A startup company
that began as a project run from a spare
bedroom of my former Silicon Valley home and a 166 Mhz PC
on a shelf at a friend's ISP, and a great .COM era story.
Entropia
was a small software company funded by
venture capital in December 1999. Its software products power
distributed computing grid applications in biotech,
financial, chemistry, materials, and other fields.
According to the October 2002
PC Labs
Editor's Review, Entropia is a grid computing market leader
and the product received their 5 star rating.
Entropia has evolved
enormously over the years. The original 1996 concept was
a foundation for intellectual community, then a business
idea incubator (one idea of which was distributed
computing), and by 1998 was entirely a distributed
computing software and Internet computing grid service.
In 1999 Brad Bernard took on operations responsibilities
which freed me to develop the business. After recruiting
A.Chien in October 1999 and L.Smarr a month later,
Entropia received its first venture capital investment of
several million bucks. Then we relocated company and
family from San Jose to San Diego, and the rest you can
read on the company's web site.
I owe a debt of
gratitude to George Woltman for signing up his Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search
(GIMPS) project as
the prototype Entropia customer. At first I was an
email-only GIMPS participant, when Woltman's project was
brought to my attention by my friend Greg Yenney. Later
George and I implemented opposite sides of an API
exposed by an Entropia DLL in the client software.
We named the GIMPS Entropia application 'PrimeNet', one of the first world-wide distributed
computing grids.
Like most big projects,
I started Entropia with a lot of optimism and hard work.
Then years of gradual progress and continued work. I
sought venture capital in 1997 and 1998 but was told by a
Sand Hill venture capital firm that distributed computing, though
exciting, was too early. Finally the whirlwind of
events following a venture investment in 2000 with
various victories and important lessons learned. As a
founding shareholder I retain a keen interest in the
company's progress, even though I've moved onto other
work. Thanks to everyone having ever shared the
enthusiasm of working at Entropia.
Entropia Facts
entropia.com Internet domain name
registered April 1996, named by Sharon
Telljohn
founded 1997 in San
Jose, California, in my home
legal incorporation
March 1999, originally as Entropia.com, Inc.,
using forms from the California Chamber of
Commerce
first corporate
bank account - Bank of Santa Clara, CA, Campbell
branch
funded by $30
million in venture capital
at its peak, about 120 employees
in San Diego, CA and London, England
other incubated
business ideas previously operated on web site:
Entropia
community, Entropia Foundation, Entropia
consulting services, Entropia Internet
Digital Notary Service, Entropia Public
Certificate Authority (fully registered
in Cambridge Global Trust), and Entropia
Distributed Technologies
created and
operated PrimeNet grid of over 200,000
computers for first (pro bono) customer, Great Internet Mersenne
Prime Search (1997), as proof-of-concept
technology demo; operated from April 1999
by Brad Bernard and to present by Brad &
Entropia team.
