Valar Labsis in the Healthcare IT Industry

Valar Labs

LightCyber was acquired by Palo Alto Networks. This is my version of the story. Ten years ago, I had a conversation with a mentor of mine, who was at that time Israel’s top . It was a cold day in September, the 2nd Lebanon war had recently ended and I had just returned from a long reserve duty and was looking for career advice. The seasoned investor who’s seen it all, told me about “growth-stage investment”, a term I knew little about at the time (and have been dealing with ever since). He was bullish about the tech segment in Israel and had two clear messages: venture capitalist growth 1. Unlike early stage VC investments — growth investing is about numbers, not people. 2. Don’t sell quickly. You invest to build a mammoth! (they didn’t call them unicorns back then…), we want an Israeli Nokia! (we all know how that went). He gave me his third and last piece of advice, when I already had one foot out the door: “most importantly!” he said, “don’t pay too much attention to other people’s advice… go with your gut!” Ten years have passed and over the past weeks I’ve been thinking about that conversation a lot, in the context of LightCyber’s acquisition by Palo Alto Networks. My relation to the deal is that I led LightCyber ‘s last financing round in the summer of 2016 and served on its board since. It is common knowledge that early-stage investments are “all about the people”. You meet a couple of wide-eyed entrepreneurs with a PowerPoint presentation and you need to make a decision. Growth investments require a much more data driven decision process, as the target companies already have substantial metrics, historical revenues, P&L profile and a sizeable team in place. But once in a while, even in later stage investments, you come across an investment decision which is largely driven by “the people” element. For me, the investment in LightCyber was exactly that. Yesterday Yesterday, Palo Alto Networks announced it has acquired LightCyber. Palo Alto is one of the world’s leading cyber security companies. It was a successful deal for the founders, employees and investors. And it is just the beginning, because now LightCyber’s team has even better chances to make the world a safer place, protecting companies and organizations from malicious hackers. 20 years ago… What most people don’t know is that the LightCyber story began over 20 years ago, at Boyar high-school in Jerusalem. Giora Engel, Michael Mumcuoglu and I met in 10th grade for the first time. Being much smarter than me (and to this day two of the brightest people I know), they both majored in Physics (I — in Geography). Despite being much smarter, they were still nice to me — and the three of us, together with a group of kids from our high school class actually founded our first company at the age of 15. Our company (creatively named Boyar Inc.) didn’t go public or get bought, but we won some prizes and came out with roughly $100 USD profit each, roughly 500X our capital invested, which is (still) my best investment ROI to date. Years passed and Michael & Giora (M&G) started another company together (MeterLive — audience measurement for outdoor advertising). They didn’t invite me to join them that time, but were kind enough to come and talk to me about it every now and then. I even introduced them to one of the best VCs I knew — Battery Ventures (BV). BV didn’t invest in MeterLive, but a couple of years later, BV became the largest shareholder in M&G’s newest venture — LightCyber… and BV’s Itzik Parnafes joined its board of directors. The call When it was time for another investment round at LightCyber, Itzik called me. By coincidence, when that call came, I had just walked out of a meeting with Israel’s “Mister Cyber”, CheckPoint’s co-founder Shlomo Kramer. At that time, Kramer had just recently joined LightCyber’s board of directors and told me about his long relationship with Gonen Fink, LightCyber’s CEO. Gonen was one of the first employees at CheckPoint and spent years as a part of their senior management team. He was recruited by M&G and Glilot (LightCyber’s first VC investor) as a professional CEO to take the company to its next phase. I had met Gonen several times before and highly appreciated his leadership style and his strategic thinking. And so, even before the due diligence started I had already made my decision regarding LightCyber. During the DD phase, my colleague Tomer Babai and I analyzed the market, competitive and strategic landscape. We consulted with subject matter experts and spoke to almost every player in the space. We met and spoke to many LightCyber’s customers who explained to us how superior the product was compared with any other network-based detection tool they had tested, specifically LightCyber’s ability to provide real threat detection with minimal amounts of false positives. The company already had real revenues and customers and we had a clear thesis on why it will be a good investment — but even with all that, at the end, the decision was based on the quality of people, whom I knew for many years. The night is dark and full of horrors Every Startup’s journey, even at growth stage, is a struggle. It is a rough trip through the snow desert north of the Westerose Wall and not a carefree tour of Disneyland. While the trip behind the wall can be difficult, dark and full of horrors, I knew that with Michael & Giora, Itzik & Shlomo and Gonen at the helm, it would be exciting to go for the scary & challenging journey, and I was willing to join them — frankly, anytime. So we (ClalTech) led the company’s last investment round and as an added bonus, I was joined by one of my favorite investors — Vertex’s Aviad Ariel. It has been an intense but short journey… Claltech led LightCyber’s last investment round in July 2016, and today, roughly seven months later, we are parting ways. Sale or Scale? This brings me back to my old mentor’s second piece of advice — not to invest with an eye to a quick exit but rather with the aim to build a large company. That was indeed our intention when we invested, though we always knew that one of the leading security vendors could proactively approach the company in the near term with the intent to buy it for its great product and people. Before investing — we all knew that the area north of the wall is dangerous. It is full of wildlings and giants and if you are not careful you can run into White-Walkers. But neither the competition nor the need to educate the market scared us. We were more than willing to continue to trudge through the snow and to fight and support the company through the next steps of its journey. But then came Palo Alto Networks- the mother of dragons… and we quickly realized it was the leader we wanted to align with, the true heir to the Iron Throne… Palo Alto Networks, led by the Israeli Nir Zuk, is a $14B market cap emerging leader in the cyber security world; with technology, vision and growth that are second to none. Under Palo Alto’s dragon wings the amazing LightCyber team will be able to move onwards and upwards faster and stronger than before, fighting harder to make the world safer against cyber villains. To avoid any misunderstanding, my old mentor was right: when you invest in more mature companies the metrics become critical. He was also right in saying that you should never invest in a company just looking for a quick exit. But sometimes a unique opportunity comes, which is fantastic for all parties — providing a promising future for the company’s employees and vision, a great outcome for all stakeholders. When that happens, my rule is to follow the entrepreneurs and join them in whichever direction they choose. At the end of the day — the keys to the company’s future are in their hands. When a great company wants you to join forces with it — it’s a badge of honor and a reason to be proud, and by no means is it a thing to apologize for. Should we build multi-billion companies in Israel? YES, of course. But it is NOT the only way to go. Once the founders and management communicated their view to the board — we gave them our full support and rolled up our sleeves to execute the best deal we could. The North remembers… A big thank you to my old friends for including me in this journey north of the wall. Good luck, and always looking forward to joining you again for another adventure. — — — — — — — — — — — — - is a common greeting in Braavos, meaning “all men must serve” in High Valyrian. It is the common response to the greeting (“all men must die”) — meant in the sense of “all men must (eventually) die,” sooner or later, somewhat like the Latin saying “memento mori”. This has absolutely nothing to do with my story, but I always wanted to use it as a headline, because I think it’s cool. Valar Dohaeris Valar Morghulis

Valar Dohaeris*

174 AI Tools To Try

The Birth of The Startup Through PayPal of The Early Days

Photo by on Adam Nir Unsplash U.S. Senator and National Monetary Commission chairman Nelson Aldrich. “[T]he study of monetary questions is one of the great causes of insanity." – Introduction Money Money is a technology designed to facilitate commerce and investment. Money was primarily , not economists, although first definitively defined by that great economist . developed by scientists William Stanley Jevons Economists study money.  Scientists defined and engineered it. When the notorious Scottish economist John Law meddled in French monetary policy, he infamously muddled it, destroying France financially. What is Money? summarizes the consensus well: Wikipedia “In Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875), famously analyzed money in terms of four functions: a , a common measure of value (or ), a standard of value (or ), and a . By 1919, Jevons's four functions of money were summarized in the : William Stanley Jevons medium of exchange unit of account standard of deferred payment store of value couplet Money's a matter of functions four, A Medium, a Measure, a Standard, a Store. “This couplet would later become widely popular in macroeconomics textbooks. Most modern textbooks now list only three functions, that of the , , and .” medium of exchange unit of account store of value Not for nothing did U.S. Senator Nelson Aldrich -- while reporting, in 1909, on the observations of his National Monetary Commission, in a of New York-- archly quote McLeod to the effect that: speech before the Economic Club "the study of monetary questions is one of the great causes of insanity." This was almost certainly a swipe at free silver demagogue and presidential candidate William Jennings “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold” Bryan. Yet perhaps Sen. Aldrich was prophesying my good friends, Gerard Daché, the founder and executive director of the Government Blockchain Association and Professor Jim Liew, of Johns Hopkins University. And me…. Not so incidentally, let us recall quantum physicist Niels Bohr’s comment to Wolfgang Pauli: “We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.” As it happens, money has a sterling scientific provenance. Ralph Benko addressing a gathering of the Government Blockchain Association January 27, 2022, National Press Club, Washington, DC.  Photo by Jim Liew. Money’s Provenance Copernicus Money's modern scientific provenance goes back at least to Nicholas Copernicus, the very same savant who persuaded the Earth to orbit the Sun instead of the Sun orbiting the Earth as previously believed. In 1526, yes, nearly 500 years ago, Copernicus wrote a brilliant treatise . It was my arcane privilege to serve as the lead co-editor of what may be its most esteemed modern translation. On the Minting of Money Copernicus warned: “ALTHOUGH THERE ARE COUNTLESS MALADIES that are forever causing the decline of kingdoms, princedoms, and republics, the following four (in my judgment) are the most serious: civil discord, a high death rate, sterility of the soil, and the debasement of the coinage. The first three are so obvious that everybody recognizes the damage they cause; but the fourth one, which has to do with money, is noticed by only a few very thoughtful people, since it does not operate all at once and at a single blow, but gradually overthrows governments and in a hidden, insidious way.” He went on to observe: “Money, or ‘coinage,’ is gold or silver that has been specially marked — in accordance with policy established by any government or head of government — for the purpose of reckoning the prices of things that are bought and sold. “Money is therefore a kind of common “measuring stick” for the valuation of things. Now, whatever is taken as a measure has to be stable — must keep to a fixed limit. Otherwise, public order will necessarily be disturbed, and the buyers and sellers of things will be cheated many times over, just as if basic measures of length [Latin ulna, or ell], bulk measure [Latin modius, or peck], or weight did not have a fixed quantity. “Now, I think that the relevant measure here is the valuation [Latin aestimatio] of the money as such, and, although this is founded in the quality of the metal it is made of, nevertheless, money’s material or metallic value [Latin valor] must be distinguished from its valuation as money [aestimatio]; for money can be valued more in itself than the material it is composed of and vice versa [i.e., its material value may be more than its actual valuation]. “It is necessary for money to be established: even though exchange could also take place simply by weights of gold or silver alone (since, by universal human consent, gold and silver are everywhere highly valued). “Nevertheless, money is needed for two reasons: first, because of the inconvenience of always having to carry around heavy weights of metal, and second, because the real value of the metals is not easily grasped by everyone at a glance. Thus it has become customary to mark money with a public seal, by means of which the proper amount of gold or silver is indicated as present in each coin, and that the public authority is to be trusted in this. … “The [material] value of money is lessened in many ways: either through defect of material alone, namely, when more bronze is mixed with silver than is right for that particular weight of coin; or through the loss of [total] weight of the coin, even though the proportion of bronze to silver is correct; or (and this is the worst case) through both of these defects occurring at the same time; finally, the value can just diminish on its own through usage, over a long passage of time, and this is the only reason for making new money. “The evidence of this happening is, if the silver in the money is found to be significantly less than what can be bought with it — and this is rightly considered debasement [or poverty: Latin penuria] of the currency.” The Prussian nobles who Copernicus was addressing did not heed his wise advice. They eventually suffered the fate he predicted. Newton In addition to observing an apple’s fall and founding modern physics, Sir Isaac Newton served, professionally, as the Master of the Royal Mint of Great Britain toward the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. Per the itself: Royal Mint “When Sir Isaac Newton came to the Royal Mint Britain’s finances were approaching crisis, with up to one in ten circulating coins believed to be forged.  His vision of matchless quality led him to root out and prosecute notorious counterfeiters, improve assaying techniques (the way coin quality is checked), and refine weights and measures to standards never seen before. “In 1699 Newton became Master of the Mint. After overseeing the new coinage for the accession of Queen Anne in 1702 he also supervised the huge task of bringing Scottish coinage into line with English coinage, following the Union of England and Scotland in 1707. Thanks to Newton’s vision, Royal Mint coins remain unrivaled in their accuracy and purity to this day.” How great a figure was Newton? Just for a moment, consider , delivered posthumously by his brother, Geoffrey, singing the praises of Newton in the 1940’s. the last words of the first celebrity economist, John Maynard Keynes ”Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.” And per : Christianity Today “Even in Newton’s lifetime, his contemporaries’ adulation verged on worship. Following his death in April 1727, Newton lay in state in Westminster Abbey for a week. At the funeral, his pall was borne by three earls, two dukes, and the Lord Chancellor. Voltaire observed, “He was buried like a king who had done well by his subjects.” “No scientist before or since has been so revered and interred with such high honor. “Who was this man whose stature has dominated the scientific landscape for three centuries? Why did his achievements have such an impact on society? What role did Newton’s faith play in his life and work? … “For Newton the world of science was by no means the whole of life. He spent more time on theology than on science; indeed, he wrote about 1.3 million words on biblical subjects. Yet this vast legacy lay hidden from public view for two centuries until the auction of his nonscientific writings in 1936. “Newton’s understanding of God came primarily from the Bible, which he studied for days and weeks at a time. He took a special interest in miracles and prophecy, calculating dates of Old Testament books and analyzing their texts to discover their authorship. In a manuscript on rules for interpreting prophecy, Newton noted the similar goals of the scientist and the prophecy expositor: simplicity and unity.” Although the Sermon on the Mountain contains an aphorism holding that you cannot serve both God and money, Newton proves a clear exception to that rule. What was Newton’s Monetary Legacy? A happy accident by Newton led to the gold standard, a monetary system which helped Great Britain prosper, proving instrumental in Britain’s becoming a dominant world power. : Wikipedia ”Great Britain accidentally adopted a de facto gold standard in 1717 when Sir__ __, then-master of the , set the exchange rate of silver to gold too low, thus causing silver coins to go out of circulation. Isaac Newton Royal Mint “A formal gold specie standard was first established in 1821, when adopted it following the introduction of the by the new Royal Mint at in 1816. Britain gold sovereign Tower Hill “As Great Britain became the world's leading financial and commercial power in the 19th century, other states increasingly adopted Britain's monetary system. … “The gold specie standard came to an end in the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Empire with the outbreak of .” World War I Contemporaneously with Newton, John Law, a Scottish economist, introduced (what some today call “fiat”) in France. This led to a speculative bubble, horrendous inflation, and both France's and Law's financial ruin. a paper money standard Per : Wikipedia “[Law] served as Controller General of Finances under the , who was regent for the juvenile . In 1716, Law set up a private in France. A year later it was nationalized at his request and renamed as . … Duke of Orleans Louis XV of France Banque Générale Banque Royale “Law also set up and directed the , funded by the Banque Royale. Its chaotic collapse has been compared to the 17th-century in Holland. The Mississippi bubble coincided with the in England, which allegedly took ideas from it. Law as a would win card games by mentally calculating …. The term " " was coined for beneficiaries of Law's scheme. Mississippi Company tulip mania South Sea bubble gambler odds millionaire … “Speculation gave way to panic as people flooded the market with future shares trading as high as 15,000 livres per share, while the shares themselves remained at 10,000 livres each. “By May 1720, prices fell to 4,000 livres per share, a 73 per cent decrease within a year. The rush to convert paper money to coins led to sporadic bank hours and riots… The descent of a relatively unknown man came as fast as his rise, leaving an economic power vacuum. Law's theories live on 300 years later and ‘captured many key conceptual points which are very much a part of modern monetary theorizing.’" Priestley Fast forward again, now toward the mid-to-late 1700s. One of the first great chemists, Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen and the inventor of carbonation (an invention upon which our soft-drink industry is based) wrote extensively and eruditely on the gold standard, providing an extensive lecture on the mechanics of money later published in his y (1793). Lectures on History and General Philosoph Per : Wikipedia “Lectures on History and General Policy (1788) is the published version of a set of lectures on history and government given by the 18th-century British to the students of . polymath Joseph Priestley Warrington Academy “The Lectures cover an array of topics—"forms of government, the feudal system, the rise of corporations, law, agriculture, commerce, the arts, finance and taxation, colonies, manners, population, war and peace"—demonstrating how all-encompassing Priestley believed the study of history to be. “Priestley offers a version of history in which all events are ‘an exhibition of the ways of God.’ Studying history and nature, according to Priestley, ‘leads us to the knowledge of his perfections and of his will.’ Understanding history thus allows one to comprehend the natural laws God established and the perfection towards which they allow the world to tend. This outlook is tied together with Priestley's belief in scientific progress and the improvement of the human race.’” millennial Stornetta and Haber The author taking a snapshot of Dr. Stornetta and Congressional blockchain thought leader Lizzy Fallon, Capitol Hill, January 10, 2022. Photo by Jim Liew. Fast forward yet again, to the late 20th century. In 1991, Dr. W. Scott Stornetta, together with Dr. Stuart Haber, published . This was the breakthrough that is the blockchain, cited three times (out of eight citations) in Satoshi's white paper. How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document Per , Coingeek " Working at Bellcore Labs in the 1990s, scientists Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta were allowed to pick their own research projects. For Scott, a problem worth solving was the authentication of digital documents: how could you be sure the version you were looking at had not been altered from its original? “The two worked as a team and were on the point of proving to themselves that the question of trust made the problem insoluble: there always needed to be some independent person or body to verify authenticity—but what if they were also part of a collusion? But then, Scott says, as he was waiting to go into a restaurant (author’s note, as he told me, a Friendly’s) with his family, he had a brainwave. “If you needed to keep adding extra trusted parties to vouch for the honesty of the existing players, then, logically, the list would expand infinitely until the whole world was required. And that still wouldn’t be enough. Scott’s insight was, as he explains it, ‘I realised that if you turn that upside down and created a system of interlinked documents with essentially everyone as a witness, then you had, in fact, solved the problem.’” Behold the seed of cryptocurrency, the money of the future. Conclusion And there you have a potted history of the scientists who invented money as we knew it and know it today: Copernicus, Newton, Priestley. And the secret origin story of future money by scientists: Stornetta and Haber. I have treated you to the scientific provenance of the key makers of money, with brief detours to the distinguished monetary economist Jevons, a passing reference to the first celebrity economist, John Maynard Keynes, and a revelation of the notorious economist John Law, proponent of promiscuously issued paper money with its attendant catastrophic debasement. And here we are today at the Government Blockchain Association's . Future of Money, Governance and the Law Contemplating the contributions of five distinguished scientists, coupled with brief forays to three influential economists, gives us insight into the potential future of money, governance and the law. What possibilities for greater prosperity, equity and financial stability does the blockchain create? So glad you asked. Let us reprise the view of the great discoverer of oxygen who offers: “A version of history in which all events are ‘an exhibition of the ways of God;’ studying history and nature, according to Priestley, to lead “us to the knowledge of [God’s] perfections and of [God’s] will." Let us reprise the quest of the great Newton, who sought, both as to prophecy and science, simplicity and unity. What possibilities does the blockchain create? Welcome. You’ve come to the right place. Adapted from at the Government Blockchain Association’s the National Press Club January 27, 2022. remarks presented The Future of Money, Governance and the Law, Dedicated to Ellen Stevens, editor extraordinaire.

A Brief History of Money

Slime sourcing: it’s to the letter of libre licenses, but it’s certainly not to the spirit. Let’s talk about a trend in free and open source software that makes me uncomfortable. slime source (noun) 1. A project which is under an open (libre) license but which places restrictions on the official compiled binaries or usage in a commercial context through non-licensing means 2. A project which satisfies the requirements of being Free Software but which violates the spirit of Free Software. slime sourcing (verb) 1. releasing a project under an open (libre) license, but creating restrictions on the use of freely provided binaries 2. hiding the source code of an open (libre) licensed project, using trademarks, or other means to attempt to curb users from distributing their own compiled binaries or using it in a commercial setting 3. Weasel-Wording your way into Commons Clause, e.g. through the program’s behavior I first saw this anti-pattern in Free Software over in font-design land with the Birdfont project. is a typeface/font editor for Windows, OSX, Linux — the big three — written in Vala. It’s an astoundingly capable program, but there’s… Some sticky bits to it. The source is available via GPLv3, but the author intentionally hides the source repository and pushes users to pay money. It in fact, goes so far as to when you first start Birdfont, it asks you what your intent is. If you answer that you’re using this for commercial means, it informs you to go buy a license, and either makes you quit or answer that you’re not using it for commercial use. Birdfont tell the user that commercial use is prohibited: It takes some wrangling, but you could take out the checks, add some of the features that aren’t public yourself, and run your own fork of Birdfont. But why create needless forks of projects when a happy medium can be found? Another example of slime sourcing is Caddy. Caddy is a high-performance, Apache2 licensed, https-auto http/2 server written in Go. It’s a fantastic bit of software, and I was all set to use it until I noticed that they’re placing (artificially limited) restrictions on the compiled binaries that they’re putting out: What you see when you go to download Caddy They’re totally free to do this, but it feels slimy (hence why I call it slime sourcing.) There’s implications here: That commercial use is outside the scope of the license that Caddy is licensed under (Apache2 makes no restrictions and explicitly allows commercial use of the software). Matt Holt — also author of the open source CSV parser library Papa Parse — makes the argument here that : the whole concept of Free Software itself is a sham Today you will notice an addition to the page: a “Payment” section. Is Caddy no longer free software? Download The truth is, it never was. There’s no such thing as free software. The question is, “Who pays the price?" (correction: previously, I stated that Matt worked on Sublime Text; His previous work was on Papa Parse, a CSV parser, and I misinterpreted the use of “my” — my bad!) Matt decided to push for commercial licensing of the Caddy server back in 2016. His argument revolves around the fact that there are bills to pay and mouths to feed. He’s not wrong: living costs money, and software needs living, breathing people to be developed. If software developed itself, we’d be in a vastly different world (one where I, and Matt, would be out of a job!) When Matt made the choice to change up some more of the presentation, Hacker News got wind of it and there were some interesting comments made: Wow, in the course of this HN thread I went from about Caddy, to deciding against using it. Definitely not cool to immediately threaten legal action almost instantly after forking. Definitely not cool to force a header. I’ll be sticking with nginx. [ ] learning source A potential user just went from “I think this is useful to me” to walking away. Another commenter mentions the underhandedness of the change: after examining the website more I feel the need to write another comment expressing how poorly this is being handled. The website is very misleading — on the download page, it now asks you to pick a license, and says that the “Personal” version is for only personal use and you need to pay for the commercial version. There’s no indication until you click through to the full pricing page that the open source version even exists. On that page, you have the same personal/commercial breakdown, also stating that the personal version is strictly for non-commercial use, but with a sidebar mentioning open source. It assumes you understand the Apache 2.0 license and makes no attempt to clarify that businesses can use the open source version. The authors are also wasting no time in going after forks to complain about trademark infringement, so if you want to distribute your own patched Caddy builds you can expect to hear from their lawyers. Absolutely devoid of class. [ ] source [ed. note: a fork, called Wedge, was threatened over using the name caddy in the source] A third example comes from another project I nearly wanted to use: OnlyOffice. OnlyOffice is a very well built, commercially supported groupware suite that includes a desktop client that really could challenge the Microsoft suite in terms of features and usability. Their cloud service can be had for $4/user/mo when bought for a year, but when you want the on-premise options, there’s some confusing options: There are enterprise licenses, development licenses, community licenses… Their enterprise on-premise license is proprietary , but then you scroll down, you’ll see a tiny link (here, ) pointing to a binary distribution set of the GPL/AGPL3 sources. This isn’t on their “Download” page either, hiding it in a footnote of the enterprise page. enlarged for detail pricing OnlyOffice restricts the number of actively open documents (artificially) in its source-derived “Community” form to 20, though to their credit, that page links to their GitHub organization and includes a very convenient Docker script to get you going: Yes, they suggest Windows. Their installer is actually quite nice, which is impressive for free software. It’s not _not-_libre, though Adding these sorts of restrictions make it non-free software — the copyright owner is allowed to do whatever they want with their source, the user could in theory patch that out as they see fit or fork, and these sorts of practices are not unethical in the eyes of the Free Software Foundation; to quote Stallman : doesn’t per se What Is Free Software, writes Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis. Again, in the context of commercial use, Stallman has similar thoughts, through : GPL Exceptions Selling exceptions means that the copyright holder of the code releases it to the public under a free software license, then lets customers pay for permission to use the same code under different terms, for instance allowing its inclusion in proprietary applications. The three projects here: BirdFont, Caddy, and OnlyOffice, are well within their rights, both under their respective licenses and under the philosophy of the GNU project (in the case of BirdFont and OnlyOffice) to sell usage of the software: the source is available, freely distributable, and if someone was so inclined to, they may modify the software to their liking. That’s not what my complaint is about. It’s the deception and underhanded limitations that I take offense with. It’s the soft limitations, the extra-license limitations and social pressure against that I take offense at. I believe that there should be an that someone should be able to run libre licensed, publicly open source software without fee should they put the work into making it work, as well as share those executables, packages, etc. under the same license. flexing your rights as a user implication Caddy discourages the distributing of builds of Caddy itself by locking the name behind a trademark: the README includes at the very bottom the text The name of the software is “Caddy”, not “Caddy Server” or “CaddyServer”. Please call it “Caddy” or, if you wish to clarify, “the Caddy web server”. See . Caddy is a registered trademark of Light Code Labs, LLC. The name “Caddy” is trademarked: brand guidelines The sources to Caddy are The name is not, a practice allowed under the Apache license, which is the same reason that prompted the Debian project to rebrand Firefox as Iceweasel and the GNU project to hard fork Firefox and other Mozilla projects as icecat, GNUZilla, etc. This, in my opinion, makes software like Caddy slime sourced: you’re free to use it and compile it is there, but there’s an implied amount of work in order to distribute that which you’ve built from that source. libre. These are just modern examples. In the past, we had a rather famous example of XChat. XChat is an IRC client that was released under the terms of the GPL, but which required payment for use on Windows. Free-as-in-beer variants such as XChat-wdk (now HexChat) were regularly built and distributed, often refuting the claims from the XChat Developer that it was “simply too hard” to do the work for free — often with the maintainers of the free-beer variations offering to help, from what I understand. So what? While I agree that there needs to be a commercial space for free software, there are now connotations that cannot be avoided. The idea behind Libre Software is that because I have the source, and because the source is shared with me under a free license, I am free to use it as I wish (Stallman’s clarifies this, and the OSI definition explicitly denote this). There exists a gap that has been filled with what I am beginning to call slime sourcing. freedom zero Again, let me be clear: I have problem with Matt, OnlyOffice, or the maintainer of BirdFont wanting/needing to make their monthly rents and dues off commercial of the software, even have features in a commercial variant that are only available in the paid variation (This is what the business calls features) so long as those added features don’t boil down to purely artificial limits such as user count. I don’t even mind them being a little stingy — Bills have to be paid — I just find it disingenuous to hide under the guise that only would run things from source, or place barriers in front of users simply because they’re building from source (such as is the case with BirdFont.) no support Value Added developers De-sliming: It doesn’t have to be this way These projects, as we’ve seen, are libre. They are licensed under libre licenses and are source-provided. In the case of Caddy, there have been restrictions placed outside the source and its license to keep you from using something commercially, and in the other two, the source itself, outside of the license, keeps you from using the software as you wish. technically Projects like Caddy, OnlyOffice, and Birdfont should consider looking at the successes of others: ntop support for users who need it. ActiveState has off supporting Libre languages, including Python, Perl, and Go. maintains , the most popular bake-at-home VoIP solution. There are even other web servers that have picked up the same model! Nginx is libre, but the developer . Wordpress is the most deployed piece of Libre web software, as is one of its plugins, WooCommerce. Both rank in the #3 and #4 spots of BuiltWith’s ranking and provide a steady stream of income for the company that owns them, Automattic. offers commercial built their lifeblood Digium Asterisk offers commercial support and training for a fee To put it another way: Don’t license your software as Libre and then weasel-word your way into the commons clause or worse, go Doing so is slime sourcing your software, and in the end, it limits your customer base and hurts the overall community. full commons clause. If Asterisk required a commercial license above a certain number of active SIP sessions, nobody would use it. If Wordpress attempted what Caddy has, it wouldn’t surpass Ghost by a gigantic margin. It’s worth noting that Ghost is licensed under a permissive license, and makes no restrictions on using it from source, only noting that there is maintenance and upkeep that must be done to keep things running smooth. Ghost makes money from their support and hands-off solution. If you’ve already slime sourced, reach out to your community and begin the process of de-sliming. Wear “We’re ” as a badge of pride and hold true: show that the source is available, tell people what they get for ponying up money for your software, help people make an informed choice between running it themselves on their own, having a guiding hand, or letting you do all the hard work. Uphold the of Freedom 0 and the OSI definition’s point 6 and don’t discriminate based on endeavor, be it business or personal, through purely software limitations in the libre source. Seek to make your software good enough that people want to pay for it and contribute . It might make sense to offer a dual-licensed version for commercial entities or add that you produce and support commercially. I believe that doing so will extend the audience of your software beyond what it is today, as has been seen with products which were built in the open, such as Wordpress, Nginx, or even software such as QGIS, which suggests of commercial support. libre spirit back an exception that allows the libre variant to load non-libre libraries many different sources There money to be made in free software. The value comes in support and features that make sense at a larger, commercial scale. Truly successful free software gets into the hands of everyone — this is the story of Apache, Wordpress, and Nginx — and when the time comes that users need help, you’ll be the the most qualified to deliver the things that businesses need. is

Let’s Get Away From Slime Sourcing

Objects life-cycle is crucial. A mistake in determining an object’s lifecycle can lead to resource (e.g., memory, fd) leaks as the resource owned cannot be properly released and recycled for use. When the leak accumulates to a certain level, it crashes the whole system.Objects life-cycle is also complicated since the ownership of one object might be relinquished by, transferred to, or shared with different entities which include but are not limited to variables, arguments, modules, data structures, containers, and threads. Again, the resource has to be released and recycled by one of the owners at some undetermined point.There is no de-facto standard to determine objects life-cycle. Utilities like (garbage collection) that is used in Java, used in Objective-C and all those pointers (ptrs) in C++, all have their pros and cons. However, this article is not about pros and cons but is focused on C++ resource management helper classes, Smart Pointer, , and . future function GC ARC shared_ptr auto_ptr unique_ptr Smart pointer A is a wrapper class of a normal pointer. defines life-cycle with a reference count that reflects how many time the smart pointer object is referenced. smart pointer Smart point Next, I will show a simple implementation of a . The code is for demonstration purposes only, thus, there is no sanity check, no exception handling and no thread-safety guarantee. smart pointer #include <stdio.h> template < typename T > class SmartPointer {private:T* _pRes;int* _refCount; void _release() {if(--(*_refCount) == 0) {printf("---Valar Morghulis:%d\n",*_refCount);delete _pRes;delete _refCount;} else {printf("---not today:%d\n",*_refCount);}} public:SmartPointer() : _pRes(NULL), _refCount(NULL) {_refCount = new int(0);printf("SP default cons:%d\n",*_refCount);} SmartPointer(T* pRes) : _pRes(pRes), _refCount(NULL) {_refCount = new int(1);printf("SP cons:%d\n",*_refCount);} SmartPointer(const SmartPointer<T>& sp) : _pRes(sp._pRes), _refCount(sp._refCount) {(*_refCount)++;printf("SP copy cons:%d\n",*_refCount);} SmartPointer<T>& operator = (const SmartPointer<T>& sp) {this->_release(); // release the last resource it points to_pRes = sp._pRes;_refCount = sp._refCount;(*_refCount)++;printf("SP assign:%d\n",*_refCount);return *this;} ~SmartPointer() {this->_release();} // to mimic a real pointerT& operator* () {return *_pRes;} // to mimic a real pointerT* operator-> () {return _pRes;}}; class AClass {public:AClass() { printf("aclass cons\n"); }~AClass() { printf("aclass des\n"); }}; void l2(SmartPointer<AClass>& p) {SmartPointer<AClass> use3 = p;        // >> SP copy cons:3}                                       // >> ---not today:2 void l1(SmartPointer<AClass>& p) {SmartPointer<AClass> use2 = p;        // >> SP copy cons:2l2(p);}                                       // >> ---not today:1 int main() {AClass *res = new AClass();           // >> aclass consSmartPointer<AClass> aSmartP(res);    // >> SP cons:1l1(aSmartP);}                                       // >> ---Valar Morghulis:0// >> aclass des Result: aclass consSP cons:1SP copy cons:2SP copy cons:3---not today:2---not today:1---Valar Morghulis:0aclass des To briefly explain the code above: ‘s life-cycle is no more than that of an ordinary class. Thus, logic flow going out of a (function) scope destructs it; SmartPointer has two properties, and , both are allocated from heap. Thus, logic flow going out of a (function) scope DOES NOT destruct them; SmartPointer _pRes _refCount each time a is constructed with a valid (of type ), the plus ; SmartPointer _pRes T _refCount 1 each time a is destructed, in our case, by a logic flow going out of a scope, the minus ; SmartPointer _refCount 1 however, the destruction of does not necessarily lead to a destruction of : SmartPointer _pRes a) when is still larger than , simply reduce the and print _refCount 0 SmartPointer _refCount not today b) only when is set to by the minus, destructs the resource referred by and and print _refCount 0 SmartPointer _pRes All men must die So s work as handles that are used by different parts of a program to keep track and to control the resource instance. When all handles are destroyed, the resource is considered “not used”, and is deleted as well. In the end of this article, I will show some real handles that embody in real world. smart pointer smart pointer The sample showcases the usage of in program that is linear, which is rarely the case in real scenario. Rather, as mentioned before, the resource (i.e., the instance of ) can be shared, by multiple data structure and variables in parallel. smart pointer AClass shared_ptr (C++11) is the ’s implementation of the that is more robust than the demo code listed above. And it does not generate dodgy log. shared_ptr std smart pointer Automatic pointer An , though looks similar to , is totally different. It is a convenient helper class that destructs the resource whenever the logic flow going out of the scope, just in case a programmer forgets. To some extent, it makes a pointer (that refers to a memory chunk dynamically allocated in runtime) works similar to a stack variable (statically allocated in compiling time). automatic pointer smart pointer Example, AutoPointer v1.0: #include <stdio.h> template < typename T > class AutoPointer {private:T* _pRes; public:AutoPointer() : _pRes(NULL) {} AutoPointer(T* pRes) : _pRes(pRes) {} AutoPointer(const AutoPointer<T>& ap) : _pRes(ap._pRes) {} AutoPointer<T>& operator = (const AutoPointer<T>& ap) {delete _pRes;_pRes = ap._pRes; return \*this; } ~AutoPointer() {delete _pRes;} // to mimic a real pointerT& operator* () {return *_pRes;}// to mimic a real pointerT* operator-> () {return _pRes;}}; class AClass {public:AClass() {printf(“cons\n”);}~AClass() {printf(“des\n”);}int i;}; void l1(AutoPointer<AClass>& p) {AutoPointer<AClass> use2 = p;}//the resource has already been deallocated here int main() {AClass *res = new AClass();res->i = 5;AutoPointer<AClass> use1(res);l1(use1);}// abort, repeat deallocating pointer Result: consdesdesautop(1148,0x7fff74eff000) malloc: *** error for object 0x7f9940c03240: pointer being freed was not allocated*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug[1] 1148 abort ./a.out As given by the code snippet above, works internally like a simplified that deallocates the resource regardless of the reference count (in fact, there is no reference count at all). automatic pointer smart pointer The shows a major drawback of the : the ownership can not be transferred (to ). As a result, even though the resource has been deallocate in , still consider itself as the owner of the and deallocates the pointer one time more. coredump automatic pointer l1() l1() main() automatic pointer How about implementing the copy constructor as well as the assignment operator so the ownership can be properly transferred? Example, AutoPointer v2.0: ......AutoPointer(AutoPointer<T>& ap) : _pRes(ap._pRes) {ap._pRes = NULL;} AutoPointer<T>& operator = (AutoPointer<T>& ap) {delete _pRes;_pRes = ap._pRes; ap.\_pRes = NULL;  
return \*this; }...... Result: consdes All seems good. Yet it is another example of “fixing one bug leads to another”. The new problem is that the two semantics, ownership-transferring and copy, are coupled. So it is not compatible to some of the library functions such as that takes one extra copy (as pivot in quick sort) as it destroys the previous one that is still in use. The detailed explanation of the problem can be found , and thanks for pointing out the mistake in the original implementation. std::sort here patatahooligan is the implementation of the . As discussed above, it is either not very interesting or problematic, so it is now deprecated. And we should use instead. std::auto_ptr std automatic pointer std::unique_ptr std::unique_ptr (C++11) is the ’s replacement of in C++11. With the newly added , the ownership of a can be safely transferred to another entity. Moreover, the copy semantic is disabled for s to avoid ambiguity we saw in AutoPointer v2.0. Like , the last owner of the pointer is responsible for deallocation. std::unique_ptr std std::auto_ptr rvalue and move semantics unique_ptr unique_ptr automatic pointer #include <iostream>#include <vector>#include <memory>#include <cstdio>#include <fstream>#include <cassert> class AClass {public:AClass() {printf(“cons\n”);}~AClass() {printf(“des\n”);}int i;}; std::vector< std::unique_ptr<AClass> > v; void l1() {std::unique_ptr<AClass> p1(new AClass());    // >> consp1->i = 1;v.push_back(std::move(p1));std::unique_ptr<AClass> p2(new AClass());    // >> consp2->i = 2;v.push_back(std::move(p2));} // p1 and p2 are not destructed here int main() {l1();for(auto& p: v) printf(“%d\n”, p->i);}                                              // >> des// >> des Result: conscons12desdes As shown in the code snippet above, the is preserved across different owners. When the ownership has been to , does not deallocates the resource anymore. This gains a much wider usage. unique pointer moved vector v l1() unique pointer N.b., I would rather believe is the major reason of the introduction of the new compared to the improvement gained here, the is less significant. unique pointer move semantic. Because optimization enabled by and move rvalue Take home “I can understand the stuffs, but I’m not sure if I still remember them exactly next morning.” Sure. I will find some real world counterparts to enhance your memory. a is like a handle of a video game console. std::shared_ptr The console (resource) is “ by multiple players with handles, and the game should continue even if there is only one player left. Thus, “Game over” only when all players stop playing. shared” a is like a portable game console. std::unique_ptr One player at a time, and one should “ it to let another to play. “Game over” when the LAST player stops playing. move” a is a std::auto_ptr as it can not be easily d. move If you like this read please clap for it or follow by clicking the buttons. Thanks, and hope to see you the next time. Originally published at holmeshe.me .

Smart Pointer, shared_ptr, Automatic Pointer and unique_ptr

Local VCs in Berlin — A Network Analysis

My first ever HackerNoon post attempts to broadly make sense of my journey over the last year; the challenges and opportunities I faced of leaving Google, becoming a solo founder; and from idea and a $50k investment from my roommate, to completing Techstars and raising $3.3m in funding from Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. Our company is currently headquartered in London with a newly opened San Fran office. There are now 18 of us, living the dream and working hard. Caveat: I took great enjoyment from badly weaving Star Wars references into this article. ‘Never tell me the odds!’ I first met Jon Bradford, the Managing Director of Techstars London in a cafe in Clerkenwell in October 2014. I had an idea, and this was the man that was going to help me. Jon was upfront, saying he’d only taken that the meeting because I had been introduced by Google Ventures (a lesson in the power of serendipity that I have never forgotten). He went on, blankly pointing out that the odds of me getting into Techstars, as a solo founder, with no product, no team, no business plan, and looking, as I did, about 12 years old, were about the same as Northern Ireland winning the Euros in 2016. I loved his humour but quickly realised that any chance of using our Northern Irish connection was, more than likely, out the window. I knew it was going to be a tough sell after reading a Wall Street Journal article that quoted David Cohen, CEO of Techstars, and a number of the Y-Combinator guys saying that they did accept solo founders. In fact Paul Graham, puts being a ‘solo founder’ as the number one factor that will kill a startup. And there I was, alone except for a big idea and less than a year of computer science under my belt. not I was all about out of hope, and wanted to crawl back to my warm, cosy, Google team of designers, creatives and engineers. It was there that I was in my element, doing what I did best, solving problems, designing UI, and eating three free lunches a day. But despite the rocky start, the meeting lasted lasted 45 minutes, something I considered an achievement given what I’d heard about Jon. And just as the meeting ended, Jon threw me a bone. He said he loved it. I looked at him like he was from another planet. He said getting me onto the program would be a challenge, but pending a few other chats with his colleagues, he would endorse me, on one condition. That I leave the warmth of the Google mothership and the bubble I had been raised in for the last couple of years. Tatooine So there I was, out in the cold reality of the startup world without a wingman. I had nothing more than a place on the Techstars programme and a generous cheque from my housemate, Courtney Grant. (One of the conditions we wrote into the term sheet; I wasn’t allowed to introduce him as his banker friend anymore). It was then that the hardest part of my journey as a solo founder began. Aside from the fact that it was a huge personal challenge, financially and culturally, going through the accelerator programme put me completely out of my depth professionally and exposed me in a way I had not been for many years. Despite yearning for a bigger challenge during my entire tenure at Google, the months at Techstars that followed my departure were brutal, and I hated it. During the Techstars process, they have a fortnight they called ‘mentor madness’. It’s like speed dating for mentors — with people who are successful in some field related to tech startups (or not). Unlike others, I didn’t have a co-founder there to back me up, support me while these ‘experts’ tore my idea apart, but more importantly, to be there to put the idea back together, to foster and improve it. For the first two months I felt like i was throwing a tennis ball against a wall, with idea after idea smacking me right back in my face. I felt like Luke, abandoned on Tatooine with not a glimmer of hope in sight. I needed a co-founder, someone to be there to support me, encourage me to try new things and push boundaries. Without this partner in crime, I was never even going to ‘show up’ as Tak Lo, a director of Techstars put it. And so, I didn’t, literally. After two weeks of the mentors ripping my idea (not even a product) to shreds, I’d had enough and I ran away. I spent the next two weeks at home, researching and reading, more about how to survive an accelerator than how to run a company. Lesson number one: And I can’t stress this hard enough, never do a fucking startup without a co-founder. Ever. Never ever let it be about the equity. There’s a reason why these incubators don’t accept solo founders. Because it’s brutal and it’s way too easy to give up when there’s no one else to let down. Jedi Knights Luckily, I didn’t give up completely. Before long, I found myself back in the room and began to see the silver lining of being a lone ranger. Being on my own, I ended up naturally relying heavily on the network of mentors around me, much more than others. The mentors I had managed to persuade to help me, people like Matt Webb (Berg.com),Scott Dodson (Gamesys), Adam Ross (Goldcrest Capital), Guy Podjarny (Snyk.io) and Richard Fearn (Friday Club London) would become a lifeline for me in the first six months of the company. Likewise Mark Evans, of Balderton Capital, who around this time, I can make a good guess, was spending considerably more time with me than some of his much larger investments. I would definitely not be in the position I am today if I hadn’t listened to those around me and taken their advice, mainly encouraging me to make a conscious effort to forget what I thought I knew and acknowledge that I was nowhere near as smart as I thought I was. Because, for all my complaining and initial resistance of the program, I would never be where I am without it. As a solo founder, you will need an ecosystem like this around you. Lesson number two: Build a network around you. Forget everything you know about the world of working, accept that your way is not the right way and embrace the people who can help in light of not having a co-founder. Fueling the battleship Keeping the lights on was a constant worry for me the whole time and has been until we started getting some serious traction and subsequent funding. The first fundraise was the hardest. I had left Google, with a $50k cheque in my pocket from my flatmate who invested in Kalo, with the only certainty in my life being that I knew the money wasn’t going to last me very long. Like many start-ups, I had rejection after rejection, going door to door at VC firms, trying to get intros to any angel investors I could find online but it wasn’t working. I quickly came to the conclusion that unless you are coming out of an environment in which you are already immersed in that world, with that network of capital at your disposal, finding funding as a solo founder is next to impossible without an accelerator program like Techstars. It was Techstars that introduced me to investors, both directly and indirectly, and ultimately led to our most well known round of funding, led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, which has since catapulted us into a Silicon Valley network of ex-Stanford, ex-Paypal / Palantir power players we could have only dreamed of having access to 12 months ago. One of things that was key to landing our second funding round (totalled $2.75m) was that I wasn’t selling myself anymore. I was selling a dream team of passionate hungry and experienced professionals, demonstrating that we not only knew what we wanted to achieve but had a firm grasp on how we were going to that. At seed stage of a startup, the investors have in the majority of cases, nothing to go on but your team and your idea. So if you’re on your own, you need talented people — any form of serious fundraising requires a founding team. Lesson number 3: You won’t get big funding alone. Use your network and build a team of people that angels and VC funds can believe in. Strength in numbers. Taking on the Empire The main thing above all else that still baffles me is how I persuaded two of the most dedicated, talented (and patient) people to join Kalo, and irrevocably change the future of the company. When Kalo was just me and one junior engineer, with no Peter Thiel involved, no $3.5m in funding and no headline stage opportunities at TechCrunch Disrupt we made two game-changing hires. Fergus Doyle, previously the Head of Platform engineering at OneFineStay and Akosa Melifonwu, an enterprise account executive from Salesforce decided to join me on my journey, but it took a very long time to get to that point. Hiring talent as a solo founder is tough. I had no idea if I could trust them or if they would share the same passion or vision as I did. I interviewed over 30 candidates in total for their positions (CTO and Head of Sales respectively) and without a co-founder it was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make, as the buck literally stopped with me. As a young startup, with an inexperienced founder, investing in the wrong people at the beginning given we had a limited roadmap/funding to prove our concept, would ultimately determine whether Kalo sank or swam. Persuading candidates to even have a chat with me, let alone leave their secure jobs and join me on my mad, solo journey was a challenge in itself. During this period, I relied even further on my now slightly larger network, having investors that hadn’t even put cash in Kalo yet interview the final few candidates for me. These candidates took five months to find. Lesson number four: if going to be a solo founder, you better be bloody good with people and you better trust your instincts as you’re the one who can build your founding team. only Master and Apprentice Finally, back to the man that helped start it all, someone that despite the lambasting during Techstars, couldn’t have been a better person for me to be mentored by. Jon Bradford constantly gave me a hard time, questioned everything — from the way I spoke, how I dress, to how I answered questions, to almost every step I made along the way. It is my adoption of what he taught and preached at Techstars and his work ethic that still influences me and my team, everyday at Kalo. Jon is still on standby when I need him, giving me hiring advice, funding strategy help and is always someone I can vent to. Finding a mentor that is not only a great fit for you as a solo founder, but as a human is something I can’t ever really put into words how grateful I am for the people I had around me. The fact that with mine I landed Jon and a group of individuals that were not only compatible with me but willing to be patient, teach me, push me and spend late nights with me, is well, now how would I put it, as about as likely as Northern Ireland winning the Euros in 2016.

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Since n.d.

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