Ray Ozzie

Founder, Iris Associates, Groove Networks

Story:

     It was in 1982 when Ray Ozzie first wrote the spec for groove. It had been based on a system called PLATO- a large-scale interactive system - which he had been exposed to at the University of Illinois. Since he couldn't find funding for the idea, he did a small amount of work in 1-2-3 1A for Lotus Development after having been hired there in 1983. It led to a small team to create Lotus Symphony, one of the first suite products, which he agreed to work on in the condition that Mitch would help him find a VC for his idea. Symphony was successfully shipped but Mitch just suggested that Lotus would supply them the capital instead of introducing them to VCs. He then formed Iris Associates in Westford, Mass in December 1984 with three other programmers. Iris became a corporate partnership with Lotus. Lotus Notes was the first widely used collaboration software for people who would want to do dynamic work together and had email on it. It was used as a content management system and as an application server. Its first release was shipped in 1989 and was acquired by Lotus in 1994. Meanwhile, in the fall of 1997, Ozzie founded Groove Networks in his house with his brother Jack, Eric Patey, and Brian Lambert. They moved to an office space at the Cummings Center in Beverly, Massachusetts few weeks later and then after a couple of months, another former Iris engineer joined their team. Early on in Groove, they tried to work through some of the more difficult algorithms and make key tooling decisions. They knew that it was a very risky piece of technology so they didn't hire more people until they were sure they could confidently accomplish it. But once they were sure they could build it, they decided to hire first 15 to 20 people. While Lotus Notes was collaboration software, Groove Networks was meant to build Internet- based work-group collaboration software. After three years of the founding of the company, they finally launched Groove in Beta in October 2000. The first commercially available version of Groove was not shipped until April 21 but after having shipped it, they announced a 10, 000 seat deal with the major pharmaceutical company- GlaxoSmithKline- which was big Notes customer. Microsoft acquired Groove in 2005 and named Ozzie chief technical officer. And in June 2006, he took over as a chief software architect from Bill Gates.

THREE THINGS I LEARNED:

     I have learned many things from ray Ozzie, the cofounder of Iris Associates and Groove Networks.

     First of all, I learned that doing a startup is like believing in God's existence without hesitation. You believe that what you are doing is going to have a dramatic impact. You might not exactly know how, but you really have a belief. Just like what we are to god, we don't know and we literally can't see who we believe, but we knew that believing Him is the right thing to do. That belief keeps us from doing good things that would please Him. It's just the same as in a startup, the belief you're giving focus to would actually keep you from going and going through many changes and a lot of uncertainty. It's like a goal that you would want to reach no matter what.

     Next, I learned that it's very important to appreciate other people's skills. It's like one of the core values given importance by De La Salle College of Saint Benilde - appreciating individuals’ uniqueness. According to Ozzie, this is one value that people who wanted to join a startup should possess. It's because this is very important when you're going to need other people if in case you decided to start a company.

     Lastly, I learned that doing something for the right reason is important. Just as one of the verses in the Bible says, " And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men," so shall our thought be with our jobs and that is, " Don't do things just for the sake of money, but for the mission of changing the world and having an impact on the lives of the people you'd encounter.