The second winner of the Art of Disruption challenge is Versa Networks, an SD-WAN startup. (For an overview of this challenge, go here: Challenge 1 Overview.) Founded in 2012, backed by nearly $112 million in VC funding, and led by industry veteran Kelly Ahuja, who spent 18 years at Cisco, Versa offers SD-WAN, routing, and…
128 Technology was founded in 2014 to develop software-defined networking products. The startup has raised $66.7M in VC funding in three rounds of funding. Its named customers include Omada Technologies, Revation Systems, and TOKAI Communications. We put 128 Tech’s VP of Marketing and Product Management on the hot seat to find out why 128 Technology…
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we’ll be featuring the winners of the first Big50-2018 Startup Challenge. Here’s how the first challenge worked. Startups selected one of 4 tracks to compete in, with each track corresponding to various stages in the typical startup’s growth: Elevator Pitch, the Art of Disruption, Big Problems…
Startup50 and Network World are launching another “Hot Startups to Watch” competition. Our most recent competition, Hot Business Continuity Startups to Watch, published last week. If you’re curious about how I choose the startups to feature in each roundup, my methodology is available here. Now, we’re turning our attention to the heart of the datacenter, seeking Datacenter Virtualization…
My latest story for Network World — 10 Hot Business Continuity Startups to Watch — is out. I selected the 10 startups in the story based on a combination of funding, the experience of their leadership team, market opportunity, value proposition, product-market fit, and named customers. (You can read more about my selection methodology here.) In the current…
More than half the field eliminated in Challenge #1 We’ve had our hands full here at Startup50 the last few weeks, evaluating 167 startups that entered the Big50-2018 competition and eliminating more than half of them to arrive at our first Big50-2018 Startup Power Ranking. This first ranking, however, isn’t going to be all that….
Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@JWVance) may have noticed something strange when people began sharing, commenting on, and liking my “10 Hot Hybrid Cloud Startups to Watch” story for Network World. A commenter from Russia kicked things off with: Хорошее фото Translation: nice photo. That was followed by: хорошая история Translation: good…
My latest story for Network World — 10 Hot Hybrid Cloud Startups to Watch — is out. I selected the 10 startups in the story based on a combination of funding, the experience of their leadership team, market opportunity, value proposition, product-market fit, and named customers. (You can read more about my selection methodology here.) As the cloud…
This year’s Big50 startup competition is now open! Tech startups founded in 2010 or later are eligible, but you must be an actual startup to compete. In other words, spin-outs, subsidiaries, and cool ideas with no funding and no customers. . . are not really startups, at least as far as this competition is concerned….
This year’s Big50 startup competition kicks off Thursday! The Startup50 team is holding a webinar on Thursday, September 13 at 11:30 am PT to provide an overview of this year’s competition. We’ve been working on a new format that better matches what YOU, the startups who’ve competed in past competition, have told us you’d like to see in future…