I know that Hedgehog can run pretty darn fast. We have more than a few people who believe we can run fast, too. Hedgehog is a world class team backed by a world class group of investors. We are well financed to build an open network fabric for distributed cloud, optimize cost and performance value for lots of customers deploying cloud native workloads, and develop lasting partnerships with leaders in the open computing community. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our investors as new members of our team.
Ashmeet Sidana joins Hedgehog as a member of our board of directors. As the Chief Engineer of Engineering Capital, Ashmeet specializes in backing early-stage founders who possess technical insights. He describes a technical insight as “if told what problem to solve, a talented engineer would not know how to solve it.” I knew Ashmeet was the right lead investor for us from the very first call. He was already familiar with SONiC. He immediately understood the problem we solve, the unique value of our technical insight, and the double barrel wave we will ride when we are up and surfing. Ashmeet can do this because he is a very successful infrastructure engineer in his own right.
Kirby Winfield at Ascend was our very first believer. He knows that the primary success factor for early-stage investments is the team. He knows how to read people well, and he invests with conviction. When you are just starting out, finding a partner with conviction is a really big thing. It builds confidence and momentum, and in our case very quickly led to a successful pre-seed round.
Chris Kelley at Shipyard Cascade Capital also invests with conviction. He dives deep in due
diligence but arrives at a decision on the timeline he promises. Time is precious when you are running fast, and he doesn’t waste it. As the former CEO of a machine learning company, he gives thoughtful, balanced advice for key decisions.
Charles Fitzgerald at Platformonomics challenges us regularly on platform strategy, market
positioning, open-source community leadership, and the global politics of technology
platforms. As the former GM for Platform Strategy at Microsoft, and a similar role at VMware, he has plenty of experience building communities of developers for widely used platforms.
Harry Motro was my boss when he was CEO of the pre-Google search engine Infoseek. He has also been my executive coach and mentor or many years. Harry was a fantastic leader at Infoseek, and now as a licensed psychologist he understands better than anyone the
importance of team psychology in a winning formula. Harry is the Coach Campbell of the
Hedgehog team.
Anders Brown is Managing Director at Tegria, an IT consulting organization serving the
Providence Healthcare system and other healthcare providers. He gives us unique insights on healthcare workload requirements for edge computing and distributed cloud deployments.
Stan Klimoff is SVP and Chief Strategy Officer at GridDynamics. Where he brings modern
software and cloud infrastructure to numerous retail customers worldwide. With customers like Apple, Macy’s, American Eagle and Kohls, Stan gives us a unique understanding of the role for edge computing in retail clouds and retail edge to the table.
Macario Namie was my colleague at Jasper where he played an early-stage role building the
world’s largest cellular connectivity platform for the Internet of Things. We did this by
embedding Jasper in most all of the world’s mobile service providers, then telling really good stories about the Thing Makers using our platform. Macario will help Hedgehog lean into Jasper’s IoT success, giving Thing Makers and AI developers 5G multi-access edge computing for ultra-low latency and better customer experiences.
And last but certainly not least I want to recognize my co-investor and CTO Mike Dvorkin. I
couldn’t have asked for a better CTO, and I’m even luckier to have one with conviction. Mike and I started the company with the principle that we should put our own money into the venture. We invested alongside our investors not just as show of good faith, but because we honestly believe that Hedgehog is the single best investment opportunity for our hard-earned cash.
I wish I could acknowledge many more friends and colleagues who invested significant time and energy evaluating Hedgehog. It is always better to raise just enough capital to execute your plan than to raise a boatload of cash to massage your ego. Running lean forces companies to ask themselves how fast they can run. We want to run fast, so we made a conscious decision to cap this round. This meant that we had to ask some good friends to wait for our next phase of growth. We look forward to welcoming you to the team in the near future.
GOTTA GO FAST!
Marc Austin is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Hedgehog. Marc is a fox who knows many things and a hedgehog who knows one big thing. As a Hedgehog he knows that millions of cloud native development teams will use Hedgehog open network fabrics to deploy their apps on distributed cloud infrastructure. As a fox he knows many things from his experience leading mass-scale automation strategy at Cisco, Internet of Things networking at Jasper, digital media delivery at Amazon, mobile application development founding Canvas, the birth of smartphones at AT&T, early mobile ride sharing founding Mobiquity, internet search at Infoseek, e-commerce at Internet Shopping Network and leading people through adversity in the United States Army.