How SolidFire has stayed on the “bleeding edge” of the market

by Carlin Sack
January 9, 2014

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Since 2010, SolidFire has been ahead of the market in the cloud computing at the intersection of spinning and solid state storage. This all goes back to founder Dave Wright’s original philosophy that “startups, to be successful, have to be on the cutting edge of what’s going on, the bleeding edge of what’s going on.”

Wright, with plenty of experience in the industry through his previous company Jungle Disk (which was then acquired by Rackspace), said that if startups aren’t scores ahead of their competitors then they aren’t truly competitive.

“It’s easy to look at another startup and say, ‘I can be 20 or 30 percent better,’” Wright said. “But the barrier to entry is so high that you need to be 5x better, 10x better. You need to be so much better than the thing you are replacing that it almost isn’t even in the same category.”

By applying his experience to gain insight into the marketplace years down the line and then “re-architecting everything,” Wright was able to bring cloud computing to whole new level with SolidFire, though it was not the easiest path.

“You have to be in touch enough with what’s going on to be able to make predictions about what’s going out, especially if you’re in a market with a very long development cycle like SolidFire; SolidFire took us two and a half years to build our initial product to get out there in the market,” Wright said.

When Wright left Rackspace in December 2009 to start SolidFire, he had a great vision and intuitive insight into market patterns. But not much else. He started SolidFire as a sole founder and had to recruit “off the street” for his first hires: “it’s always really challenging when you’ve got nobody, no product, no customers, just your great idea.”

But Wright was fortunate enough to find great board members through his initial investors (Novak Biddle, Valhalla and New Enterprise Associates) and their networks who trusted Wright and his track record in the industry. From there, SolidFire grew to have the “seasoned” leadership team that it does today: VP of Marketing Jay Prassl (previously at Lefthand Networks), CFO John Hillyard (previously at Datalogix), President RJ Weigel (previously at HP), among many more.

The diverse backgrounds represented in the executive team has been one of the main factors pushing SolidFire continuously forward, Wright said.

“A lot of technology companies get their start because they have all worked together before, they all have a similar background and then they start a company; that can be nice early on because you have similar viewpoints on things,” Wright said. “But I think, later on, that can be challenging because you are going to be bringing on new people with different viewpoints. If you don’t have that experience of working with different backgrounds, I think that makes that harder.”

From the “gut instinct” of a sole founder to the well-established international company that it is today, SolidFire has embraced its team, its executives and its board as a part of its unique community: “we talk about SolidFire as a team sport,” Wright said. This unified team, both nationally and internationally, will be doubled in size over the next year which is “a big growth year for us,” Wright said.

The team’s growth is a signifier that SolidFire’s offering is truly needed and valued by the market, which is finally starting to catch up to SolidFire’s ever-expanding vision in 2014.

“It’s a year where we are very heads-down and focused on execution, but it’s a year where we are starting to see the market really understanding the importance of what we’re doing,” Wright said. “I talk about kind of being on the crest on that wave: well, now we’re at the point where the wave is up and it’s going to come crashing down. We’re still out there riding that wave and that’s exciting to see.”

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