Andreessen: Nicira scrapped its OpenFlow tech immediately after a16z investment
Marc Andreessen · a16z Podcast | The Role of Academia in the Startup World · Jan 2, 2019 · at 27:50
Marc Andreessen recounts a16z's early investment in network virtualization pioneer Nicira (co-founded by Martin Casado and Nick McKeown), which was acquired by VMware for $1.26 billion.
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“So we funded this here at NetWeQ's networking lab, and it was the OpenFlow. OpenFlow was the sort of protocol was the approach and Martine had, had, had been one of the main people doing that. And so they start in Asira, and we're all excited, because we're like, this is great. We've got OpenFlow. We've got the OpenFlow technology. We've got the OpenFlow team. Like, this is going to be the OpenFlow company. And in the first board meeting, Martine sets us down, and he's like, okay, the first thing you guys need to understand is we're throwing away all that OpenFlow stuff. And Ben and I went, what? And he said, you know, that was great for a research lab, but, like, for commercial applications, we need to do another, we need to do another version. We need to take everything we learned from that research, and we now need to build the actual commercial product.”
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