I started out with Linuxcare as the second real employee (if you go alphabetically). There were the three founders; Art, Dave, and Dave. Then there were Ed, Bryan, and I. We first worked out of our homes and had staff meetings at the VC offices. To say we were childlike, having fun, watching where Linux was going, would not even sum up the feelings. Soon, we reached our first real zenith and got a real office over at 650 Townsend, SF. Our first office was this tiny room and I have memories of a group of support people sitting around in a small room watching the phones ring around through their hunt group and desperately trying to catch it. Ed and I had come from the GAP, Inc. So did Art and a few others that ended up there. We also had Dave Mandela who setup our first network and uttered one of the more funny statements during our first days. One day when trying to do something online, Dave stood up and demanded to know “who was taking the bandwidth?” We all looked and around and pointed out we were all NAT’ed to the small ricochet modem so there was no real bandwidth to be had. Almost the next day, DavidM was busy stringing CAT5 cable and building our first network.
I remember working for DavidM on this web project awhile and Edward Tast and I built these Sun boxes. We got the boxes racked and stacked and DavidM asked whether we had installed the memory and disk drive upgrades he had ordered. Of course, we found tiny little boxes all packed separately and had to go unrack and unstack. It was probably funny after and maybe even during 
.
Another memory I have was first building the lab at Linuxcare. We had a weekend to build it and the next Monday HP was coming from France. We spent the weekend assembling it, making it look like a lab. Ned then said it looked too neat. We decided to let Duncan Mackinnon loose on it. Soon it looked much like any other corner of the big room. Funnily enough though, when we powered up all the servers, the lights dimmed in the building.
People will also remember that Linuxcare gave away cars, bug stickers, strange doodads, and a really mighty little CD that could rescue, create, move, copy, ssh. It was one of the more wondrous of little tools that I still use to this day.
I did my duty there in Professional Services too; so I managed to support a number of enterprise clients like IBM, Dell, HP, Sun. We did pretty nice consulting gigs with most of them and for almost 1.5 years I managed the technical relationship with Dell Computers. To this day, I still have Linkedin links to people that I once worked with. The Dell thing was the most fun though.
Then there came the hard times. Layoffs, ruined mergers, more layoffs. In December 2001 I left under a severance package. Then I came back in 2006. It was like I never really learned the lesson that “you can never go back again”. But I also met some amazing people. People like Phil, Simon, DaveR, Kurt, Jeremy, and others. But I think Levanta was star-crossed in its own right. It never knew what it wanted to be and its failure was etched in the stars. You simply cannot live that long without a compelling vision. So I left again in December 2006. It was 5 years later almost to the day of the first severance. I was able to tell Dan Lee there that he should feel honored. He got to sever me twice from the same company in the same month with 5 years inbetween.
So, why all this memory and happenstance? Because Levanta is gone dear reader. I will miss it and what it might have been; but I’ll never miss a whole subset of the cast of characters who thought they were above the laws of space and time. No you were not as it turns out. You made the failure as much as if you drove the car. You simply cannot run the company like its your personal kingdom. Sorry. So, it will be gone and people will wonder whether it was good or bad.
It was neither. Like most cultural and social entities it was a bit of both. Its been almost 9 years of the company either known as Levanta or Linuxcare. I’ll miss one and hardly notice the passing of the other.
Faretheewell.
Wow. That took forever. I thought they couldn’t last a year back when I got let go. It seems like a lifetime has past since then.
Not sure why, but I sure look back fondly on Linuxcare. Guess I’ll have to chock it up to some kind of Stockholm Syndrome or something like that.
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Since Levanta isn’t answering its phones–funny that–I was wondering if you had anything more to say about it kicking the bucket. Or, anyone who was more recently there, and might be willing to talk to a pesky journalist.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Steven
Indeed Steven and others they have gone under. As of 1 April 08 they closed their doors and severed the staff relationships. Levanta’s website still answers but its a story of “the lights are on but no one is home”. I don’t know why they have not done a press release other than there may be no one left there to do one. I got this information from a colleague there who was directly affected by the change.
Sorry for the delay in posting this.
Mike
Well, I would not encourage anyone to talk to the press. What’s the real upside? Linuxcare, pre-VC takeover was a great company with lots of potential. At least we were masters of our own ship. By the time it became big, ugly, and all about the IPO exit any resemblance between the company we founded and the company we found ourselves working for was gone. Still though, we pioneered the Linux services industry. We were all part of the single largest validation that allowed Linux to go mainstream. When Linuxcare was founded – there were still people at IBM facing disciplinary action or termination for loading non-IBM or non-Microsoft operating systems on IBM company hardware. The world certainly has changed…
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I worked for Levanta for about 14 months from 2005 to 2007; I just don’t think they had what it takes.
There were some smart people there, but not much direction. It’s unfortunate really, they had a very good product.
I am grateful to Linuxcare. For starters I got to work with this big guy with the heart of a bear called Mr Michael Perry, I got to bounce off DuncanM, Dave Sifry and Messrs Tyde and LaTyde. I got to see how to build datacenters badly and how to spot a bluffer from 200 yards (Doug). To be around pre IPO f*ckup and to see how a company could grow and become almost a cancer that would eat itself outside the care and remit of the founders wishes once the VC monkeys essentially screwed it into the ground. I second Arts comments entirely.
If I hadn’t worked at Linuxcare I’d never have created and founded Smoothwall. Because of Linuxcare I refused $23m of VC money and founded entirely on revenue and ongoing profit and by doing so made more money in year one than both Linuxcare and Levanta ever banked. Eight years on with over 400 commercial partners and multimillion pound revenues it still dwarfs both Linuxcare / Levanta and unfortunately Sputnik which I had such great hopes for (and still do).
Sorry its real early – meant LaDuke – brainfart
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The comment below is from another blog. But it is sooooooooooooooo true !!!!
Very typical of the cast of characters at Levanta, but THIS one, man, this one stands out. No wonder the company went under….
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Another former Levana employee | Apr 8 2008 9:39AM GMT
Hello, I am a former Levanta employee who was also laid off recently. Michael Perry’s comments above on the company’s management style (”You simply cannot run the company like its your personal kingdom”) are sooo true.
As another example of the general approach and attitude of the senior management there, I think everyone there vividly remembers the absolutely nightmarish experience during the time a Swiss guy be the name of Beat Knecht ran the marketing group a few years back. Since then, this name has become synonymous with apocalypse and nigthmare throughout the company. Although he is just one of several examples, he clearly stands out. He not only thought he was above the laws of space and time, as quoted above, he actually thought he was as good as god. In reality, he was the most arrogant, condescending jerk people there have ever met in their entire lives. He was delusional and completely out of touch with reality. For example, at one point he wrote a memo to the entire company on a change in direction of the company. It came completely out of the blue; nobody was prepared, not even the CEO. When he was done sending the email, he walked around the office, and just said, “I (!) have now re-programmed the company,” and then left to go home — at three in the afternoon. We were all shocked. The email contained “instructions,” group by group. Until then, I didn’t know that employees were there to be “re-programmed” by HIM. Was it the team? No. Was it the leadership who ran the company? No. Was it the CEO? Nope. It was HIM who dared “re-programming” us all via email. We all thought this was absolutely hilarious. Just hilarious, but also very sad. He obviously though he was some kind of Jesus whose mission was to save us mere mortals from the evils of this world. At the end, we all had to laugh out loud in total awe and disbelief. What a moron. We wanted to tell him that it may be a good idea to take a communications class, but then we decided that this would do more harm than good.