Daniela Barbosa recently did an interesting post, A VC Calls for Startup Ideas and I Ponder What I am Doing at Dow Jones, on the list of Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund by VC Paul Graham. She discussed a number of his desired concepts as they relate to her work at Dow Jones. I highly recommend the post.
I was also drawn to look at Paul Graham’s complete list and from this interesting desired idea - Hardware/software hybrids. Paul writes “Most hackers find hardware projects alarming…Hardware is already mostly software. What I mean by a hardware/software hybrid is one in which software plays a very visible role. If you work on an idea of this type you'll tend to have the field to yourself, because most hackers are afraid of hardware, and most hardware companies can't write good software. (One reason your iPod isn't made by Sony is that Sony can't write iTunes.).”
We put our social software into a piece of hardware for many reasons but security is certainly one of them. In addition, with a rapidly changing technology, we did not want clients to have to deal with implementation concerns and face any issues with upgrades. We literally adopted a plug and play approach through a hardware/software hybrid to get things not only inside the firewall but also inside the box, the one we provide. It also enables one click back up and restores, one click upgrades, and automatic authentication. We find that many of our large customers appreciate the added security. It is nice to get the added validation of the concept through Paul Graham’s list.

