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Enterprise Software - Friday, April 7, 2006

The First Open-Source VC Firm

“We might dabble with open-source-meets-Hollywood,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be fun to build the next ‘Ice Age’ with a lot of people helping you build it?” so says Simula Labs founder Winston Damarillo.

Winston Damarillo At Rest

Given his track record we should pay attention to Damarillo. He was a VC with Intel, before founding early open-source software startup Gluecode Software, which was bought by IBM. His latest venture Simula Labs is more of an open-source VC firm than a startup. Damarillo plans to launch a new product or company every quarter.

Simula’s first portfolio company, LogicBlaze has a services-oriented architecture (SOA) platform that integrates Apache, messaging, orchestration and enterprise service bus technologies. Simula’s second company, Mergere, has a software life-cycle management toolset incorporating Apache’s Maven project. Damarillo’s ambitious schedule calls for a major product launch every quarter. Simula’s third venture, a systems management software company code-named LiveTribe, is hiring up.