A fun dinner

Last night, I had a very enjoyable dinner with two old friends: Andy Palmer and Dave Girouard.

Andy and I go way back.  He was the CEO I recruited to Vertica in 2005, back when he, Mike Stonebraker and I were working on “big data” before the Big Data label came along and it became trendy.  Vertica was sold successfully to HP last year for about $340MM, from what I hear.

Through Andy, I first met 9 years ago with Dave.  Dave became the head of Google Enterprise, which is today a $1 billion business.

Dave has left Google and is launching a new start-up that is doing some cool things. Called Upstart, he is just getting going.

It was a very inspiring meal.

Here are two very successful entrepreneurs who can “retire” at any time.  Yet, they continue to think about knotty problems and how to solve them.  They were so incredibly passionate over dinner.  It also was great to re-connect with Andy’s wife, Amy, who swung by to say hello.

Infectious energy.  I need more of that in my life!

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