Shortly after SpringSource was acquired by VMware, the company has acquired a company called Cloud Foundry. SpringSource develops Java applications and management software.
“I am excited that as a part of SpringSource, Cloud Foundry will leverage the SpringSource product line to build, deploy and manage cloud-based, full-featured Java applications without tradeoffs,” stated Cloud Foundry President and Founder Chris Richardson. “This deal was independent of our discussions with VMware, but it was one of the many things about our road map that VMware liked.”
Cloud Foundry was built using Richardson’s open-source Cloud Tools project. Cloud Foundry is the first pay-as-you-go public cloud deployment platform company.
Peter Fenton was one of the lead partners behind the investments in SpringSource and FriendFeed. Both of these companies were acquired this past Monday. SpringSource was acquired for $420 million by VMWare and FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook for about $50 million.
Fenton also sits on Twitter’s and Yelp’s board of directors. Benchmark started in 1995 and manages about $2.5 billion in assets. Benchmark made a substantial amount by investing early in eBay too.
Fenton’s staregy for choosing the right companies to invest in is based on when the company’s adoption curve meets the declining risk curve. “The challenge is to identify the acceleration/adoption phase before it’s obvious.” Before SpringSource was acquired, he was deeply involved in the $10 million investment into the company.
