Building a Mid-Market Cyber Security Company from Utah: Peter Bookman, CEO of Guard Dog (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Did you work for SonicWall?

Peter Bookman: I did not. I transitioned out. I’m always excited about the next opportunity.

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Peter Bookman: 2001.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after that?

Peter Bookman: I contemplated retiring but ended up with huge amounts of technology in my garage.

Sramana Mitra: Was it a big exit?

Peter Bookman: We sold for $321 million.

Sramana Mitra: With a big piece of the pie still?

Peter Bookman: Relatively. There were six co-founders.

Sramana Mitra: It was a meaningful exit.

Peter Bookman: Absolutely. It created the incubator phase for me. It took a while to get to the next opportunity. We did an in-house incubator of sorts that had a number of technologies. Nothing too interesting until we created Fusion-io. That was interesting as well. It stemmed from what could we do if we take solid-state chips, apply high-performance computing principles, and put them all together.

What would you do if had all of those chips on one board or one server? You can use that same combination of software and hardware to do some interesting things.

The incubator had a lot of these concepts. It had cards and storage. It was a really good time. Ultimately, that storage need, which is now prolific in the cloud, is taken for granted. We don’t have an IOPS problem anymore. Many of our early customers with Fusion-io were dealing with exactly that. They were pegged at what they could do. Storage was the bottleneck at that time. It led to that technology where I and others were entirely focused.

Sramana Mitra: You decided to do that full-time?

Peter Bookman: Exactly. I tend to bounce around within an organization. One of my early partners used to like his title Best of Chief Bottlewasher.

Sramana Mitra: That title has floated around in the industry for long time.

Peter Bookman: You never quite let go of that hat.

Sramana Mitra: Fusion-io was based in Utah as well?

Peter Bookman: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: This was 2007?

Peter Bookman: Yes, right around that time.

Sramana Mitra: Right around the financial crisis.

Peter Bookman: Yes. It was nice to have the incubator to rely on and take advantage of.

Sramana Mitra: Was the incubator funding companies?

Peter Bookman: It was our own. It was a technology incubator where we either sold or spun-out technologies that were interesting.

Sramana Mitra: I remember in that timeframe, Silicon Valley VC just started funding companies in Utah. What was the trajectory of pulling VC into Fusion-io.

Peter Bookman: It’s one of the really strong points of Utah. Utah has a strong technology background. We syndicated with a technology lead in Utah that syndicated with venture funding in California.

Sramana Mitra: Nowadays, people are not so obsessed about only funding companies within five miles of their office.

Peter Bookman: The model is still the same. I haven’t heard this in a while. I do remember touring Sand Hill Road. A lot of the venture funds in Utah have relationships with VCs on Sand Hill Road. Novell brought a rich history and connections that ran really deep.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Building a Mid-Market Cyber Security Company from Utah: Peter Bookman, CEO of Guard Dog
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