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Diane Greene

10/26/13

@ Y Combinator

We self-funded VMware initially, allowing only immediate family to invest, and later sought angel investors who were technically sophisticated and understood our vision.

Video

Diane Greene at Startup School 2013

@ Y Combinator

Diane Greene at Startup School 2013

10/26/13

Related Takeaways

Diane Greene

08/05/17

@ Y Combinator

We raised our initial funding through a friends-and-family round, ensuring that only those who understood our vision could invest.

Diane Greene

08/05/17

@ Y Combinator

I co-founded VMware with my husband, who was a professor at Stanford, after realizing the value of his research and the need to take it to market.

Ben Horowitz

04/29/25

@ a16z

We differentiated ourselves by combining angel investments with venture investments, a strategy that was initially met with skepticism from established VCs.

Alexandra

09/18/18

@ Y Combinator

We learned that finding investors who specialize in hardware was crucial, as they understood our vision and supported us.

Hosain Rahman

10/15/14

@ Y Combinator

When we raised venture capital in 2003, it was one of the only deals that the firm had done at that time, highlighting the challenges of building hardware.

Diane Greene

10/26/13

@ Y Combinator

I co-founded VMware in 1998, creating the virtualization industry, which allows multiple operating systems to run on a single computer or across computers.

Diane Greene

08/09/17

@ Y Combinator

At VMware, we launched the virtualization revolution in 1998 and took the company public in 2007, achieving a market cap of $19.1 billion on the first day.

Jessica Livingston

07/11/18

@ Y Combinator

We decided to fund a large number of early-stage startups with small amounts of money, providing them with significant help, which was a departure from traditional VC practices.

Reham Fagiri

12/15/18

@ Y Combinator

We communicated our startup plans to friends and family, who were initially skeptical but ultimately supportive of our decision to leave stable jobs.