Episode 42: Opsware (with special guest Michel Feaster)

Acquired dives into the legendary acquisition of Ben Horowitz
& Marc Andreessen’s “second act” software company Opsware,
from a perspective never before heard—HP’s side of the story! Our
heroes are joined by Michel Feaster, who led both the acquisition
for HP and then the Opsware product as part of the integrated
company afterward under Ben Horowitz. Today the tables have
turned: Michel is the Co-Founder and CEO of Seattle-based startup
Usermind, and Ben Horowitz sits on her board on behalf of A16Z.
This episode is not one to miss!   


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Topics covered include: 

Opsware’s early history and origins as Loudcloud, the “second
act” of internet wunderkind Marc Andreessen and Netscape product
manager Ben Horowitz

Ben’s first person telling of the Loudcloud/Opsware history
in The Hard Thing about Hard Things, as well as the great Wired
"period piece” covering Loudcloud’s launch in August 2000

The importance of timing, and Loudcloud’s too-early vision
of—essentially—AWS before AWS (including eerie parallels between
the metaphor Andreessen used to describe Loudcloud during the
company’s first press briefing, and Jeff Bezos’s description of
AWS at YC nearly a decade later)

Creation of the “Opsware” tool inside of Loudcloud to
automate deploying and configuring servers within Loudcloud’s
data centers

Loudcloud's meteoric rise, crash following the burst of the
internet bubble, and hard pivot as a public company into
Opsware—now an enterprise software company selling datacenter
tools 

Michel’s role in HP’s evaluation of the company as an
acquisition target, and process leading to its $1.6B acquisition
in July 2007

Integration of the company into HP’s culture and sales
channel

The creation of Ben & Marc’s “third act”, the VC firm
Andreessen Horowitz, and what it’s like for Michel now having Ben
as an investor on her board at Usermind 



  The Carve Out: 


Ben: StarStaX star trail photography software

David: Jimmy Iovine on the Bill Simmons Podcast