AIC Seminar Series

The biggest surprise in moving from the AIC to an early stage startup was how few real surprises there were. For example, the technical experience from developing robust research prototypes was a better fit than the experience of people coming from established software companies, and the experience marketing a research project was little different than the technical contribution to marketing a startup and its products.

Issues and problems that arose trying to grow the company will also be discussed. Since the speaker has no illusions about having any broad perspective on this topic, the presentation is intended to be largely anecdotal and interactive. The speaker will attempt to be candid about various mistakes that happened.

Doug Moran joined SRI in 1983 and the AIC’s Natural Language group in 1987. He left in 1999 to join Recourse Technologies, a startup in computer security. His slide from natural language process to computer security began innocuously - his initial project at SRI had purchased Sun workstations (4 of the first 100 servers) and the departmental computer facility refused to support them, so he took on administering them. But this turned out to be a slippery slope, and he was soon managing larger and larger clusters. As part of the computer facility management, he became involved in computer security. Based upon his operational experience, he created the DERBI research project (Diagnosis, Explanation and Recovery from Break-Ins).

Please arrive at least 10 minutes early in order to sign in and be escorted to the conference room. SRI is located at 333 Ravenswood Avenue in Menlo Park. Visitors may park in the visitors lot in front of Building E, and should follow the instructions by the lobby phone to be escorted to the meeting room. Detailed directions to SRI, as well as maps, are available from the Visiting AIC web page.

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