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Interviews: Ask Larry Augustin What You Will
Former chairman of VA Software and venture capitalist, Larry Augustin, co-founded VA Research in 1993 and was one of the driving forces behind the creation of Sourceforge. VA bought Andover.net in 2000, acquiring a number of media sites, including Slashdot. He serves on the board of several companies and is currently the CEO of SugarCRM. Larry has agreed to take some time and answer your questions about the world of venture capital, open source software, and surviving the dotcom bubble. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post
Do you agree with the Slashdot Beta program ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Was VA Linux the most successful pump and dump of all time? Or was there a bigger one lost to history?
Hey, Larry -- you don't know me (shocker), but I've been a fan since back in the day -- indeed, VA's IPO helped buy me my first LCD monitor. (Go, SGI 1600SW.) Anyway, Linux, open source, the web, and technology itself has certainly seen lots of change since the "olden" days of the mid-90's; which parts do you reflect on most fondly, which parts have surprised you the most, and, of course, the proverbial: "If you could do it over again, what would you do differently?" (I realize that technically, that's three questions, but I think it's really three questions in search of one answer.)
Amen. I have no idea who this guy is, so I can't imagine any other question to ask him.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
you suck.
one of the names that we all felt some sort of kinship with back in the early Linux commercialization days. He started VA Reasearch -- which had the biggest one-day spike on IPO, ever, managing a front-page story in the WSJ, and an incredibly sanctimonious public letter from ESR -- and forever popularized blue LEDs on servers (you can thank or blame him as you see fit). Since then, he's gone off to do some venture capital stuff, and help out with Sugar CRM. While I've never met him, I certainly owe him for both his contribution to the community as a whole, as well as more explicitly for opening up the IPO to common folks like me.
By all accounts, he's a good guy, and someone I was glad was in our corner during those heady-but-tumultuous times.
As someone who was "involved" with Slashdot, How much influence do you currently have to make slashdot beta burn a fiery death as to never see the light of day again?
What's your opinion on crypto-currencies? Do you think SHA-256 currencies have no future because only the big guys can afford mining rigs? Do you think there's way too many Scrypt currencies?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Currently, advertising pays for the web as we know it. From my perspective as a non-marketer, it is very much ineffective and yet a lot of money is changing hands over it. We live in an age where someone can make $50,000\day on a free mobile game that display ads that most people do not even tap on, and avoid directing their attention to. The web doesn't seem much different, and that strikes me as unsustainable. Do you foresee a future bubble burst based on an industry-wide, sudden realization that current advertising models do not work anywhere near as well as the powers that be currently believe the do? What would be the consequences of an advertising bubble burst and what might support the web afterwards?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Dude -- EVERYONE believed in Linux at the time, as well as The Internet. Bright-eyed investors who jumped at a Linux-associated hardware company made that happen, not Larry. Larry just happened to be the best-known Linux-associated hardware vendor at the time. I'd say his timing was awesome for the spike, but I think Larry would have been happier than just about anyone to see the stock price stay up where it started.
If you bought in at $320/share, and have sour grapes... well, that's your fault. "Caveat Emptor." See: "dot bomb".
I recently ran into a problem with SugarCRM where I need the relationship between a lead and an account (ideally through REST), but apparently I cannot get access to that information.
After speaking with a few engineering and our developer support there is currently no way for an On-demand customer to have direct access to the relationship tables.
I have attached this case to Enhancement Request
Why can't I get that data, and can I get a timeframe/priority for the enhancement request?
Thanks.
WTF did Larry do to "ruin" Slashdot? I'm pretty sure Rob loved working for Larry. Or with your UID of four bajillion, do you remember stuff I seem to have forgotten?
Slashdot really is determined to dig up and remind us about every embarrassing moment in Linux history!
You were prominently featured in the documentary Revolution OS.
Do you think it is time for a similar documentary to be made, this time avoiding or minimizing the financial aspects?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Hello Larry, Since you are an EE and started out hacking systems together, I assume you loved working with technology and the open source down at the nuts and bolts level. Now you are a suit, a very successful business man running companies that serve business (CRM!). What's the appeal of sitting in Board meetings, wheeling and dealing on the phone or in teleconferences and all that? It seems to me, if you still had a passion for tech, you would have taken your riches and either started a new company on something cool. Or just retire and use your free time to play with tech.
He kill your dog, break your guitar, and steal your woman and truck? WTF?
I don't think VA was *embarrassing*, so much as, maybe, unfortunate.
And ESR being an embarrassment hasn't really been relegated to history. Fortunately, most of his involvement with OSS has.
Facepalm.
I & my company are dedicated to open standards, open source software & open source hardware. We also need to make a living, which has been very difficult for too many years now. Where would you recommend I look for information with which I can educate myself on monetizing technology development while remaining true to my cypherpunk & libertarian philosophy? Regardless of what some (who presumably have never had to make payroll) may say, not all information wants to be free, as it will never be created if its creators know their reward for creating it will be continuing poverty. We also recognize that pure money, useful information & free energy (in the statistical mechanics sense) are equivalent, so it ought to be possible to convert some of the useful information we generate into money...
prOn!
tied to proprietary for-windows player
riches man stinkin filthy riches
Or if you can find hoes that give it away like you do then maybe you can keep your little hobby going
Larry, I just want to express my appreciation for the way you handled the IPO. I've never made much money from doing software. Your gift of VA shares to many open source developers paid off my student loans, got me out of debt, and there was enough left over to buy a bunch of O'Reilly books. Very classy. Hope you've done well in all your endeavors over the past years since then.
Robots. Lots of robots.
What is your recommendation if you have a dream that can not produce a decent business case for venture capitalist to join?
What if you project is something crazy that may not be consider usefull at first?
Any recommendations?
Easy old timer...just go back to sleep. We won't party like its 1999 until next year, promise.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
My "party" in '99 was sitting in a room with two other engineers, eating Chinese food, playing video games, and seeing if the internal Cisco infrastructure suddenly up and died.
It didn't.
That being said, your UID is perilously close to mine; might wanna watch who you hit with the "old timer" stick. ;-)
Damn !
A guy with a low 5-digit and a guy with a lower than mine 4-digit UID were having their parties back in '99 and I was working my ass off pulling cables trying to fulfill Al Gore's "Information Superhiway" prophecy.
Man, I totally missed the damn boat !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I've been a member since 2000-01-06 17:58:21: http://sourceforge.net/u/paulf...
Even if I'm mostly using GitHub for new stuff... It was a real encouragement and inspiration back then. It is like when someone turns on a light bulb in the middle of the night in a kitchen desperate for a drink of water and the light bulb is so bright you can't even look at it but lets you find the sink, and then when the (open source) sun comes up in the morning, you almost forget the lightbulb is still on compared to the sun. Thanks for turning on that lightbulb when we needed it most.
And SourceForge is still a great site for putting up demos of FOSS code that need to run CGI.
http://sourceforge.net/apps/tr...
I guess if I had a question it would be, what do you think about Rick Webb's (another venture capitalist) article suggesting we're in the nascent stages of transforming to a post-scarcity economy (expanding the gift, planned, and subsistence aspects instead of purely emphasizing exchange)?
http://entertainment.slashdot....
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I just wasn't pulling them on 12/31/99, which is the date I think of when I think of "Party like it's 1999." 'Cause everyone *else* (except a few closet survivalists) that I knew was out having fun. I got to work until roughly 4:00 a.m. (1:00 a.m. PST, but I was east coast) to make sure that Cisco wasn't experiencing systemic Y2K issues. And... it didn't. The rest of the time, I was Joe Sysadmin, pulling cables, bitching about Windows, and trying (successfully, as it turned out) to get Cisco to accept Linux.
P.D. Se habla español?
Hi Mr Augustin, What is your reaction to your users defecting from your proprietary version now that there's an open source version that does the same as SugarCRM Pro. Did you factor that into the business model of SugarCRM?
Hi Mr Augustin. Can you tell me the reasons why SugarCRM has walked away from open source software?
Hi Mr Augustin. Can you tell me why the SugarCRM CE 6.5.x is slowly crippling with the introduction rather than fix bugs ( iCal integration broken on 6.5.16 for instance)?