UPDATED 14:24 EDT / AUGUST 28 2013

NEWS

Enterprise Focus in Product Design and Great Teams, Entrepreneur Success Recipe #VMworld

Dr. Stephen Herrod, former CTO at VMware, discussed his new position as Partner at General Catalyst with theCube co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante. The three also discuss the ideas Herrod looks to invest in live at VMWorld 2013 in San Francisco.

Reminiscing about his time as CTO of VMware, Herrod admitted to missing the experience of being a part of the team. Commenting on this year’s VMWorld, he said “this type of event is unbelievable, I think it’s the largest IT event” of the moment.

Dr. Stephen Herrod is now a partner in General Catalyst, a venture capital firm with a big focus on enterprise infrastructure. Herrod wants to help the company grow in Palo Alto, and expand on the West Coast to reach the same level of success it currently has on the East Coast.

While at VMworld, he looks forward to meeting interesting companies and helping them “do something good.” Explaining the type of company he was looking to invest in, Herrod said, “This is not the flash in the pan type of idea that becomes viral. The companies I’m interested in take time to build.” He believes entrepreneurs need to really think about how the enterprise is going to accept the product and then build a great team around it.

Watch the interview in its entirety below:

Asked what excites him from what he could see at VMWorld, Herrod said that “a lot of the hypercloud world is very interesting,” along with network virtualization. “What is interesting is what comes after that,” mentioning the development of interesting things around management and security in this world.

Commenting on Flash and its impact on the industry, Herrod said there was a “huge amount of things unrealized.” Flash has been hyped, at a macro level it was exciting, but there still was a need to answer the question of how to converge software, network, and compute and provide it as a package.

As far as future successful ideas are concerned, he advised entrepreneurs to think about “things that we take for granted” in how certain things were done, “and think really creatively on that front. At the end of the day, you try to make things more efficient and faster moving,” he explained.

Asked what the event’s biggest surprise was, Herrod said it was the large number of enthusiastic people with great ideas. “I didn’t realize how many ideas are out there that are really exciting right now.”


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