We founded Cloudsmith in July, 2006. We're a virtual team, with workplaces
across the U.S. and EU. Collectively, we have decades of experience
developing innovative software products and delivering large projects
for enterprise clients.
Earlier in our careers, we were part of companies that developed really hard
software products. About ten years ago, we noticed we were
spending too much time managing the components we were developing,
so we started thinking about how to make that easier. About five years
ago, we noticed we were using more open source components and fewer
that we developed ourselves.
It wasn't hard to see that knowing how fit things together was becoming more valuable
while developing things was becoming less valuable.
It took a few years to come up with an idea developers would like that
would allow us to build a company without lots of venture capital. When we
thought we had that idea, we started Cloudsmith.
Chris is a Cloudsmith co-founder and Chairman. When we started Cloudsmith, Chris
was Vice Chairman of IONA Technologies, a company he founded with two of his computer
science grad students at Trinity College Dublin. Chris led IONA as CEO through a decade
of bootstrapping (and an IPO) as it grew from selling direct-to-developers CORBA documentation
into the dominant independent vendor of enterprise middleware.
We've benefited from Chris entrepreneurial experience since the company was founded.
Chris freed up to take an active role after IONA was acquired and is now our executive
Chairman. On a given day, Chris may be doing anything from evangelizing for Cloudsmith
to talking to new customers or writing white papers, just like the old days at IONA.
Chris got to know Mitch and Henrik during the early days of commercial open source,
when Mitch and Henrik were active in Eclipse and IONA was preparing to jump in. <<<
Mitch is a Cloudsmith co-founder and our CEO. Mitch is currently on his third career.
In his first, he was a lawyer specializing in venture funds and financings (i.e. the sidelines).
In his second, he was a Wall Street research analyst (i.e. the press box). In his third career,
Mitch took the last step onto the playing field as head of corporate development and strategy at
one of the leading technology companies of the day.
This is Mitch's second start-up; the first started late in the Internet bubble, hung on for
four years to pioneer great technology in SaaS and SOA, but was ultimately a few years too far
ahead of its time. Mitch got the idea for Cloudsmith came from watching the software industry
evolve during that startup, and continues to shape our product and market strategy.
Mitch knows Henrik from almost acquiring Henrik's first start-up in his corporate
development role and co-founding his first startup (the failure) with Henrik. He knows
Thomas because they worked together at that startup. <<<
Henrik is a Cloudsmith co-founder and our CTO. Before Cloudsmith, Henrik ran BEA's
virtual machine product organization (JRockit) in Stockholm. Before that, Henrik was a
co-founder of two startups, one of which (the success) was the world's first CRM application
vendor and the other of which he co-founded with Mitch, as well as the CTO of two publicly
listed software companies.
Henrik is the technical "first among equals" at Cloudsmith. He translates our product
vision into a technical vision, sets the overall boundaries of product architecture and reviews
and coordinates what other members of the team design. Time permitting, Henrik codes major
element of the system and trailblazes new technology. At Eclipse, Henrik is a committer on
Buckminster, Spaces, P2 and the Packaging Project. <<<
Thomas is our Chief Architect and a co-founder. Thomas is the primary architect of
Cloudsmith's "dark matter", the really hard foundational technology that supports the
Cloudsmith service. Thomas is also the project lead and primary architect of the
Eclipse/Buckminster project, which is part of the Cloudsmith foundation.
Henrik and Thomas have been a technical team for 15 years, collaborating on everything
from real-time operating systems to object-oriented languages to application frameworks
and development tools. <<<
Charlie is one of our lead investors and a member of our board. Charlie spent 15 years as
a banker at Broadview Associates, the preeminent technology M&A firm, where he was the
advisor for some of the largest deals of the '90s and ultimately the firm's Chairman. After
Broadview, Charlie spent a number of years as a partner at BRM, an early stage venture firm.
Charlie left to set up a new venture, firm, Crossbar Capital, and we were fortunate to be one
of the companies he became involved with in between.
Charlie played a key role in encouraging us to found Cloudsmith, and has been a very
active supporter of our venture. Charlie met Mitch when Charlie was at BRM and Mitch was at
his first startup. During Mitch's time on the beach, they had an ongoing dialog about how the
software industry was changing and how a new opportunity could be sustained. They've continued
this dialog since the company was founded. <<<
Ed Merks is our chief technical evangelist within the global developer community
and a key member of our architecture team.
Ed joins us after 16 years at IBM, where he was the creator of the modeling technology
that provides the foundation for the Rational product portfolio and hundreds of IBM software
products. Ed's interest in modeling technology began with his graduate work at Simon Fraser
University, where he received a PhD.
Ed is widely recognized for his contributions to Eclipse modeling technology, as well as
his overall engagement in the Eclipse community. Ed leads the Eclipse Modeling Project,
and is the primary architect of the Eclipse Modeling Framework. Ed is also an elected
representative of the Eclipse committer community on the Eclipse Foundation board,
and has received Eclipse community awards as Top Ambassador and Top Committer.
In connection with Ed's work at Cloudsmith, we also support his work in the modeling community. <<<
