Marilyn A. Bosito                   O0A                     06/26/08

SYSANAL

Case Study (Gmail/Paul Buchheit, Web TV/ Steve Perlman, TiVo/ Mike Ramsay)

After I read Gmail I learned that Paul Buchheit is the creator and the developer of it. Gmail is an effect a startup within Google a dramatically novel project on the margin of the company, initiated by a small group and brought to fruition against a good deal of resistance.

He said that he started working on email software a long time ago, it was 1996, but for him it was just a little project, he had all these ideas that never really went anywhere. He was calling it Gmail at the time, for some other reason. He think it was just a random project-not necessary the predecessor to Gmail- bit it was something that he had been thinking about because he been sort of unhappy with email for a long time.

He said it was before hotmail and he was in college at the time. He was at Google and he had work on Google groups, which is not exactly the same, but it’s related. After the first generation of Google groups he had mostly wrapped up.

I like the way Buchheit saying his challenging part he said that there’s a lot that was challenging about it, just because it’s very big, for one thing. They gave everyone a gygabite of storage to start with. A lot of people actually didn’t think that it was real. They thought that it was joke-partially because they launched on April 1. They also thought that it wasn’t possible. It can be a little bit tricky, because it’s a lot of data if you actually do the math. It requires a lot of research. It’s lot machine and a lot of system to make that all work without requiring an army of people to maintain the system and keep it running. There’s a very complicated problem there. They were also doing thing that were new to Google. And he guesses that is one difference between a regular start up and starting with Google.

I learned also how Buchheit develop Gmail. He used user’s perspective. Every time they would get irritated by some little problem, or one of the users would say they just spend time thinking about it, looking at what the underlying problems are and how they can come up with solution to make it better for them. He said also the principle in the famous “Don’t be evil” he said that it was sometime in early 2000, and there was a meeting to decide on the company’s values. They invited a collection of people who had been there for a while had just come from Intel, so the whole thing with corporate value seemed a little bit funny to him. He was sitting there trying to think of something that would really be different and not one of the usual strives for excellence type of statement. he also wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out.

The most interesting part for me in every story is the advice they gave, in Gmail part Buchheit said that the advice he can say in someone who was working in the big technology company is: It depends on in the situation. It depends on how risk-averse you are. You should consider going to work with start in start up, or go to another place where you are going to have that opportunity. For someone who’s pretty far down in a company, if they are going to try to change the whole culture of the company.

The most serious question I read in the story is the relationship in his wife if it affected by his work he said that, he always been like that ever since, so his wife was used to it.

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After Gmail I go in Web TV which the cofounder is Steve Perlman he built it weekend 1995, he get his idea on his dreams for many years he had been interested in making television interactive, it is something beyond just changing channel up and down.

For me his idea in making the Web TV is quite serious and it helps it to make her dreams come true unlike me I have many wants but I can not choose which of those wants I going to pursue.

The interesting part  in this story for me is the most wrong their experienced in they first year, they said that the most worst thing  in the startup is founding team or the people who leading the team do not getting along, and it deadly when they don’t get along in the front of the troops.

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After I read the second story for this week I go to the last part which is TiVo cofounder is Mike Ramsay. TiVo founded 1997 by Ramsay and Jim Barton, their original plan was to create a network server for homes but they realize it was very hard to explain to consumer so they narrowed the idea down to one component of the original plan. TiVo was ground breaking in that and it took all the information that existed in the television and gave the power to manipulate it. It went to the public in 1999.

The most interesting part for is the question about the biggest technical challenge for them Ramsay said that while people had talked about storing video data on disk they used a disk to video to store video and it was pretty radical because at the time it is very expansive and they hat to make bet on whether the price was going to come down fast enough to make consumer product.

Among the three story for this week I like the Gmail it help me to inspire for many things related in business and startups strategy and techniques…