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Diane Greene

10/26/13

@ Y Combinator

Michael Dell, our lead investor, expressed skepticism about the profitability of Linux companies, stating he just wanted to support Linux, which was disheartening for us as entrepreneurs.

Video

Diane Greene at Startup School 2013

@ Y Combinator

Diane Greene at Startup School 2013

10/26/13

Related Takeaways

Alexandra

09/18/18

@ Y Combinator

During the disillusionment phase, we struggled to attract investment due to recent failures of other hardware companies, which made investors hesitant.

Luis von Ahn

05/10/25

@ Stanford Graduate School of Business

Our first investor didn't believe in the education business model, thinking it was a bad investment, but they were primarily interested because I had previously sold a company to Google.

Steve Ballmer

06/02/25

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At the time of my 'developers' speech, we were facing competition from Linux and needed to reinforce our platform with third-party support.

Paul Buchheit

10/25/18

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I was really into Linux early on, and I wanted to work on technically interesting projects, but there weren't many startups focused on Linux at the time.

Harvard Innovation Labs Cast

02/02/14

@ Harvard Innovation Labs

Jim Whitehurst recognized that the true value of Linux was not just being another operating system, but ensuring it was certified and supported across various platforms for widespread use.

Diane Greene

08/05/17

@ Y Combinator

In the late 90s, during the dot-com era, we faced skepticism about our software that allowed users to run multiple operating systems on one machine.

Harvard Innovation Labs Cast

02/02/14

@ Harvard Innovation Labs

The company Unidesk sells ten times more hardware than software for Dell, which has led to Dell investing in them and providing leads that convert into customers.

Diane Greene

10/26/13

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

Y Combinator Cast

08/18/23

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As a founder, it's important to believe the 'no' from investors but not necessarily the reasons behind it, as they often lack transparency.