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June 26, 2006
French Linux Guru Starts Up Ulteo
As some people say, all it takes to create a new business is a resentment and a coffee-machine, or a case of Red Bull, if your under thirty.
And so it is with Ulteo, a French startup aiming to develop nothing less ambitious than a new open source approach to operating system software. Its founder is Gaël Duval, the key developer of Linux Mandrake, who was recently ousted from Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, with nothing but a thank-you (he writes) and a "two-month standard" severance package.
NewsForge says that Duval is suing his former company, but more interesting is that he has formed Ulteo.
We're looking into the startup effort and can report that it is using the Kubuntu/Debian distribution (according to Wikipedia).
Duval created Linux-Mandrake in 1998 which was based on Red Hat Linux and it became known as being the easiest-to-use version of Linux. The company he formed around it was called Mandrakesoft, and later Mandriva.
Mandriva came close to insolvency several months after it floated on the lightly regulated Marche Libre in France in mid-2001, raising a meagre €4M. Our research shows that two investors, a US hedge fund and a French investment firm called Remote Reward stepped in to shore up finances.
In the meantime, it has changed its market focus and business model, in an effort to reach profitability. It has also acquired several other open source firms, namely Conectiva in Brazil, Edge IT in France, and Lycoris in the US.
Ulteo is based on an idea that Duval had brought to the Mandriva's management team back in 2004 that was ultimately rejected, he writes.
We think that there is going to be a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming 18 months due to the hefty number of startups that VCs have shopped to larger technology companies in M&A deals as they seek to exit bubble era invetments (as opposed to IPOs where it is more common for founders to stay on, that is if the founders are still with the company by the time it floats.)
As the post-merger key-man lock-ins end, and related non-compete clauses get lifted, founders are not retiring to Toscana to live the dolce vita, they are setting out to either repeat their past success, or make more money than they did last time around.
Examples abound, such as the post M&A activity of the founders of Kelkoo, acquired by Yahoo, and Musiwave, acquired by Openwave, who have since created Wikio and Eyeka, repsectively.
There are also reports about departures at SUSE Linux (acquired by Novell in 2003). Our research show that several founders and early employees have subsequently joined or create new startups.
Although not all of them actually begin with a resentment, the trend for founders to become serial entrepreneurs is pretty clear from where we sit.
Read - Gael Duvall's Fired Message (personal web page of Duval)
Read- NewsForge | Mandrake founder Gael Duval to sue Mandriva over firing (newsforge)
Posted on June 26, 2006 10:22 AM | Posted to Early stage | Open Source Software | entrepreneurship | Permalink
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