When it finally ended—the long road from Loudcloud to Opsware—I couldn’t believe that I’d sold what it took eight years and all of my life force to build. How could I have done that? I was sick. I couldn’t sleep, I had cold sweats, I threw up, and I cried. And then I realized that it was the smartest thing that I’d ever done in my career. We’d built something from nothing, saw it go back to nothing again, and then rebuilt it into a $1.65 billion franchise. At that point, it felt like my business life was kind of over. I had hired all the best people that I knew or could find, and I had gone
...more
