Martin Kleppmann: To Silicon Valley and back again, with two exits along the way
In our latest podcast Peter talks to successful entrepreneur-turned-academic Martin Kleppmann. The two explore the companies that Martin has founded, and exited, including a move from the UK to the USA and back again. Alongside this, Martin discusses how he and his co-founders raised funds on both sides of the Atlantic, and the differences between Angel Investors in each country.
Martin grew up in Germany, before moving to the UK to study at Cambridge University. Once he had completed his degree he decided that the entrepreneurial life looked interesting and exciting, so he set up Go Test It. He ran the company for less than three years before software provider Red Gate bought the company.
Having worked in a startup co-working space within Red Gate prior to its purchase, Martin met a number of like-minded entrepreneurs. From here his story takes an even more exciting turn as he co-founded Rapportive and took the big decision to relocate to Silicon Valley in the USA, benefiting from the Y Combinator accelerator program. Again, it took him and his co-founders less than three years to find a buyer, this time LinkedIn.
Having founded two companies and worked for LinkedIn in a relatively short space of time, Martin then turned to another passion, data systems and applications. He has subsequently released the book “Designing Data-Intensive Applications” for O'Reilly, created an illustrated guide to distributed data systems, and is now back at Cambridge University, this time working as a research associate.
Produced by Mark Cotton, Twitter.
To read the podcast transcription please CLICK HERE - Powered by Speechmatics
Podcast links:
Martin's website (link here)
Go Test It - cross browser and platform testing environment for web developers has been bought by fellow Cambridge (UK) outfit Red Gate Software.
Rapportive - an email add-on that displays social media info about contacts inside the users' inbox, bought by LinkedIn.
Y Combinator - provides seed funding for startups.
'Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems' - Book written by Martin (available here)
The big ideas behind reliable, scalable and maintainable system, published by O'Reilly.