Nusym De-cloaks 2

Some follow-ups to yesterday’s post on Nusym

• Why de-cloak? Don’t most stealth startups emerge? Yes, at least according to Google and EET. But a good Star Trek allusion (or is it Harry Potter?) always enriches a blog post and the Duke “invisibility cloak” demonstration announcement had recently gone out over the mojo wire, so it was fresh in my mind. Technically I think you have a cloak of invisibility and boots of stealth, so a stealthy start would de-boot (debut?).
  • you might wonder how they could have been “on my radar” if they were in stealth, but think Jorn.
• Quiet mode (stealth mode): I am normally in favor of this, but if you are advertising jobs for folks and identifying yourself as associated with the startup in public forums it can’t hurt to at least talk about the problem you plan to solve. Other opinions on “stealth mode startups”
  • Peter Leppik’s Cult of the NDA against
  • Mark Fletcher’s “Stealth Mode Startups Suck” against
  • Paul Kedrosky’s “Stealth Mode Startup’s Don’t Suck” for
• Other “stealth mode startups” that have emerged in 20006 according to EE Times:
  • Gear6 (FYI their news page allows you to enter your E-mail to be notified of new developments).
  • Takumi Technology (they “emerge from stealth” here).
  • Micro Magic (reborn in stealth after being acquired by Juniper; their CEO believes “What separates Micro Magic from other EDA companies is that we are actually designers.”)
• The Company page contains a paragraph that looks to be more appropriate for B round solicitation than a customer oriented briefing:
  • The company’s technology is based upon ground-breaking research done at Stanford combined with 60+ years of design and verification experience of the founders. The company has attracted funding from individuals that are legends in the EDA industry and Silicon Valley and from venture capital firms prominent in the EDA industry. We have assembled a team of outstanding technologists and a seasoned management team.
  • You have to be careful that you don’t base your customer briefing on your funding pitch and instead work from scratch on customer pain points. I guess the counter-argument is that it establishes their financial viability.
• I got an e-mail from Howard Landman (he of the Law and Lemma) that pointed out Patterson’s Precept was coined by “David Patterson, co-author of Patterson and Hennessy computer architecture book, professor at U.C. Berkeley.” I have amended the original post to reflect this.

Details as they frolic in plain view but beyond understanding, like the invisible ineffable cues that a school of fish use to synchronize their movements.