimized for Solaris platform and free email technical support via Startups Ask Sun offer.

Ask Sun is technical assistance provided by Sun experts to startups approved under Sun Startup essentials program or startups who are considering joining the program.  A team of senior Sun engineers are available to answer questions related to architecture, design, coding, best practices, performance tuning, etc. So if you are a developer developing in a startup or managing and administrating IT infrastructure in a startup and run into any questions on Java, Solaris, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP on Solaris or any issues with hardware or even want to get expert advise on performance tuning and scalable testing of your applications - give Startups Ask Sun a try - You'll save time and get your product to market quicker!

Posted at 08:28PM Feb 24, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

Community Next: Build your next community on Sun

We have been sponsoring quite a few of networking events for startups. The last two were CommunityNext on Feb 14th at Stanford  and second one STIRR on Feb 21st. Both the events were great, a lot of enthusiastic enterpreneurs attended to socialize their Next Big idea.

CommunityNext organizers brought in some very successful people who have created large communities like Akash of h15.com, Steven Reading of dogster.com and some folks like Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency and Aaron Dignan of BrandPlay who had cool ideas on how to be successful in building social communities and branding them successfully. Here's a long list of speakers
For us, it was great because we got a lot of folks educated on what Sun has to offer to startup companies and why Sun was best partner to choose to build and grow their communities. 

 STIRR is exceptionally cool event and if you haven't been to one, I strongly suggest you sign up for the next one (not that its easy to get into one). The event is organized once every month and is pretty cool environment. Its less of presentations or education but more of networking amongst the investors and other alike enterpreneurs. Four companies are picked to present their idea in 60 seconds each and winner is chosen depending on the reading of decibel meter - yes, they measure the level of applause that each presenter gets after their presentation.
Since we sponsored the event, Scott McNealy came down to give his inspiration and wisdom to those seeking to make their ideas successful. Of course, Scott did talk about Sun Startup Essentials Program and other ways, startups can partner with Sun to get them going from day one.

Looking forard to attending more events like this to get the word out - Sun is great partner for Startups! 

Posted at 06:26PM Feb 23, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  | 

startupcomments@sun.com - For startups

The title caught your attention, means you are probably working for a startup company, starting a new startup or are considering one. To get you started and  help you to get your product and services to market quickly, you want to consider joining Sun's Startup Essentials Program. The program offers startups deeply discounted hardware (Systems and Storage) - these prices can beat any third party prices hands down. Check out SDN TV where Juan Carlos Soto, VP of Market Development at Sun describes advantages of the program.

We launched the program officially in Nov 2006 and in two months, we have had tremendous success with hundreds of startup companies joining the program. With many more offers to be added to hardware offer, you may want to keep visiting Startup Essentials website and keep reading more in my blog here.

For now if you want to know more about this program or want to chat, feel free to send me comments through this blog or reach our core team at startupcomments-AT-sun.com.

Posted at 05:15PM Jan 15, 2007 by rrajesh in Startups  |