Gawker: valleywag, splunk

Splunk soft-fires CEO

Owen Thomas — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:00:00 EDT

When a company outgrows its founder-CEO, the fashionably euphemistic thing to do is to allow him to "step up" and take a job as chairman, or chief product visionary, or Beloved Leader — something that looks good on a business card. No such luck for Michael Baum, the boisterous cofounder of Splunk, who has simply been replaced as the enterprise-search startup's CEO. Godfrey Sullivan, who ran Hyperion, a business-software company acquired by Oracle last year, is displacing him.

Baum, a self-described "serial entrepreneur," will continue, awkwardly, as the company's head of strategy and corporate development. Funny, don't those sound like the CEO's job? This should prove entertaining to watch — especially if Baum reverts to loudly drunk form. But if Splunk follows the rest of the script — hire experienced CEO, sell or go public, make founders rich — Baum will have all the more reason to shout.

(Full disclosure: Valleywag very special correspondent Paul Boutin is married to Splunk executive Christina Noren, and you're not.)

Sysadmin of the Year contest goes video

Paul Boutin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:40:00 EDT

Slashdot is sleeping on the job. Not only is this Sysadmin Appreciation Day, it's also the launch of this year's Sysadmin of the Year contest, which has thankfully woken up and ditched the written testimonials for self-produced video submissions. Send us copies! This'll be rich. Oh, and full disclosure for journo-ethics wonks: I used to work across from super-sysadmin Mark Cohen (pictured) at Splunk. I'm still married into lots and lots of their stock. Hahaha pageview bonus, that's a good one.

Full meta disclosure

Paul Boutin — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:20:00 EDT

After two years of playing footsie with Valleywag, I've finally been hired full time to write for what these kids call The Olds — that means winning over Fleetwood Mac fans and Fortune subscribers. Waist-high ace reporter Kara Swisher goaded me to start my first full day today with a journalistic "disclosure" statement like hers. She assured me that coming clean of my conflicts of interest would assuage Internet geezers suspicious of eww bloggers. Ok, but just this once. I hate journalism about journalism, plus I need to get back to nagging Arnel Pineda for an interview.

Like Kara, I have an overachieving wife with a real tech job — she's a vice president at Splunk. California's trophy-spouse-friendly property laws award me exactly half of Christina's stock earned during our marriage. Even if she dumps me. Has that colored Valleywag's coverage of Splunk CEO Michael Baum? Of course it has: Splunk gets extra hate. I'm sure passive-aggressive Valleywag chief Owen Thomas will do his best to keep my Splunk shares worth 50 percent of nothing for as long as possible so I can't afford to quit on him. (UPDATE: See, I told you so.)
Wired editor Chris Anderson, whom I think the world of even though he fired me once, offered stellar advice: "Let others take the cheap shots." Way to spoil my fun again, Chris, but you're right. I'm going to push everyone here to step up to our motto, "Valleywag will never stab you in the back. We'll stab you in the face." If we ever write about you, it'll be so deservedly true that you'll pine for the days of the cheap shots.
Dear corporate spokespeople: Standard public relations procedure in the Valley is to blow off reporters who seek your boss to confirm a totally-true rumor with the canned statement, "Mr Founderbot is traveling and cannot be reached for comment." It's the worst lie imaginable. A high-tech CEO who can't be reached. Many traditional news publications' rules require them to quote this bullshit. I'll just post my story. Traveling Man can add a comment if he ever comes back.
Valleywag's ethics rules are on a wiki. I'll stop there.

Commercial real estate vacancies show no sign of dot-bomb 2.0

Jackson West — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Recent reports from local real estate trackers put the amount of office space relinquished by local companies in the last quarter at the highest it has been since the third quarter of 2002 — 436,933 sq. ft, according to commercial broker CB Richard Ellis, or the equivalent of nearly all the space in the Transamerica pyramid. The East Bay and the South Bay also saw an uptick in vacancies. The bankruptcies of Sharper Image, Pay By Touch, and RedEnvelope helped push up San Francisco's vacancy rate, but South of Market remained an untouched bubble of business leases, thanks to expansion by Monster.com, Advent Software, and Splunk. (Photo by Thierry)

Children's book explains surly IT people

Paul Boutin — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:31:32 EDT

Well, no it doesn't. But Otis and Rae and the Grumbling Splunk, available Saturday from Amazon, is a must for the black-clad Unix bigots who keep things running at your office. (Stupid ethics-in-journalism disclosure: My wife works at Splunk. Complaints to port 514.)

Olympic torch gets obligatory rickrolling

Paul Boutin — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:23:42 EDT

San Francisco city officials, hoping to avoid the hippies, began today's torch run up the Embarcadero in front of the Splunk office and its large scale sound system.

How to write for your company's blog

Paul Boutin — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:20:18 EDT

I recently reported on blogging secrets of the stars. But as a Valley worker, you may end up blogging on your company's site, not your own. Corporate blogging is very different from personal blogging, regardless of what The 250 will tell you for a small fee. So I created this stack of product-managerese slides on how to write a company blog worth reading.

Fake Steve to face angry mob at book reading

Jordan Golson — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:28:29 EDT

Yes, tonight's the night. Dan Lyons as Fake Steve Jobs is meeting Segway-polo fanatic Real Steve Wozniak for an Options reading at the Menlo Park Keplers at 7:30. This is a party that we just can't miss. Some of us anyway. My boss is too cheap to let me expense a Virgin America flight cross-country. Owen "Mr. Bigglesworth" Thomas will be there, purring away. So will Megan McCarthy, the self-proclaimed "Princess of the Valley." Finally, very special correspondent Paul Boutin (boo-TAHN) will be there with his wife, Christina Noren, whom voters on Dig a Silicon Valley Girl have deemed the prettiest girl in the area. You don't want to miss that! Hit the jump to see what Fake Steve had to say the last time Woz crashed his party.

Isn't it just like Woz to show up and try to steal the spotlight from me on my big day? He's like the ex-girlfriend who shows up at the wedding dressed in a really hot sexy red dress, trying to take attention away from the bride. Fair enough. Apple geeks love Woz better than me. Always have. So of course he can't resist showing up on iPhone day to steal some of the love that was supposed to be aimed entirely at me. Plus, and this is really sad, Woz just thrives on the adulation and can't get enough of it. It's almost a sickness, the way he needs it.

Who's dentoned himself now, Lyons? We can't wait to see you make nice with the Woz. He might run you down with his Segway if you aren't careful.

Is Splunk CEO Michael Baum a hero or zero?

Megan McCarthy — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:04:07 EDT

Meet Michael Baum, the CEO of recently funded enterprise software company Splunk. Is he a hero for raising so much money at a splendid valuation, when all the Valley's buzz is on profitless consumer plays? Or is he deserving of our Silicon Valley Tool award for being a colossal jerk? Our commenters are leaning strongly towards the latter.

From Ghostwriter:

Michael Baum is a self-loving a-hole. I first came across him about 8 months ago on a United PS flight from SFO to JFK. He was the row behind me in business class. The guy wouldn't shut the fuck up the entire flight. And he had a splitting loud voice. It was a nightmare. Then the following week I get on the same flight back to SFO, and I have my headphones on. I couldn't concentrate because someone behind me was talking incredibly loudly. I turn around, and sure enough it was him again. He was having full-blast conversations about things that were way too private for half the cabin to be listening to.

About three weeks later I he was on my flight again, thankfully not seated by me. I knew who he was now, considering I'd previously had 10 hours of listening to him self-indulge to some unfortunate subordinate.

The topper came the night after the third flight. I was at the Elite Cafe on Filmore having dinner with my girlfriend. We were seated in a both, next to a table of about 6 guys loudly eating and drinkig. I couldn't see the table, but they were fucking loud and drunk. They kept staring at my girlfriend, who finally made me switch places with her. Of course, I sit down, look over, and it's fucking Michael Baum, and he's now ruining my dinner. WTF. At some point I go to the bathroom, and when I come back, my girlfriend tells me that one of them has just snapped a picture of her with his treo (remember this is like 6 months ago). So I turn and walk over to him "You're Michael Baum right?" "Uhhhh Uhh yeah.."... "Great, why don't you keep your camera in your pocket. And stop taking the 5:30 United flight from JFK on Thursdays..."

He was pretty dumbfounded. The best though was when they spilled a full bottle of red wine and a bunch of glasses all over the table about 15 minutes later... pure class...

From thewriter:

I used to work for the thebaum and you're spot on! So are the comments by the Ghostwriter. Mr. Baum is so full of himself he is widely hated by all who come in contact with him: employees, vendors, customers, and apparently anyone who is stuck on a plane or in a restaurant with him. Thebaum is not a tall man, but clearly thinks he tops 7 feet—the joke is everyone calls him the little jockey.

Embarrassing doesn't even begin to cover his behavior sometimes. Try being at a company dinner with 30+ people while he asks the waitress to ask the other waitress with the big boobs to bring him dessert.

Funny thing is, if you meet his two brothers, you find out he's the decent one! And I'd heard him say on more than one occasion that the only people worth hiring went to ivy-league schools.

Amazingly, the company is great. They have been able to hire a lot of fabulous people who are building an amazing product, but quite a few people interview with thebaum and won't even consider taking a position there.

The battle to plunk bucks in Splunk

Owen Thomas — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:09:09 EDT

The Valley's venture capitalists fall into and out of love with enterprise software. Today, with Facebook and other social networks the talk of the town, it's hard for the makers of boring IT products to get attention. But not, it seems, money. Splunk, in a lightning-fast fundraising effort, has pulled in $25 million in a third round of financing, bringing the company's valuation up to $120 million. Splunk's software analyzes server logs, and in a nod to the collaborative aspects of Web 2.0, lets sysadmins share and discuss the results to figure out if odd patterns are signs of system failures or security breaches. Think of it as a Google for hardcore nerds, but one they're actually willing to pay for. And that, in turn, made Ignition Venture Partners, a Seattle-area venture-capital firm, willing to pay for a stake in the San Francisco company. In every investment, there are winners and losers, though.

The obvious winner is Splunk, which has commanded one of the highest valuations assigned to a software startup in recent times. Splunk also wins the services of John Connors, right, the former Microsoft CFO who's now a partner at Ignition, who's joining the company as a board member.

And the losers? Rory O'Driscoll, left, of Scale Venture Partners, whom Splunk turned down despite bidding to invest at a higher valuation. O'Driscoll indiscreetly complained last week of his disappointment at losing the deal — and no wonder, since Splunks fits in several areas Scale likes to invest in. Also shut out, with a lowball bid: Famed angel investor Ron Conway. Could this be what preoccupied him at last Thursday's party for iLike?

Splunk CEO Michael Baum, though, seems to be celebrating a bit overmuch. In a blog entry last week, in which he alludes to his company's fundraising, Baum writes:

It's a privilege not a right for investors to take a look and consider partnering up with you.

How privileged Connors must feel. How gratified he must feel to be serving on a board with Baum, who signs his blog posts "thebaum." It must be just a little bit of a comedown to go from managing multibillion-dollar budgets at Microsoft to having terms dictated by a cocky startup CEO.