Starting a new adventure …

Alas, I’ve decided to move on from Abaca Technology and start a new adventure.  It was a very difficult choice for me to leave but it was the right thing  for me and my family to do.  I have the utmost respect for the leadership team and the engineering team that I helped to re-build.  They are in great position to execute on their engineering goals moving forward.  And, what a ride is was!

  • Recruited by seasoned silicon valley entrepreneur Steve Kirsch and reported directly to CEO
  • Grew the customer base from 10,000 to protecting hundreds of millions of email boxes worldwide
  • Started with two resources and later became responsible for ~50% of the overall company within constrained start-up environment
  • Rebuilt engineering team from scratch after previous leadership meltdown
  • Managed highly regarded 24/7 support organization
  • Built 24/7 operations organization managing production IT and customer facing infrastructure
  • Owned road map and engineering of all product lines
  • Responsible for engineering deliveries resulting in key company wins
    • Produced first external product effectiveness review [press release]
    • Successfully deployed first 3000 user appliance [press release]
    • Successfully attained official VMWare certification [press release]
    • Successfully deployed first 12 million user customer [press release]
    • Successfully deployed large scale trial leading to a deal of hundreds of millions users worldwide [press release]

I’m very happy with the traction we were able to gain during my time there despite the start-up conditions.

So, what’s my next thing? Same type of thing — building something new. Stay tuned ….

Yahoo! Selects Abaca Technology

Just this past week, Abaca Technology announced that they were selected by Yahoo! to help prevent spam, phishing, and other email-borne attacks.  It’s only a matter of time before folks realize that Steve Kirsch has done it again.  He has come up with one of the most unique and effective email security techniques on the market.

I can’t wait until they roll it out to the Yahoo! mailboxes in the US.  Then maybe I would consider using my Yahoo! email account again.

Show Me the Amazon Kindle 2!

I have a few personal goals that have lead me down the path of wanting an Amazon Kindle.

  • Use less paper (Save the environment)
  • Save money (Spend more wisely)
  • Read more books (Increase knowledge and create ideas)
  • Read more periodicals (Increase knowledge and create ideas)
  • Read more newspapers (Increase knowledge and create ideas)

The Kindle seems to have hit what I need out of an e-reader.

  • Relatively cheap for a new gadget.
  • Smaller than a stack of books.  I’m tired of having a backpack mostly full of books and printed documents.  It’s bad for the environment and for my back.
  • Great user interface for long reading sessions.  I hate reading long documents on a monitor.  Not only would I read books on it but longer work documents that I don’t want to print or read on my laptop.
  • Easy shopping for reading material through Amazon — a trusted online retailer.
  • Diverse reading material support.  Books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, PDF’s, etc.
  • Cheaper books.  Amazon sells most popular books for $9.99 or an average of 60% off of retail.
  • Less paper.
  • Free wireless updating

Now, I’m holding out for the Kindle 2 which is supposed to be release early 2009.  I hope it comes out soon.  I don’t want to buy another physical book — I’m out of shelf space.

Still Reading Wired Magazine

In a day when newspapers are going out of business and reading material is mostly on the web, I have to throw some kudos to Wired Magazine.  It’s the only magazine that I enjoy reading cover to cover.  Here are two articles that I found interesting from a few months back …

wired_magazine_nintendo