<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="REUTERS/Brendan McDermid" title_caption="A mascot dressed as a character from the mobile game " Candy="" Crush="" Saga="" walks="" the="" floor="" of="" New="" York="" Stock="" Exchange="" during="" IPO="" Mobile="" game="" maker="" King="" Digital="" Entertainment="" Plc="" March="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53333f1cecad045f44527812-960/king-digital-candy-crush-2.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53333f1cecad045f44527812-1108-830/king-digital-candy-crush-2.jpg?maxX=480" border="0" alt="king digital candy crush" width="480" /></a><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Brendan McDermid</span></p><p class="caption">A mascot dressed as a character from the mobile game "Candy Crush Saga" walks the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during the IPO of Mobile game maker King Digital Entertainment Plc March 26, 2014. </p></div><p></p></div>King, the maker of hit game Candy Crush Saga, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/king-ipo-2014-3" target="_blank">officially debuted on the New York Public Stock Exchange today</a>. </p>
<p>King's stock closed down 15.56% from its IPO price of $22.50 a share. </p>
<p>It was one of the biggest day-one drops for a newly listed U.S. company in the past six months, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-25/king-raises-500-million-in-candy-crush-maker-s-u-s-offering.html" target="_blank">Bloomberg reports</a>. It was also the worst trading debut this year, <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-fast-money-crushed-candy-crush-ipo-2014-03-26?link=MW_pulse" target="_blank">according to data from Renaissance Capital</a>.</p>
<p>"It almost stood no chance," <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-fast-money-crushed-candy-crush-ipo-2014-03-26?link=MW_pulse" target="_blank">analyst Scott Sweet told MarketWatch</a>. "It wasn't surprising. It's getting pounded." He said there appeared to be "a hope for a pop that never materialized" as "traders immediately pulled the trigger."</p>
<p>Other big day-one drops in the last six months include tech companies Chegg, and Violin Memory.</p>

King, The Maker Of Candy Crush, Had The Worst IPO Debut This Year

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/51d49e1d6bb3f7ad63000000-1200/plumgrid-awais-nemat.jpg" alt="Plumgrid Awais Nemat" data-mce-source="Plumgrid" data-mce-caption="Plumgrid CEO Awais Nemat" /><p class="source"><span>Plumgrid</span></p><p class="caption">Plumgrid co-founder and former CEO Awais Nemat</p></div><p></p></div></div>A startup called Plumgrid sold its technology and IP to VMware and is shutting down, co-founder Pere Monclus <a href="http://www.plumgrid.com/plumgrid-blog/2016/12/an-update-on-plumgrid-for-customers-and-partners/">announced in the blog post.</a></p><p>Some, but not all, of its employees will be joining VMware, too.</p><p>The terms were not disclosed but the farewell blog post was so sad and final, that this appears to be a fire sale, not a healthy, big return on investment.</p><p>"Our technology and IP have been acquired, and many of our employees have joined a new team," Monclus wrote in that post. "We thank our founders, Awais, Pere, and Sushil ... We also want to extend a warm thank you to our customers and partners who supported PLUMgrid throughout the years. Your support has meant the world to us, and your feedback always made us a better company."</p><p>Word on the street among the network startup community was that Plumgrid had been looking for a buyer for a while.</p><p>Plumgrid had raised about $29 million in venture investment since it was founded in 2011. Its last equity round from venture investors was just over $16 million, back in July 2014, <a href="https://my.pitchbook.com/#page/profile_1596437131">according to PitchBook.</a></p><p>If you remember, 2014 was at the height of unicorn madness. Startups were raising lots of cash and many were encouraged to burn through that cash fast, to grow themselves as fast as they could. But by the fall of 2015, sanity returned. Money was harder to come by. Cash flow and business models were back in vogue.</p><p>In mid 2015, founder/CEO Awais Nemat was replaced by a new CEO, Larry Lang, who had cut his teeth at Cisco back in the day. In 2013, he was CEO of a security startup called Quorum. He's also a board member for a number of startups, including the ill-fated Violin Memory, a storage <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/15/violin_memory_share_collapse_as_chapter_11_filing_made/">startup that just filed for Chapter 11. </a></p><p>In August of that year, the company took on a $2.45 million bridge loan.</p><p>Plumgrid was promising when it launched. It was founded by a group of former Cisco engineers who worked on some of the network giant's most important technologies.</p><p>Back in 2011, it was part of a market taking on Cisco loaded with hot startups being acquired as soon as they had a product, a market called software-defined networking (SDN). Since then, Cisco released its SDN competitor and the market is largely a Coke and Pepsi battle between VMware and Cisco. A few standalone startups that etched out a successful niche for themselves are still doing well.</p><p>Those, like Plumgrid, that didn't get bought during the early frenzy, were left to figure things out. Plumgrid then banked on another hot technology in 2011, the cloud operating system that competed with Amazon Web Services, OpenStack. Amazon has since boomed and OpenStack didn't make a dent in that. And <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/openstack-vc-investments-are-slowing-2015-4">many OpenStack startups struggled, too. </a></p><p>Still, Plumgrid's technology did make an impact. Its claim to fame is a networking technology is called <a href="https://www.iovisor.org/">IO Visor</a>, which helps IT professionals manage a company's software-based computer networks. </p><p>IO Visor was added to the main Linux operating system kernel and has become an open-source project under the Linux Foundation. </p><p>VMware is a good home for Plumgrid's technology and the employees who were offered jobs. It's a leader in the SDN world and is also involved with OpenStack - a technology it, too, once considered to be a competitor.</p><p>Plumgrid could not be immediately reached for comment.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/insectothopter-cia-dragonfly-spy-drone-military-defense-espionage-spies-2016-12">In the 1970s the CIA created a spy drone the size of a dragonfly</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="FhMjYwODE6c8sNux8Nyz7mjSqLhBpNvk" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'FhMjYwODE6c8sNux8Nyz7mjSqLhBpNvk',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

A promising startup founded by former Cisco stars just called it quits

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/561829359dd7cc24008c0b84-2732-4133/gettyimages-113197987.jpg" alt="Amy Chua" data-mce-source="Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images" data-link="http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/author-amy-chua-attends-the-time-100-gala-times-100-most-news-photo/113197987" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/author-amy-chua-attends-the-time-100-gala-times-100-most-news-photo/113197987">Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images</a></span></p><p class="caption">The Chua-Rubenfeld family.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>What's it like to be raised by a "Tiger Mom"?</p><p>It's something that Amy Chua's kids, 19-year-old Lulu Chua-Rubenfeld and her 23-year-old sister, Sophia, know intimately well. </p><p>The Chua-Rubenfeld sisters are the subject of the elder Chua's 2011 parenting memoir "<a href="http://amychua.com/">The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother</a>," where she describes her unrelenting parenting style in brutally honest terms. </p><p>The sisters are now speaking out, five years after their mother's book caused a media firestorm, as a "<a href="http://www.today.com/video/kids-of-tiger-mom-speak-out-from-harvard-and-yale-5-years-later-611455555505">Today Show</a>" segment from Friday morning noted, citing a recent article in The Telegraph. </p><p>The sisters spoke to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/whatever-happened-to-the-original-tiger-mums-children/">The Telegraph</a> this month, opening up about their upbringing, and saying they would raise their children the exact same way.</p><p>"<span>Everyone talks about my mother threatening to throw my toys on the fire, but the funny thing is that was not a major memory. I remember my childhood as happy," Sophia, now a law student at Yale and a second lieutenant in the Army, tells <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/whatever-happened-to-the-original-tiger-mums-children/">The Telegraph</a>. "<span>I am not scared of my mom and never have been. <span>It was always unequivocally clear in my mind that my parents were on my side, no matter what. They did have high expectations of me, but because they had the confidence that I could do amazing things."</span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span>Lulu, the younger child who's now a sophomore at Harvard, was always a bit more rebellious. </span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span>"I had a tough childhood, but a happy one," she tells <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/whatever-happened-to-the-original-tiger-mums-children/">The Telegraph</a>. "<span>I was playing up to six hours of violin a day and it was too much. However, when I rebelled because it was putting too much of a strain on me, <span>my mom could easily have given up on me. </span><span>She pushed me when I needed it."</span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span>While both Lulu and Sophia say they would raise their own children the same way, Sophia tells <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/whatever-happened-to-the-original-tiger-mums-children/">The Telegraph</a> </span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span>that she would guide her kids toward activities they are more "naturally drawn to."</span></span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span>Lulu also cautions that her mother's parenting method doesn't work for all children. "A<span>ssuming every kid can do this is dangerous," she tells The Telegraph. "<span>I know too many kids who have cracked."</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p>Despite all of the detractors, it seems as if Lulu and Sophia turned out quite all right. Besides their sterling, Ivy League educations, friends describe Lulu as a "free spirit," while former employers say that she is both "charismatic and intuitive," according to <a href="http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/07/the-tiger-daughter-intact">Harvard Magazine</a>.</p><p>And Sophia, whose <a href="https://www.instagram.com/sophiacaribou/?hl=en">Instagram account</a> is filled with the typical food and friends pictures of a 23-year-old, told The <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/the-tiger-cub-speaks">New Yorker</a> that she hopes to be a military prosecutor focusing on sexual assault.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/teachers-protest-detroit-schools-2016-1">Teachers are calling in sick to protest the deplorable condition of Detroit public schools</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="U3ZmljMDE6kebm9aDSDmMEqlVwuWB3Er" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'U3ZmljMDE6kebm9aDSDmMEqlVwuWB3Er',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

2 kids of the 'Tiger Mom' speak out 5 years after their mom's book caused a stir

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/524565bd69beddeb708f0409-1200-924/steve-ballmer-alan-mulally-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Steve ballmer alan mulally" /><p class="source">AP</p></div><p></p></div></div>Happy Friday! Here's some news to kick off your weekend.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702304795804579099534218005734-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwNjEyNDYyWj.html">Microsoft's new CEO will be picked by John Thompson.</a></strong> Thompson is head of the board committee that's in charge of finding Ballmer's replacement.</li>
<li><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130926/is-fords-alan-mulally-now-in-the-lead-to-be-new-ceo-of-microsoft/"><strong>Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia, may not be the top Microsoft CEO candidate</strong>.</a> Instead, Ford CEO Alan Mulally may be best positioned to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO of <keyword id="10387" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Microsoft">Microsoft</keyword>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/26/4774746/steve-ballmer-microsoft-company-meeting-final-speech"><strong>Leaving Microsoft won't be easy for Ballmer.</strong></a> Ballmer recently held a final, tearful meeting with Microsoft employees. During the meeting, music blared, Ballmer jumped and danced around, and Microsoft employees screamed at their CEO, "We love you!" </li>
<li><strong><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/10338002/Candy-Crush-creator-King-files-for-IPO-in-America.html">King, the maker of hit mobile game Candy Crush Saga, has filed to go public in the U.S.</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/23/thirteen-ipos/">13 tech companies went public this week and two are debuting today, Violin Memory and Ring Central.</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/twitter-investors-williams-to-branson-await-ipo-windfall.html">Celebrities like Ashton kutcher and billionaire Richard Branson are positioned to make a lot of money from their Twitter investments.</a> </strong>More than 50 people and institutions have invested in Twitter.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/billionaire-yachts-are-passe-as-monaco-peddles-luxury-submarines.html"><strong>Forget yachts.</strong></a> Billionaires are seeking new thrills are turning to multi-million-dollar submarines. </li>
<li><strong><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/09/26/google-just-revamped-search-to-handle-your-long-questions/">Google made the first significant update to its core search algorithm since 2010.</a> </strong>The changes won't be noticeable to most people, but they make mobile search even better and all results turn up faster.</li>
<li><strong><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/26/imgur-traffic-milestone-100m-uniques/">Image hosting platform Imgur became big on Reddit and now it has 100 million monthly unique visitors.</a></strong></li>
<li><strong><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/highers-brothers-freed-after-facebook-post-2013-9">Two brothers who were found guilty of murder and served 25 years in jail have been freed thanks to a Facebook post.</a> </strong></li>
</ul>

10 Tech Things You Need To Know This Morning

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56997af2e6183e50008b9f3c-2484-1863/no.jpg" alt="No, just say no," data-mce-source="Flickr/marc falardeau" data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/49889874@N05/5580127313/in/photolist-9v6BrB-5FG3oX-ah3rDf-vCryZL-bCB2Gb-q438K7-oukpjq-8KjuBQ-8xosEJ-4ibmeb-nuwcV-qNNYRw-nJAixo-4eMgtA-iRc6ch-gL3Ywe-qABfJ1-bpqbmf-9PoAK-zL5mq-6iSNYQ-5mHBHK-qsu7sy-qJZujh-9d4xA3-9gYtwj-jCCZkH-hPwevn-6rv8zK-6u6Agn-r9h2cw-5KcPU5-6oSsva-4qzZRL-9dnVFF-ausdbF-EGP6z-dpBLWP-8ZcUsb-7Vofkv-7K5v7N-9tmZbt-76pqU-4w5tf-vRA8t4-fXCnFp-hmGCpb-cMFyr9-iWyb3r-55LJFf" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/49889874@N05/5580127313/in/photolist-9v6BrB-5FG3oX-ah3rDf-vCryZL-bCB2Gb-q438K7-oukpjq-8KjuBQ-8xosEJ-4ibmeb-nuwcV-qNNYRw-nJAixo-4eMgtA-iRc6ch-gL3Ywe-qABfJ1-bpqbmf-9PoAK-zL5mq-6iSNYQ-5mHBHK-qsu7sy-qJZujh-9d4xA3-9gYtwj-jCCZkH-hPwevn-6rv8zK-6u6Agn-r9h2cw-5KcPU5-6oSsva-4qzZRL-9dnVFF-ausdbF-EGP6z-dpBLWP-8ZcUsb-7Vofkv-7K5v7N-9tmZbt-76pqU-4w5tf-vRA8t4-fXCnFp-hmGCpb-cMFyr9-iWyb3r-55LJFf">Flickr/marc falardeau</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>There's an implosion going on in <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25451215">the $36 billion enterprise storage market</a>, which was the darling of the tech world <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/flash-memory">just two years ago</a>, </p><p>One of the hardest hit is NetApp, its stock now trading at its lowest point in about five years - the stock is about $22, a mere $6.9 billion market cap. It's lost almost half its value in the last year, and almost two-thirds of its value since 2011.</p><p>Now everyone is buzzing that Cisco might buck up and buy its partner NetApp, which is the No. 5 storage vendor.</p><p>We've heard this Cisco-buying-NetApp scuttlebutt from multiple people in the last week.</p><p>People have been <a href="http://www.crn.com/news/networking/300078404/partners-dell-emc-deal-could-force-cisco-to-buy-storage-vendor.htm">talking about it</a> ever since Dell announced its plans to buy EMC last October. (And every few years, there's a new <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-12-17/cisco-seen-needing-citrix-to-netapp-for-growth-real-m-a">Cisco-buying-NetApp rumor.)</a></p><p>But we understand from people close to the company that such a deal isn't going to happen. Not now, not ever. </p><p>Cisco is aware of the all the talk and is being asked all the time, we hear from somebody close to the company. But the truth is Cisco's "focus is on emerging technologies in storage," and that the company is "looking forward instead of backward."</p><p>For the record, Cisco spokesperson Nigel Glennie declined comment, telling us, "We don't comment on rumors and speculation."  (We've reached out to NetApp as well and will update when we hear back.)</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56997c2ce6183eee168b9d59-960-720/george kurian.jpg" alt="george kurian netapp ceo" data-mce-source="Screenshot/YouTube" data-mce-caption="NetApp CEO George Kurian" /><p class="source"><span>Screenshot/YouTube</span></p><p class="caption">NetApp CEO George Kurian</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Why this rumor won't stop</h2><p>With a $6.9 billion market cap today, NetApp isn't terribly expensive for Cisco. (The joke in the industry, another person told us, was that Cisco just needs to wait another 3 months and NetApp would be even cheaper.)</p><p>NetApp is cheap because it "missed" the biggest opportunity in its industry, the shift to flash storage, another source told us. The company just finally bought a flash startup, SolidFire, in December.</p><p>But this is years after its competitors were snapping up flash vendors. NetApp paid dearly for it, too, spending <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/netapp-buys-solidfire-2015-12">$870 million in cash</a> on SolidFire. If Cisco bought NetApp it would gain SolidFire, as well as all of NetApp's <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> storage customers.</p><p>Plus, Cisco needs storage technology.</p><p>The struggles in the storage industry come from a movement called "converged" and "hyperconverged" computing. That means that companies are buying their computers, networking, and storage all together as a bundle, Miki Sandorfi, a vice president at major storage player Hitachi Data Systems tells us.</p><p>Storage vendors who are just selling storage are struggling ...  from EMC to NetApp, Sandorfi says.</p><p>Meanwhile, some of the hot newer storage companies are also hurting. Pure Storage had a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pure-storage-ipo-close-below-3-billion-2015-10">less-than-spectacular</a> IPO, <a href="https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:NMBL">Nimble Storage is trading below $7</a> (from a year-ago high of $52), and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/violins-stock-is-nearly-worthless-as-it-looks-to-sell-2016-1">Violin Memory's stock </a>is now nearly worthless.</p><p>Cisco was one of the leaders of the "converged" computing market, with its UCS computers/networking/storage boxes. It originally partnered with EMC for the storage part, but <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-1-billion-vmware-nicira-buy-2014-10">those companies don't like each other now.</a> Cisco is now partnering with everybody, including NetApp, IBM, Pure Storage.</p><p>But to really compete with HP and EMC/Dell, Cisco needs its own storage tech.</p><p>Cisco actually tried to build its own storage offering and that was a disaster. It bought a startup called Whiptail for $450 million in 2013, and after a couple of years the product still didn't work. One of new Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins'<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cisco-killed-its-emc-killer-product-2015-7"> first acts was to kill the product and lay off the team.</a></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55cbd3dc371d22c6178be081-1067-800/cisco-chuck-robbins3.png" alt="Cisco Chuck Robbins3" data-mce-source="Cisco Live/Business Insider" /><p class="source"><span>Cisco Live/Business Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Cisco is likely up to something in storage</h2><p>While an acquisition may seem obvious for Cisco, others are telling us that Cisco may be looking at an internal team to build an original product.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54527965eab8ea315a63f750-350-262/mario-mazzola-1.jpg" alt="Mario Mazzola" data-mce-source="Cisco" data-mce-caption="Mario Mazzola" /><p class="source"><span>Cisco</span></p><p class="caption">Mario Mazzola</p></div><p></p></div></div>We're hearing that this new team may even involve the legendary triumvirate of engineers at Cisco known as "the heart, soul, and brains" of the company: Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, and Luca Cafiero.</p><p>That team is currently running Cisco's all-important Insieme unit, which makes Cisco's flagship Nexus 9000 router and the software that allows <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/software-defined-networking">Cisco to compete in the "software defined networking" market </a>that threatens to upend its hold on the network equipment market.</p><p>Cisco has previously leaned on these engineers for its famous "spin-in" model. That's where Cisco bankrolls a startup staffed mostly with its own engineers. It then buys that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-cisco-showered-three-men-with-billions-2014-9">startup for millions of dollars once it successfully builds a product.</a> </p><p>Robbins has already gone on record saying he's not a fan of that funding model, but he <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ciscos-new-ceo-ditches-spins-ins-2015-11">wants to create teams internally</a> that develop new products and are similarly rewarded if they succeed.</p><p>Meanwhile, the storage industry has already moved on to the new thing beyond flash. </p><p>Intel and Micron have created a breakthrough new kind of storage chip that is ideal for big-data, in-memory kinds of uses, <a href="http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/3d-xpoint-unveiled-video.html">known as XPoint</a>, which they say is 1,000 times faster than flash and 1,000 more durable.</p><p>If Cisco is really focused on emerging storage technologies, we can see why NetApp would not be its first choice.</p>

Everyone is talking about Cisco buying NetApp, but we hear Cisco has other plans up its sleeve

<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56157f6b9dd7cc22008c026d-4558-3419/151007_ob02.jpg" alt="Pure Storage management" data-mce-source="Pure Storage" data-mce-caption="Pure Storage CEO Scott Dietzen" /><p class="source"><span>Pure Storage</span></p><p class="caption">Pure Storage CEO Scott Dietzen (second from right).</p></div><p></p></div></div>Pure Storage, one of the most anticipated tech initial public offerings of the year, failed to live up to its expectations on its first day of trading.</p><p class="p2">The flash-storage provider went public Wednesday, but began trading below its $17 IPO price, and closed the day at $16.01.</p><p class="p2">That gives Pure Storage a market cap of around $2.9 billion, slightly below the $3 billion-plus private-market valuation it garnered last year.</p><p class="p2">"We always knew this was going to be a marathon, not a sprint," Pure Storage President Dave Hatfield told Business Insider. "The measurement we're going to look at is going to be measured in years and decades."</p><p class="p2">Pure Storage offers flash storage for companies to use in their data centers. Flash drives generally provide significantly better performance and speed, but are also more expensive than traditional hard drives.</p><h2 class="p1">'We're not experts on the valuation'</h2><p class="p2">Hatfield stressed that the company has been growing fast and has a $24 billion market opportunity ahead in the overall storage industry, citing an IDC report. Gartner ranked Pure Storage third in the flash-storage market, behind EMC and IBM.</p><p class="p2">"We're not experts on the valuations of the business. We're focused on creating value for customers and delivering consistent financial results in a really big market," he said.</p><p class="p2">According <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1474432/000119312515334446/d895532ds1a.htm#toc895532_9">to its S-1</a>, Pure Storage made about $174 million in revenue last year, roughly a 4X jump from the previous year. It has already made $159 million in the first half of this year, putting it on pace to hit nearly $300 million this year.</p><p class="p2">But the revenue growth came with huge spending, resulting in a loss of $180 million last year. In the first six months of this year, it lost about $112 million.</p><p class="p2">"We're investing in the growth, and using the proceeds we earn to invest into that $24 billion market," Hatfield added, saying ultimately that the company's goal is to bring its operating profit up to the 15% to 20% range.</p><h2 class="p2">IPO bellwether</h2><p class="p2">Pure Storage's IPO debut could serve as a bellwether for the rest of the tech-IPO market, which has been slowing down in recent months. According <a href="http://www.renaissancecapital.com/news/renaissance-capitals-3q-2015-quarterly-us-ipo-market-review-35621.html">to Renaissance Capital</a>, the tech sector saw only one offering in the third quarter of this year, the lowest in six years.</p><p class="p2">The overall IPO market has also cooled down this quarter, only seeing 34 total deals, down 43% from the same period last year, Renaissance Capital said.</p><p class="p2">"The end of the quarter saw volatility at a new high, IPO returns at a new low, a dip in initial filings and a rate hike on the horizon, all of which suggest that IPO activity will continue at a slower pace than 2014," Renaissance Capital wrote in a report.</p><p class="p4">But Pure Storage may be keeping an eye on its share price for other reasons, too, as some of its competitors in the same flash storage space all saw their values drop significantly in recent years.</p><p class="p4"><span class="s1">Fusion-io had a market cap of $1.9 billion on its first day of trading in 2011, but was acquired by SanDisk for $1.3 billion in 2013. </span>Violin Memory saw its first-day market cap of $763 million drop to $144 million by last month, while Nimble Storage is trading at nearly half of its first-day value at around $1.9 billion now.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-facts-about-vladimir-putin-russia-2015-10">Putin is 63 today - here are some incredible things you didn't know about his life</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="k4NTY1dDqFCsBpfiPjzGEUMzJURbWO-R" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'k4NTY1dDqFCsBpfiPjzGEUMzJURbWO-R',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

A big tech IPO flopped and now the company is worth less than when it was private

<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/52684c7e6bb3f7e67de18b3a-1200-924/steve-wozniak-talking-in-a-microphone-1.jpg?maxX=480" border="0" alt="Steve wozniak talking in a microphone" width="480" /><p class="source">AP</p></div><p></p></div>We've been documenting the implosion of <keyword id="852306" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Fusion-io">Fusion-IO</keyword>, a 2011 IPO darling and the employer of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.</span></p>
<p>On Wednesday, the company reported <a href="http://www.fusionio.com/press-releases/fusion-io-reports-fiscal-first-quarter-2014-results/">a loss for the quarter</a> and said its CFO, Dennis Wolf, was leaving.</p>
<p>For the quarter that ended on Sept. 30, Fusion-io reported a loss of $27.9 million, or 28 cents a share.  A year ago, it reported a 4 cents per share profit ($3.9 million). On a non-GaaP basis, it reported a loss of 7 cents per share. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Analysts were expecting a loss of 11 cents.</span></p>
<p>Revenue was down 27% to $86.3 million, slightly beating expectations for $84.73 million, a drop of 28%.</p>
<p>Fusion-io significantly will miss expectations for the current quarter, however, saying it expected only slightly higher revenue, while analysts were counting on a rise of more than 30% to $113.8 million.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Stock is down almost 13% in after hours trading.</span></p>
<p>Fusion-IO, which makes flash storage systems for enterprises was one of the most anticipated tech IPOs in 2011. Fusion IO raised $233 million in the IPO by selling shares for $19 each and the shares jumped to as high as $39.60 in its first five months. </p>
<p>But in early 2013, Fusion-io admitted that it was relying heavily on just two customers: Facebook and Apple. They accounted for about 50% of revenues, and both companies said they had plenty of flash storage and would buy less in the future. Plus there's a ton of new competition in this market, including Violin Memory, which finally went public last month after years of hinting about an IPO. The <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/violin-memorys-ceo-on-its-awful-ipo-2013-9">IPO didn't go well</a>.</p>
<p>In 2013, it's been a revolving door among Fusion-IO executives. The company hired former HP executive <span>Shane Robison </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">and, a couple of weeks later, the two cofounders David Flynn (CEO) and Rick White (CMO) suddenly left. </span></p>
<p>Robison was previously Chief Strategy Officer at Hewlett Packard. He left HP in 2011 and a year later, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/shane-robison-hp-autonomy-2012-11">HP CEO Meg Whitman publicly blamed him</a> for HP's disastrous acquisition of Autonomy.</p>
<p><span><span>Wolf left Fusion-IO</span> to become CFO at DataStax, a startup that makes a NoSQL database and has a number of big <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> customers.</span></p>
<p><span>In the meantime, Fusion-IO stock is down more than 40% since the start of the year and the outlook isn't good.</span></p>

More Bad News From Steve Wozniak's Fusion-IO: A Crummy Outlook And The CFO Is Leaving

<p><div class="image-container float_right"><div class="image"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52ab7787ecad04e86d3a73c3-806-604/nimble-storage-employees.jpg?maxX=480" border="0" alt="Nimble Storage Employees" width="480" /><p class="source"><a href="https://twitter.com/NimbleStorage/status/411573970086154242">Nimble Storage</a></p><p class="caption"><keyword id="1971699" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Nimble-Storage">Nimble Storage</keyword> Employees watch the NYSE bell ring from their San Jose office</p></div></div>On Friday, Nimble Storage became the latest <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> tech company to go public.</p>
<p>Investors are loving the stock. Nimble set an initial price of $21 a share, raising the price at the last minute from the range it announced earlier this week, $18-$20.</p>
<p>And the shares popped on the opening bid, climbing as high as $35. It closed at $33.93 today, up 61%.</p>
<p>It was a risky move for the company to proceed with an IPO today and not just because it's  Friday the 13th. (Although the ill-omened date did cross the CEO Suresh Vasudevan's mind, he jokingly told Business Insider.)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nimble-storage-to-ipo-on-friday-2013-12">As we previously reported</a>, two of his competitors have really been struggling to grow since they went public. Their stock is struggling and there's been executive turnover. Violin Memory went public only two months ago. It's IPO didn't go well and after reporting worse-than-expected earnings in November, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/violin-memory-cto-leaves-amid-lawsuits-2013-12">stock crashed</a>. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/violin-memory-cto-leaves-amid-lawsuits-2013-12">Business Insider also discovered</a> that the CTO left the company. Meanwhile, 2011 IPO darling <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fusion-io-reports-loss-cfo-leaves-2013-10">Fusion-io has been struggling, too</a>.</p>
<p>It seemed brave for Nimble Storage to ask investors to take a chance on another player in this field, the enterprise flash storage market.</p>
<p>Nimble makes a product that combines flash storage and traditional storage tech. Flash is the same type of storage used by thumb drives and smartphones. Flash drives (also called solid state drives) are faster than traditional enterprise storage methods, which use disk drives or tape.</p>
<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:300px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/52aa5772ecad04f9400dbdd1-400-300/sures-vasudevan-nimble-storage.jpg" border="0" alt="Sures Vasudevan Nimble Storage" width="300" /><p class="source">Nimble Storage</p><p class="caption"> Suresh Vasudevan, CEO, Nimble</p></div></div>Vasudevan told us that Nimble has two things over its competitors. For one, its technology is less expensive than some others, which makes it popular with smaller companies. That means it has more potential customers.</p>
<p>He said Nimble is signing up "350 to 400 new customers a quarter."</p>
<p>Second, Nimble has fat profit margins of about 65 points, compared to the typical 40-50 points in the industry, he said. That's because Nimble uses low-cost commodity hardware to build its product. It's secret sauce is its software that makes its storage hardware work faster and store more data than competitors, he said.</p>
<p>Flash storage is becoming a big trend for the enterprise <keyword id="178013" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Data-center">data center</keyword>. IDC expects it <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24072313">to be a $1.2 billion market by 2015. </a></p>
<p>Investors want to grab a piece of that and they are, so far, liking what they see in Nimble.</p>

Storage Company Nimble Popped 60% On Its IPO Today - Here's Why

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/576d52d291058427008cb5ea-1099/geroge-kurian2.jpg" alt="NetApp CEO Geroge Kurian" data-mce-source="NetApp" data-mce-caption="NetApp CEO Geroge Kurian" /><p class="source"><span>NetApp</span></p><p class="caption">NetApp CEO Geroge Kurian</p></div><p></p></div></div>The myth about identical twins is that they can simply switch places when they want to, so that being a twin is like having a best friend and a clone wrapped into one.</p><p>For George Kurian, the CEO of NetApp and Thomas Kurian, Oracle's <span>president of product development that myth is practically true.</span></p><p><span>They are literal doppelgangers who rose to the top with so much togetherness, at one point they literally got up and switched jobs, sending each of them on their current path to success.</span></p><p><span>George Kurian was </span>appointed CEO of $5.5 billion storage company NetApp about a year ago after a fast, meteoric rise at the company. </p><p>Thomas Kurian has spent nearly 20 years at Oracle. He reports to Oracle's executive chairman and CTO Larry Ellison, and has even been rumored to be<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-kurian-insight-idUSKBN0KL0BL20150112"> in line to become CEO when Ellison fully retires</a>. Sources close to Thomas tell us he has Ellison's ear because he's hardworking and smart and will challenge the geek-at-heart billionaire on technical product issues and tends to be right. Ellison loves a winner.</p><p><span>Business Insider recently met with George Kurian to talk about his career, his twin, and how he plans to revitalize NetApp, a $5.5 billion company with 11,000 employees, at a time when the business is facing major challenges.</span></p><h2><span>A progressive Indian mother raises four rambunctious boys</span></h2><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55835ac9ecad04e4090aa3ad-909/thomas-kurian-oracle-sv100-2015.jpg" alt="thomas kurian, oracle, sv100 2015" data-mce-source="Flickr/Oracle PR" data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oracle_images/5011597023/" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oracle_images/5011597023/">Flickr/Oracle PR</a></span></p><p class="caption">Thomas Kurian, Oracle president</p></div><p></p></div></div>George and twin brother Thomas are the youngest of four brothers. (George is technically older by a few seconds, he laughs.) </span></p><p><span>The Kurians were born to a self-made business man in the scenic, laid-back beach and agricultural state of Kerala, India. Their dad was the son o</span>f a farmer who educated himself and became a successful in the manufacturing industry. His mom was born to Indian parents living in Sri Lanka. She immigrated to India to go to college which was "unheard of" for a woman in that day, George tells us.</p><p>"We were all held in line by my mom. She was loving but tough. We were all raised with those Christian values and she did things very different than most Indian parents," he says.</p><p>For instance, with all boys and no girls, she didn't follow the typical gender role stereotypes.</p><p>"All the boys took turns in kitchen, did house chores, had to be responsible for clearing dinner, doing everything required in the house," he says.</p><p>She was famously strict in the neighborhood. She would call the boys from their Cricket-in-the-street game at 6 p.m. and by 6:01 they had to have their hands washed and be at the table or they wouldn't get dinner, he says.</p><p>It worked. In addition to raising two multi-millionaire tech execs, her oldest son is a private equity investor in Bangalore and the second oldest is a pediatrician in the U.K., George says. </p><h2>Twin <keyword id="6354910" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Careers">careers</keyword></h2><p>The twins moved to the US together to go to college at Princeton, earning scholarships to study engineering.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/576d539a52bcd029008cb830-1290/george kurian[1].jpg" alt="NetApp CEO George Kurian" data-mce-source="NetApp" /><p class="source"><span>NetApp</span></p><p class="caption">George Kurian prepares meals during NetApp's Executive Chef Day where an executive and a summer intern serve lunch to employees to raise money for the local food bank.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"It was a good thing that we came together. It gave us a friend to navigate the big cultural transition between India and US," he says.</p><p>While in college, George worked any odd job he could to raise spending money: "parking cars, working in the cafeteria, being a pizza chef, bartending, you name it," he says. "It taught me that it takes all kinds of people to make a business work."</p><p><span>Thomas </span>got a job at Oracle straight from college and Thomas landed as a consultant at McKenzie.</p><p>A few years later, each of them wanted to try the other's job. So in 1996, they switched. <span>George </span>went to McKenzie and became a consultant and Thomas went to Oracle to be an engineer.</p><p><span>"It isn't that we intended to that. It's just that we both had good experiences and were interested in trying it out," George explains matter-of-factly.</span></p><p>"I worked at Oracle before he did, and introduced him. He's had a spectacular run there, going on 20 years," he notes.</p><p><span>George </span> moved to Boston to work for internet network company Akamai and met his wife. In typical style, Thomas married a woman from Boston, too.</p><p>They even went to grad school, earning their MBAs at Stanford together. Now both brothers live in the Bay Area.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/576d557352bcd063018cba59-800/george kurian.jpg" alt="George Kurian" data-mce-source="Getty Images" data-mce-caption="George Kurian" /><p class="source"><span>Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">George Kurian</p></div><p></p></div></div>But the twins don't share an extravagant lifestyle that most other multi-millionaire Valley execs do. No private plane for instance. </p><p>"If we got a private plane, our mom would smack us down," he laughs. "You cannot grow up in India without realizing that so many people have so much less than you have."</p><p>One more thing his mother doesn't let him do? He can't act superior to his twin because he's a CEO.</p><p>"When I told her that I was named the CEO, she said, 'Great, but we don't carry business cards at home,'" he says, laughing at the story. "She constantly asks me if we're being good husbands and fathers. That brings you down to earth."</p><h2>Fast rise at NetApp</h2><p>While Thomas climbed Oracle's ladder, <span>George </span>spent nine years at Cisco, NetApp's partner. That's how he got hired away to lead NetApp's flagship storage management product OnTap.</p><p>NetApp was in a dire situation with OnTap. It had to be modernized into a "clustering" storage management product, something the company had been working on for years, not very successfully. In the meantime, competitors were eating its lunch, overall revenues were sinking. The company had more than one big layoff and morale was low.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5718e9f752bcd021008be048-975/netapp.jpg" alt="NetApp employees" data-mce-source="Facebook/NetApp" data-link="https://www.facebook.com/NetApp/photos/pb.14209292613.-2207520000.1461249950./10152107075082614/?type=3&amp;theater" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NetApp/photos/pb.14209292613.-2207520000.1461249950./10152107075082614/?type=3&amp;theater">Facebook/NetApp</a></span></p><p class="caption">NetApp employees</p></div><p></p></div></div><span>George </span>had no experience building storage products. His background was in networking and servers. And he took a lot of grief from his team for that.</p><p>"I was reminded every day," he says.  </p><p>He listened to everyone's ideas and he also challenged people. Some people didn't like it and left the company.</p><p>He told the ones who stayed: 'We've got to make this successful otherwise the company ceases to be relevant in storage," and with the future of the company at stake, "everybody set aside their personal agenda and worked on it," he says.</p><p>The product shipped and customers are buying it. Today it accounts for "80% of new shipments. It was essentially zero when I joined NetApp," <span>George </span>says.</p><p>Some customers have become downright fan boys. The clustering technology means they don't have to schedule IT downtime on nights and weekends to do their work.</p><h2>Ordering more layoffs</h2><p>Now George Kurian needs to carry the success he brought to the OnTap group to the rest of the company. </p><p><span>When NetApp's board asked 10-year CEO Tom Georgens to step down in June 2015, they made </span><span>George </span><span>interim CEO hiring him permanently a short time later.</span></p><p><span><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56997c2ce6183eee168b9d59-960/george kurian.jpg" alt="george kurian netapp ceo" data-mce-source="Screenshot/YouTube" data-mce-caption="NetApp CEO George Kurian" /><p class="source"><span>Screenshot/YouTube</span></p><p class="caption">NetApp CEO George Kurian</p></div><p></p></div></div><span>George Kurian </span>joined NetApp in 2011 and was CEO four years later. He had never been a CEO before.</span></span></p><p>He knows he's got his work cut out for him. NetApp is still shrinking. At the start of this year, he announced <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/02/17/netapp-lay-off-workforce/">another huge layoff, 12% of the company or 1,500 people. </a></p><p>He called it an "incredibly difficult decision" and says he wants to fix the company so he never has to do it again. </p><p>In December he bought Boulder, Colorado-based all-flash storage maker SolidFire for $870 million in cash.</p><p>NetApp desperately needed to get into the all-flash storage market, the new direction for corporate storage. It's late to this area but George has a come-back for that criticism.</p><p>"Being first to market is not necessarily the successful outcome. Violin and Fusion-io were first, look where they are," he tells us.</p><p>Fusion-io hit a tailspin a few years ago and was bought by Sandisk in 2014. Violin Memory's stock is currently trading for less than $1.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/532b4e13ecad04be0cc785ad-576/tom-georgens-netapp.jpg" alt="Tom Georgens NetApp" data-mce-source="NetApp" /><p class="source"><span>NetApp</span></p><p class="caption">NetApp former CEO Tom Georgens</p></div><p></p></div></div>Still, NetApp isn't out of the woods. It <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/pr/16501316-netapp-reports-fourth-quarter-fiscal-year-2016-results">reported a disappointing fourth quarter in May</a>, with a miss on profit and revenue and dimmer-than-expected guidance. And there's endless speculation that its low stock price will make it an acquisition target. It's down about 21% from a year ago to about $26. (Likely buyer Cisco says it doesn't want it.).</p><p>Kurian admits, "We've got a lot of work to do," but he says he's also made progress in his first year putting in new leadership, revamping business processes, updating the products and buying SolidFire.</p><p>He says its his job now to "just execute."</p><p>Thinking of his mother and brother, he also knows says he must "be humble about knowing you are not expert in all disciplines." </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/exercise-workout-shape-routine-2016-6">An exercise scientist reveals exactly how long you need to work out to get in great shape</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="hzamwyNDE6XH_rIq5Z2V-8yxA0I6rbAN" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'hzamwyNDE6XH_rIq5Z2V-8yxA0I6rbAN',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

How NetApp's CEO and his twin brother won the Valley after they switched jobs

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5357e3d3eab8eae728b39f01-1000-750/pure-storage-scott-dietzen.jpg" border="0" alt="Pure Storage Scott Dietzen" /><p class="source"><span>Pure Storage</span></p><p class="caption">Pure Storage CEO Scott Dietzen</p></div><p></p></div></div><keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">Enterprise</keyword> startup Pure Storage just got a huge vote of confidence from the venture world, even though it's playing in a chaotic market and the 800-pound gorilla, EMC, has <a href="http://www.purestorage.com/blog/keeping-pure-pure-an-open-letter-to-customers-on-emcs-pending-lawsuit-against-pure-storage/">been suing it and some of its employees</a>.</p>
<p>It just raised a huge $225 million round that valued the company at over $3 billion, Pure Storage <a href="http://www.purestorage.com/blog/pure-storage-now-valued-at-over-3b-raises-225m-to-maintain-fastest-growth-in-storage-industry-history/">announced on Wednesday.</a></p>
<p>That brings the total raised to date to about $470 million, it says.</p>
<p>To give you some context: that valuation is way bigger than the market caps of two of its rivals, that both hit troubled times after their IPOs.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/fusion-io">Fusion-io,</a> the employer of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, is trading at below $10/share with a market cap of $1.04 billion.</p>
<p>And <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/violin-memory">Violin Memory,</a> which went public in September, is trading at under $4/share, with a market cap of $330 million. As we previously reported, those companies have struggled with growth since their IPOs and have shaken up their executive ranks.</p>
<p>In fact, that's one reason why Pure Storage chose to raise more capital this way, instead of an IPO that was expected to happen in 2014.</p>
<p>The big raise helps Pure Storage "fend off prospective acquirers," says <a href="http://www.purestorage.com/blog/pure-storage-now-valued-at-over-3b-raises-225m-to-maintain-fastest-growth-in-storage-industry-history/">CEO Scott Dietzen in a blog post</a>. He doesn't explain that, but before a company can go public, it has to show its books to the public. In doing so, a bigger rival could find the an irresistible acquisition price.</p>
<p>More interesting is his second reason for raising so much cash when he still has "most of the $150m in the bank from our round last summer," he says.</p>
<p>He wants to make employees happy with a big IPO. He writes:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">But the biggest reason to stay private for a while longer is recruiting: <strong>lots of people want to be part of a company when it goes public</strong>. First, there's generally a material uplift in the stock price and each Pure employee has an ownership stake in the business. Second, the IPO is rightly seen as a fun, exciting rite of passage that tech entrepreneurs want to be part of. So <strong>the longer we wait to IPO, the more incredibly talented individuals we will be able to recruit</strong> to join the Puritan cause.</p>
<p>That's especially telling because Pure Storage has been in a legal tussle with EMC over recruiting employees. Over the course of 2013, EMC sued six former employees that joined Pure Storage, <a href="http://www.purestorage.com/blog/keeping-pure-pure-an-open-letter-to-customers-on-emcs-pending-lawsuit-against-pure-storage/">Dietzen revealed in a blog post </a>in November, and then sued Pure Storage itself. Dietzen wrote:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">EMC elected to broaden their legal action to sue Pure Storage, alleging that in aggregate 44 former EMC employees from the sales side have joined Pure over the last two years (which would amount to about 13% of our workforce) and is claiming that these employees and Pure in general have behaved unethically.</p>
<p>The legal situation is still ongoing, a spokesperson confirmed to us.</p>
<p>But investors aren't scared off because the enterprise storage market is so enormous and undergoing a huge transformation. Companies continue to store ever more data and are starting to buy faster, cheaper flash storage, the kind that runs your smartphone and tablet.</p>
<p>Enterprises are expected to spend $1.5 billion on this new type of flash storage device by next year in a market growing at 59% a year, <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24072313">according to IDC.</a></p>
<p>The Pure Storage round was led by institutional investor Wellington Management, with contributions from T Rowe Price, Tiger Global, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures.</p>

Despite A Legal Tussle With EMC, Startup Pure Storage Raises $225 Million At A $3 Billion Valuation

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/534432ceecad04b657084737-969-726/facebook-and-coffee.jpg?maxX=400" border="0" alt="Facebook and coffee" width="400" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mightykenny/2184340479">mightykenny/flickr</a></span></p><p class="caption">Try less Facebook with your coffee</p></div><p></p></div>Feeling down? <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214001241" target="_blank">New research from Austria</a> points to a drug-free, no-cost treatment that may very well help: Stop spending so much time on Facebook.</p>
<p>In a recently published study, psychologists <a href="http://www.spsp.org/members/?id=16908432" target="_blank">Christina Sagioglou</a> and <a href="http://www.uibk.ac.at/psychologie/mitarbeiter/greitemeyer/" target="_blank">Tobias Greitemeyer</a> of the University of Innsbruck report people "expect to feel better after using Facebook, whereas in fact, they feel worse."</p>
<p>Their evidence suggests it's not Internet browsing in general, but specifically social media use that brings people down. It also points to a likely reason: The nagging feeling that you've been wasting time.</p>
<p>"Our findings suggest that-on a daily basis-hundreds of millions of people engage in an activity that they consider (not very) meaningful," they write In the journal <em>Computers in Human Behavior</em>, "which in turn dampens their mood."</p>
<p>The first of their experiments featured 123 German-speaking Facebook users, who took a survey linked to on the social networking site. They first took a standard 20-item questionnaire that measures their current mood. They then were asked how much time they had spent on Facebook immediately before taking the survey.</p>
<p>The results: The more time they had spent on Facebook, the less positive their current mood.</p>
<p>Their second experiment featured 263 people recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. One-third of them spent 20 minutes on Facebook. Another third spent 20 minutes browsing the Internet but avoiding social networking sites.</p>
<p>The final third went directly to the second part of the experiment, in which all participants took that same survey measuring their current mood. A final survey measured the extent to which they felt they had been doing something useful or meaningful during the previous 20 minutes.</p>
<p>Once again, those who had just been on Facebook reported less-positive moods than those in the other two groups. Further analysis found the Facebook users' scores were directly related to a feeling they had "wasted time on a meaningless activity."</p>
<p>The final experiment, featuring 101 active Facebook users, directly asked them to indicate whether they believed being on the site would make them feel better or worse than before they logged on. It found they overwhelmingly assumed - incorrectly - that Facebook would improve their moods.</p>
<p>So why do we keep returning to Facebook thinking it'll make us feel better, when it fact it does the opposite, at least in the short-term? The researchers can only guess at this point; They speculate that a strong, evolution-based drive for social contact may distort our memories of past experiences.</p>
<p>"Although Facebook is an excellent tool for… staying in touch with acquaintances," they conclude, "there are serious disadvantages of using it, such as envy, lowered life satisfaction of basic psychological needs, and dampened mood."</p>
<p>Of course, it's possible that social media usage may have long-term positive effects that counteract the short-term downward mood documented here. And of course different people use social media in different ways; If you're on Facebook promoting a cause, that's quite different from idly noting what your friends are up to.</p>
<p>But given <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/mans-search-meaning" target="_blank">the strong connection</a> between our well-being and the pursuit of meaningful activities, it's hard to see how any medium that we largely equate with time-wasting could be a net positive. Perhaps Facebook isn't really our friend after all.</p><div class="feed-footer-wrapper"><div class="feed-footer">

  <h3>More from Tom Jacobs:</h3>

  <ul>
       <li>
     <a href="http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/enjoy-life-use-facebook-less-78515/" data-bi-base="http://www.psmag.com">Enjoy Life More: Use Facebook Less</a>
    </li>
       <li>
     <a href="http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/study-casts-doubt-superiority-stradivarius-violins-78350/" data-bi-base="http://www.psmag.com">Study Casts Doubt on Superiority of Stradivarius Violins</a>
    </li>
       <li>
     <a href="http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/four-star-restaurant-sure-sunny-day-78195/" data-bi-base="http://www.psmag.com">Does That Restaurant Rate 4 Stars? Sure-on a Sunny Day</a>
    </li>
       <li>
     <a href="http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/meaningful-work-boosts-happiness-even-lawyers-78120/" data-bi-base="http://www.psmag.com">Meaningful Work Boosts Happiness, Even for Lawyers</a>
    </li>
       <li>
     <a href="http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/side-bargain-hunting-77926/" data-bi-base="http://www.psmag.com">The Downside of Bargain Hunting</a>
    </li>
     </ul>
 </div></div>

To Enjoy Life More, Start Using Facebook Less

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="MPR photo/Luke Taylor" title_caption="Emily Reese conducts an interview in a Minnesota Public Radio studio." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55ae9f17371d22462c8b6287-960/ereese_studio_mg_2214.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/55ae9f17371d22462c8b6287-3888-2592/ereese_studio_mg_2214.jpg" alt="Emily Reese " data-mce-source="MPR photo/Luke Taylor" /></a><p class="source"><span>MPR photo/Luke Taylor</span></p><p class="caption">Emily Reese conducts an interview in a Minnesota Public Radio studio.</p></div><p></p></div></div><p>Public radio isn't known as a hub for video game coverage. As recently as this past April, National Public Radio published&#xa0;a think piece just to convince its readers that <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/04/28/402741863/why-video-games-matter">they should care about video games</a>&#xa0;at all.&#xa0;</p><p>That's why Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) host Emily Reese is such an anomaly. Reese has two professional passions:&#xa0;classical music and video game scores.&#xa0;Classical music, of course, is a staple of the public radio universe.&#xa0;</p><p>"Top Score," Reese's video game music podcast, is an exception.</p><p>Video game composers&#xa0;are often&#xa0;unknowns in the music world, choosing to hammer away for years on melodies to match the unique, interactive experience of gaming. Those&#xa0;artistic and technical demands&#xa0;make their work special, Reese told Business Insider:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">When you think about writing music for media, video games are pretty much the only time it gets interactive. With video games it's fascinating that composers need to think about what players&#xa0;may or may not be doing.</p><p>The broader culture has only just begun to notice what game composers are accomplishing. In 2013, the Playstation 3 game "Journey" was nominated alongside "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" for a Grammy in the&#xa0;<span>Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media category. You can listen to it here:<div><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/M3hFN8UrBPw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></span></p><p class="embed-spacer">It's only a matter of time before a video game beats out its film competitors for the award. "Top Score" is ahead of the critical curve in this respect.</p><p>With Reese's&#xa0;background in classical music broadcasting and her personal passion for gaming - right now she's obsessed with "The Elder Scrolls Online" and has a love-hate relationship with "Destiny" - "Top Score" was a natural next step.</p><p>She says it gives&#xa0;her the chance to explore an aspect of the art form she'd been aware of but, like many video game fans, knew very little about.&#xa0;"T<span>hat's why its fascinating to have people on who are in the trenches doing it."</span></p><p>Some of the most surprising things she's learned have had to do with the unusual methods many composers use.&#xa0;"I&#xa0;remember [composer Jason Graves]&#xa0;telling me how he scored the first 'Deadspace'&#xa0;and was blown away," she says.</p><p>Graves records violinists in the studio before writing a single note. Then, he mixes and edits the recordings to produce the spooky, alien melodies of that series. Reese didn't even realize the sounds&#xa0;were from violins.</p><p>Here's the full soundtrack to "Dead Space," which is both impressive and&#xa0;<em>extremely</em> creepy - it is a horror game after all:</p><p><div><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/XVOm9uY03fs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></p><p class="embed-spacer">"I&#xa0;was like, wow, I guess people really can write music like that."</p><p>That artistic wonder&#xa0;translates into the podcast - and it's addictive. I put on a short playlist of "Top Score" episodes to prepare&#xa0;to&#xa0;interview Reese, and ended up listening through the&#xa0;archive for a whole evening.</p><p>Part of what makes "Top Score" so interesting is the raft of&#xa0;technical challenges these composers face in their work - challenges that most of their musical peers&#xa0;never have to deal with.</p><p>For example, games&#xa0;written for mobile devices and handheld consoles like the Nintendo DS have to ration memory space like water in the desert. And music often gets only a few drops. It's an exercise in minimalism, harkening back to classic games with limited technical capacity for music.</p><p>Games like the original "Super Mario Bros." had extremely rudimentary soundtracks:</p><p><div><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_9bB7r0M9kg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></p><p class="embed-spacer">That's probably the most recognizable piece ever written for a video game, and it had to squeeze in among the few tens of kilobytes allotted early NES titles - a footprint several orders of magnitude smaller than even a two minute low-quality Spotify stream.</p><p class="embed-spacer">In her <a href="http://www.classicalmpr.org/story/2015/07/16/what-s-old-school-is-new-again-michael-schiciano">most recent episode</a>, Reese spoke with composer Michael "Skitch" Schiciano about his experience writing with that kind of hardware challenge in mind.&#xa0;Skitch is a technician as much as he's a musician, and when he talks about the process of scoring "Hot and Cold," a game for DS, he wades deep into the weeds of music theory and computational jargon.</p><p>"This is probably one of our most technical episodes ever," Reese warns listeners, "so get ready to nerd out."<span></span>&#xa0;</p><p>But even as Skitch talks over everyone's head, Reese clarifies and explains without getting in his way. She says her goal is to make "Top Score" appeal to anyone who likes music and creative puzzles, whether or not they play video games themselves.</p><p>That model works even in the staid line-ups of public broadcasters; a five-minute national radio version of "Top Score" reaches the same listeners who tune in for "A Prairie Home Companion" and&#xa0;"Carnegie Hall Live."</p><p>"I<span>t's really just a show about music," Reese says, "and people who love music are interested in the show."</span></p><p><span>If you want to go out and listen to "Top Score" now, you can find it in your preferred podcast app or on their <a href="http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/top-score/">show page</a>.</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fallout-4-video-walkthrough-2015-7">This is the 'Fallout 4' video fans have been waiting months to see</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="NpOWZjdjqhAFSA_U-b0VFKYUSm9O98oi" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'NpOWZjdjqhAFSA_U-b0VFKYUSm9O98oi',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Video game composers are quietly doing something incredible - and this podcast totally gets it

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b4847-2000" alt="Pairie in lab Netflix the OA" data-mce-source="JoJo Whilden/Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>JoJo Whilden/Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong>Warning: Spoilers ahead for "The OA" season one. </strong></p><p>With only two weeks left in 2016, Netflix surprised subscribers with the release of a new cerebral drama series called "The OA." The eight episode anthology follows a woman who calls herself the OA, though her adopted parents named her Prairie when she was a young girl. </p><p>The season finale concluded with a dramatic school shooting, a performance of functional interpretative dance (called "movements") that can allegedly open a tunnel to an alternate dimension, and the possible revelation that OA was making everything up from the start.</p><p>We're going to dive into the details more, and see if we can discern what was happening at the heart of OA's story and the divisive way season one came to a close.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b4848-1920" alt="Prairie the OA Netflix" data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Starting at the real beginning</h2><p>To understand what happened in the eighth episode, we're going to walk through the events chronologically according to OA's story. Feel free to skip this chunk if you have an excellent memory.</p><p>OA says she was born in Russia in 1987 to a wealthy father who owned a metal mine. She had recurring vivid nightmares about being trapped in "an aquarium" and her nose bled each time this happened. It turns out that these special dreams were really a premonition.</p><p>OA's school bus was driven into a lake - an attack from a criminal organization called the Voi, who wanted to send a message to the children's wealthy parents. OA died, but was "sent" to some sort of alternate dimension where a woman named Khatun was waiting for her. Given the choice to stay or return, OA chose to go back to Earth. In exchange, Khatun took her eyesight so she would not have to see the suffering in her future.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b4849-1920" alt="The OA with Khatun Nina " data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>OA is sent to America to live with an aunt, because her father believes she will be safer there. She eventually received word that her father was killed, and OA is adopted by new parents named Nancy and Abel. </p><p>She continues having dreams/premonitions, and sleepwalks while speaking Russian. Nancy and Abel wind up heavily medicating her for 13 years, under the advice of a doctor. </p><p>OA believed her new dreams were a message from her father, telling her he was alive and would meet her at the Statue of Liberty. So she ran away from her overly attentive adopted parents on her 21st birthday, and went to New York City. But her father wasn't there. Instead she met a man named Dr. Hunter Aloysius Percy, or Hap for short. </p><p>Hap was obsessed with understanding NDEs - near-death experience. He convinced OA to come with him for a study. However, when she arrived to his house, he locked her in an underground cage along with four other "test subjects." She lived there for seven years as Hap killed his test subjects over and over again using a kind of drowning tank.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b484a-1920" alt="Prairie with Hap the OA Netflix " data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>One day while trying to escape, OA received a blow to the head from Hap. In another NDE, she travels to the same alternate dimension and once again meets Khatun.</p><p>This time, OA was given her sight back and instructed to swallow a bird. This act gave OA a "movement," a series of hand and body choreography accompanied by specific breathing and sound. Khatun warns her that more suffering is ahead.</p><p>"All five of you must work together as one to avert a great evil," Khatun said.</p><p>Eventually one of OA's fellow "test subjects," Homer, was given his own movement during an NDE. The group's five movements were supposed to open a portal to another dimension when they were performed together. OA and Homer realize that the movement can also heal people - they bring fellow prisoner Scott back to life and help another woman recover from ALS who ends up providing them with the fifth movement.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b484b-1920" alt="The OA and Homer over Shelly Netflix" data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>But right after receiving the fifth movement, Hap forced OA to leave the house. He dropped her at the side of a road and told her that he was going to move all the others so she could never find them again.</p><p>This is where the pilot of the series begins - with OA trying to find a way back to Homer and the other captives. She jumps off a bridge, believing that if she can have another NDE then she might be able to find Homer. But instead she wakes up in a hospital, and is turned over to her adoptive parents who haven't seen her in seven years. </p><h2>OA and the new group of five</h2><p>OA decides that the only way for her to find Homer and the others again is by teaching the movements to a new group of five people. Together, she believes they can open a portal and she can travel to wherever Homer is and be with him again. </p><p>Through an odd set of circumstances, OA convinces five people to meet her every night in an abandoned house. Jesse, Steve, Buck, French (Alfonso), and their teacher Betty Broderick-Allen (who everyone calls BBA).</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b484c-1920" alt="OA and the five in attic Netflix" data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>OA tells them her story over the course of several nights, slowly introducing them to the idea of NDEs and the alternate universe she's traveled to. While she meets with them at night, OA goes to the FBI offices during the day for therapy sessions with a man named Elias Rahim. While we know OA isn't telling her parents the real story, it's unclear how much she tells Elias.</p><p>What she definitely tells Elias is that she has a mission, and that her premonitions have been returning. At the beginning of episode seven, OA has a new dream/premonition. In it she sees large glass windows and hears people screaming, silverware being dropped, and a gun firing. She tells Elias that she feels "something terrible is coming" and she wants to "just solve the puzzle of the premonition on time." She doesn't understand exactly what she's seeing, but she knows it's bad.</p><p>The group of five get the entire story of Hap and the experiments, and OA teaches them all five movements.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b484d-1665" alt="Prairie in The OA netflix Brit Marling" data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Their efforts are foiled after the four teenagers' parents find out about the secret meetings, and walk in as OA is dramatically holding a knife and has her dress halfway off while she recounted Hap attacking her. From the parents' point of view, it looks like a psychotic 28-year-old is messing with their children while a teacher sits by and watches. </p><p>The finale jumped in time then, at least a month or two, and we're led to understand that OA is being medicated again. In the show she says she's taking "Lyprexya" which might be a stand in for a real drug called Zyprexa used for treatment of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.</p><p>Meanwhile BBA has undergone some sort of legal battle, probably over her involvement with her four students and OA in a creepy abandoned house late at night. The four teens - Jesse, Steve, Buck, and French - have all gone back to their separate friend groups in the cafeteria. </p><h2>The school shooting and the movements</h2><p>The final climax of season one was unexpected. A kid - who appears to be male - comes to the school campus with a gun and opens fire. BBA and the four teen boys are all in the cafeteria together, and begin doing the movements OA taught them. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b484e-1920" alt="Steve French and Buck the OA cafeteria scene " data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>This is where the show threw some viewers for a loop. It may have seemed out of left field; however, it was technically teased back in episode five in the subtlest of ways.</p><p>While getting ready in her house, BBA had the radio on in the background. A newscaster says: "Police are saying seven people were killed after a shooter opened fire inside a shopping mall on Tuesday evening. Authorities are searching for the suspected shooter, whom they say left the scene before police arrive. He was last scene walking towards..."</p><p>The audio trails off there.</p><p>But back to the school shooting. OA's group of five perform the movements, and the shooter stood still watching them. Eventually, one of the cafeteria workers takes advantage of the shooter's distracted state and tackles him. The gun goes off again in the struggle, and when the camera zooms out we realize that OA was standing outside doing the movements too. She was shot in the chest when the shooter was tackled. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b484f-1920" alt="The OA Prairie shot " data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The scene cuts to OA being loaded into an ambulance. She looks at the group of five and says, "You did it. Don't you see? I have the will. Can't you feel it?"</p><p>And then, as ambulance begins to drive away, Steve hears a whooshing noise. This is the exact sound Hap described hearing when he first realized that some form of consciousness would leave the body when you died.</p><p>Steve says "it's happening" and runs after the ambulance, yelling for OA to bring him with her. Then everything goes black and suddenly OA is in a brightly lit room. As the screen goes dark again she says "Homer?"</p><h2>So what the heck just happened?</h2><p>Your interpretation of the ending depends entirely on whether or not you believe that OA's experience was real. If you do believe her, then it means her premonitions she has had since returning home were about the school shooting and she was inadvertently preparing the group of five for facing their own "great evil." </p><p>We know the movements have a healing power, so perhaps their combined efforts were enough to momentarily heal whatever it was that led them the shooter to their murderous rampage. It's also probably not a coincidence that the two times we saw the fifth movement completely, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOA/comments/5j4rcl/the_fifth_movement_includes_getting_shotdeath/">someone was shot and killed immediately afterwards</a>.</p><p>The first time was with Evelyn, the sheriff's wife with ALS who Hap forced OA and Homer to heal. Evelyn showed them the movement, and then almost immediately Hap ran into the room and shot her. Here's how <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOA/comments/5j4rcl/the_fifth_movement_includes_getting_shotdeath/">Redditor 713hobofredo explained it</a>:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">[Evelyn] does the movement then hugs her husband and then gets shot. The motion of hugging her husband would end up with her hands over her heart just like the OA's hands were in the last scene when she was shot. So maybe the fifth movement is not only the initial movement, but also requires the hands over heart/killed with a bullet part.<strong><br /></strong></p><p>Prairie's death was probably an essential part of moving through the tunnel of time space to find Homer again - that's why Steve said "it's happening." Their efforts had worked, and she found Homer again in the end. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b4850-1920" alt="Prairie the OA finale Netflix" data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>But what if the truth is much less fantastical than that? What if OA really did have some kind of mental disorder, and her version of reality doesn't match with everyone else's?</p><p>In the finale we saw French break into OA's house while she's staying with her parents at a hotel. He went into her room and found a violin in the closet and a box from Amazon under her bed. The box holds several books - volumes on the Russian oligarchy, NDEs, angels, and a copy of Homer's "Odyssey." </p><p>This might lead you to believe that OA was fabricating her story for the group of five.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b4851-1660" alt="French finds books The OA " data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>But there's an alternate explanation. Redditors <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOA/comments/5in5sb/episode_discussion_chapter_8/dbaqrkc/">have already begun speculating</a> that Elias, the FBI worker, planted those books and the violin in OA's room. Why else would he be in their house in the middle of the night? And why was he so concerned with whether or not French was with other people?</p><p>Perhaps the FBI didn't want any credibility given to OA's story, and Elias was there to make sure she wasn't taken serious. Several things are suspicious about the books, anyways. For one, they don't look like they've been read very much, especially by someone doing research who would probably need to take notes or mark pages. </p><p>Plus, OA was talking about Homer before she had access to the internet. And the second she did have internet, she looked up "Homer Roberts" on YouTube and found a news video featuring him. Though you could argue that she was imagining things, we're more inclined to take that scene at face value and say that Homer exists outside OA's head.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b4852-2000" alt="Homer imprisoned the OA" data-mce-source="JoJo Whilden/Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>JoJo Whilden/Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The timeline also doesn't add up for OA to have crafted that story based on books she ordered online. She received internet access from Steve and either that same night or the next, she began telling her story to the group of five. There simply wasn't enough time for her to order books, have them delivered, read them, and piece together a made up story. </p><p>But the show's creators, Brit Marling (who stars as the OA) and <span>Zal Batmanglij, <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/the-oa-producers-netflix-brit-marling-zal-batmanglij-1201942744/">told Variety that the ambiguous ending was intentional</a>. </span></p><p><span>"<span>I think there is something really delicious in the mystery about questioning the storyteller's truth," Marling <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/the-oa-producers-netflix-brit-marling-zal-batmanglij-1201942744/">said</a>. "[...] I think the place it kind of ultimately arrives at is that it maybe doesn't matter as much the details are true, because there's some essential core that she's imparting that smacks of honesty."</span></span></p><p>There were elements of her story that must be true - like her Russian childhood (remember when Abel recorded her speaking Russian in her sleep?) and the scars on her back. Plus Elias tells OA that her medical reports back up her story of imprisonment because she has Vitamin D deficiency and other symptoms of malnutrition. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5859b3c4dd08958d7f8b4853-1920" alt="The OA Prairie in alternate universe Netflix " data-mce-source="Netflix" /><p class="source"><span>Netflix</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Her blindness is the focus for many when it comes to discerning the truth, but you could explain the supernatural experience away by saying that her blindness was imagined or psychosomatic. </p><p><span>Co-creator Zal Batmanglij throws some weight behind this idea.</span></p><p><span>"I guess I believe the trauma in her story is true," Batmanglij <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/the-oa-producers-netflix-brit-marling-zal-batmanglij-1201942744/">told Variety</a>. "Maybe she couldn't tell her story as it actually happened, but she experienced something. I don't think the details matter. I think that there are lots of different interpretations. I think that's what's going to make it fun, if people do connect to it."</span></p><p><span>So do you believe OA? Or do you think the series was a deeper look into the perspective of someone struggling to cope with a mental disorder? Either way, we're all eager to hear the response to OA's final question: "Homer?"</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/california-snow-2016-12">A creamery in San Francisco is bringing "snow" to California</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="N3MGEwODE6gp6lic39eR8gNqNQRIC-qR" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'N3MGEwODE6gp6lic39eR8gNqNQRIC-qR',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Everything you need to know about the ambiguous finale of Netflix's new show 'The OA'

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bd25c16e97c62f008b6d07-1722-1292/poojan kumar-kid-chess.jpg" alt="PernixData Poojan Kumar, kid chess" data-mce-source="Poojan Kumar" data-mce-caption="PernixData Poojan Kumar as a teen kid chess champion" /><p class="source"><span>Poojan Kumar</span></p><p class="caption">PernixData Poojan Kumar as a teen kid chess champion</p></div><p></p></div></div>The classic Valley success story goes something like this: a geeky kid falls in love with computers at a very early age, learns to code, invents something cool in college, and drops out to do a startup. </p><p>That's about the exact opposite of how Poojan Kumar came to be CEO of a hot storage startup called PernixData, which has raised $62 million in VC funding, including backing from famous angels like Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce.</p><p>In the three years since it's been out of stealth, it's landed more than 650 <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> customers and grown to 200 employees with offices worldwide. </p><h2><strong>"The most interesting three years of my life"</strong></h2><p>Kumar never dreamed of being a tech CEO when he was kid.</p><p>He grew up in a middle-class family in India. His dad, who had grown up in Russia, loved to play chess. He taught his 12-year-old son to play and soon Kumar was beating his dad at the game. The proud dad enrolled Kumar in a local tournament, which he won, earning him the "budding Grandmaster award."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bd2ed62e526556008b6c8f-839-629/pernixdata poojan kumar with co-workers.png" alt="PernixData Poojan Kumar with co workers" data-mce-source="PernixData" data-mce-caption="PernixData CEO Poojan Kumar talks with his employees at a holiday party" /><p class="source"><span>PernixData</span></p><p class="caption">All grown up today, PernixData CEO Poojan Kumar talks with some employees at a party.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"And that began the most interesting three years of my life," Kumar told Business Insider.</p><p>The teenage Kumar started playing chess professionally. His dad even hired a chess tutor.</p><p>"Contrary to popular belief, what it takes to learn the game is not about playing a lot and becoming good. It's more about solving problems," Kumar says. The trick is to look at the board and work out the end result of every possible move - without touching the board.</p><p>"It's not different than a mathematical problem except you had to do it in your head," he recalls.</p><p>He spent his teens studying chess for 3 to 4 hours a day, and winning tournaments against other teens his age, first locally, then nationwide, then internationally.</p><p>People started calling him the next "Vishy Anand" an famous Indian chess Grandmaster and multi-time World Chess Champion.</p><h2><span>His dad ended his chess career</span></h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bd2bca2e526554008b6bee-1000-1778/poojan kumar-kid-chess2.jpg" alt="Poojan Kumar kid chess" data-mce-source="Poojan Kumar" data-mce-caption="Poojan Kumar as a kid chess champion" /><p class="source"><span>Poojan Kumar</span></p><p class="caption">Poojan Kumar as a kid chess champion</p></div><p></p></div></div>At age 15, he was on track to make chess his career, when his dad pulled the plug.</p><p>"He never anticipated it as a career path for me. He, thought it was going to be a recreational thing," Kumar remembers.</p><p>His dad worried how hard it was to make a living playing chess. </p><p>"One thing in common among all the players I saw, including coaches, they were all very poor.  Chess is not a glamorous game, hence there's no money in the game," he said.</p><p>What else should his brilliant son do? Become a computer programmer.</p><p>Looking back, Kumar says "I'm happy my dad made that decision for me. Chess is great, and I'll keep it as a hobby but it was time to go back and focus on higher education."</p><p>So Kumar took all those hours he had spent studying chess and all that expertise in problem-solving and spent them studying to get into the most prestigious tech school in the country, the Indian Institute of Technology. </p><p>IIT is like MIT, only it was harder to get in to in those days. It only accepted about 100 students a year into its computer science program. With India's population of a billion people, it's almost statistically impossible to get accepted.</p><p>But Kumar got in. It was a "life-changing event," he says. And he graduated at the top of his class. </p><p>So he doubled down on his luck and once again tried to do the impossible: get his master's degree in the US at Stanford. This was 1999, and Stanford only accepted maybe 5 students a year from IIT, he says.</p><p>Stanford accepted Kumar and gave him a full-ride scholarship.</p><p>The Stanford grad program is where he met his one-day co-founder, Satyam Vaghani. <span>Vaghani </span>would go on to join a little Stanford startup called VMware - now worth about $20 billion as a subsidiary of EMC - as one of its earliest employees. He stayed there until he and Kumar started PernixData in 2012.</p><p>At Stanford, Kumar caught the startup bug. It was the height of the internet bubble.</p><p>"Google was just getting formed. People were dropping out to start startups. I got enamored and came close to dropping out for an idea."</p><p>But before he could leave school for his startup, the bubble burst and "the whole thing crashed," he said. </p><h2>Oracle came calling</h2><p>With the startup world dead, Oracle showed up at Stanford and swooped up the brightest engineers, offering them good salaries.</p><p>"Oracle was loving the fact that it could attract Stanford computer graduates. A Stanford CS guy never even looked that direction but three of us joined Oracle from Stanford at that time," Kumar jokes about it now.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bd2f9a6e97c630008b6cc0-1280-960/icecream_social.jpg" alt="Poojan Kumar, PernixData employees" data-mce-source="PernixData" data-mce-caption="Poojan Kumar CEO (white shirt, right) hangs with PernixData employees" /><p class="source"><span>PernixData</span></p><p class="caption">Poojan Kumar CEO (white shirt, right) hangs with PernixData employees. From left to right:Guangcheng Lu - MTS, Karthik Dwarakanath, Gokul Nadathur, Tina Kim,Sameer Narkhede, Akshita Jain,  Poojan Kumar and Meher Buddharaju.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The startup bug still had him, so he did it within Oracle.</p><p>There was a new kind of database becoming popular, known as a data warehouse (the precursor to today's big data trend). It stored a lot of stuff on low-cost servers so companies could analyze information for business insights. </p><p>Oracle didn't have a data warehouse product so Kumar and a couple of other guys decided to build one. "I thought, this is my chance to kind of do a startup, but at a big company," he says.</p><p>They got a vice president to sign off on the project, and they built a prototype in their spare time.</p><p>Oracle founder Larry Ellison wasn't involved in the project until he saw the prototype. After he saw it, "We got a blank check from Larry go and make it happen," Kumar says.</p><p>This would become Oracle's Exadata product. It ultimately became so successful, CEO Larry Ellison bought a hardware company, Sun Microsystems, to boost it.</p><p>As Exadata took off to<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/global-cio-oracle-reveals-strategy-and-customers-for-white-hot-exadata/d/d-id/1090713?"> become a multi-billion product for Oracle</a>, Kumar became a star engineer at Oracle.</p><h2>And then he failed</h2><p>But Kumar still longed to do an actual startup. So in 2007, he left Oracle to launch a company called PixBlitz.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bd2c142e5265b9008b6cab-850-638/satyam vaghani2.jpg" alt="PernixData Satyam Vaghani" data-mce-source="Satyam Vaghani" data-mce-caption="PernixData co-founder Satyam Vaghani" data-link="https://twitter.com/SatyamVaghani/status/413121105952378880" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://twitter.com/SatyamVaghani/status/413121105952378880">Satyam Vaghani</a></span></p><p class="caption">PernixData co-founder Satyam Vaghani</p></div><p></p></div></div>After he dumped his personal money into it and raised "a couple million" in VC seed money, the economy crashed in 2008.</p><p>Kumar couldn't raise any more money, and he couldn't sell the company. So he closed shop.</p><p>"And that was the end of my first try of doing something of my own outside," he laughs about it now.</p><p>He got hired by VMware, where his old friend Vaghani worked although the two didn't work together. He stayed there for nearly two years until VMware opted to spin out his area into a new company called Pivotal.</p><p>Meanwhile, after a long career at VMware, Vaghani was ready to move on, too. So the two launched PernixData.</p><p>And Kumar's luck kicked back in, coupled with his hard work ethic.</p><p>The two instantly landed $7 million from angels like John Thompson (Microsoft's chairman) and Mark Leslie (former CEO of<span> Veritas Software). They got the backing</span> based on their reputations at VMware and Oracle and a 35-slide PowerPoint. They didn't even have a prototype.  ("We joked that the deck was worth $200,000 a slide," Kumar tells us.)</p><p>PernixData solves an interesting problem for enterprises related to flash storage. Flash is the same kind of storage on your smartphone or thumb drive, but has gradually moved into more powerful computers thanks to its speed - it's a lot faster to read and write data to it than older forms of storage.</p><p>PernixData's software that takes all the flash storage companies have across all of their computer servers and other storage systems and turns it into one giant pool of very fast flash storage that can be used for a company's most important business apps. </p><p>As <span>Vaghani describes it, these companies suddenly have access to more storage that works faster.</span></p><p>And companies seem to be eating it up. With the founders' deep industry connections in the storage industry, PernixData quickly landed a whole roster of marquee customers from <a href="http://pernixdata.com/customers">Adobe to Costco to US Bank.</a></p><p>At the same time, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/storage-exec-explains-market-melt-down-2016-1">flash storage industry is melting down</a> and this, oddly enough, is creating more opportunity for their software product, not less.</p><p>Giant EMC is distracted by its proposed merger with Dell. Younger public storage contenders like Nimble, Pure Storage, and Violin Memory are embattled in their own struggles as flash storage becomes cheaper and more commoditized, filled with competition from bigger players like Hewlett Packard Enterprise and, more recently, Hitachi.</p><p>"As the top collapses in our industry, this is a significant opportunity for us in a market with billions of dollars of market cap," he says. "New companies like us have the opportunity to become the next billion-dollar companies."</p><p>In fact, he says, it's a lot like playing chess.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/weird-1970-bug-bricks-iphones-stop-working-jan-1-2016-2">This weird bug is making some iPhones crash and stop working</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="p5bDJ2MDE6qipcaVldoIJOEU66f1QqXS" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'p5bDJ2MDE6qipcaVldoIJOEU66f1QqXS',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

How a former teen chess genius wound up leading a hot Valley startup

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5864d541dd08953f208b4b72-2400/3083685591cfb8b82e4o.jpg" alt="sheet music piano keyboard" data-mce-source="Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr (CC)" data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/308368559/"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/308368559/">Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr (CC)</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div><p>When I was about seven or eight, I went for a taster violin lesson at school. The idea was to get an idea for the instrument, and see if I wanted to learn properly. I enjoyed it - but the expected lessons never materialised.</p><p>A few years later, I asked my mother why: Apparently the tutor had refused to teach me.</p><p>It's fair to say that I am not a natural musician.</p><p>But at the start of 2016, I resolved to change that. I decided to learn the piano.</p><p>A year of immense frustrations, endless Philip Glass, and deep satisfaction later, here's how it went.</p><h2>Why? I wanted to do something totally new</h2><p>I'm 24 years old, I live in London, and I've gone through life without knowing the first thing about music. I love to <em>listen</em> to it - I've got a pretty big collection, and I go to gigs regularly. But how it's <em>made</em> has always been one great big opaque mystery to me.</p><p>Both of my brothers play - saxophone and guitar, respectively - but the extent of my musical education was tapping out basic beats on a glockenspiel and learning the first few bars of "Neighbours" on the piano at school. So why did I take the plunge now? Well, there were a few reasons:</p><ul><li><strong>I wanted to challenge myself. </strong>2016 was the start of my third year living in London. I'd settled into a routine, and wanted to add some variety to my life - and something that would push me in a new direction.</li><li><strong>I wanted to do something <em>totally</em> new</strong>. Learning music for the first time isn't like taking up a new team ball-sport, or an unusual arts-and-crafts activity. Music is an entirely new category of human endeavour I have never meaningfully engaged in before. That makes it pretty exciting - and intimidating.</li><li><strong>I love music.</strong> Pretty self-explanatory. I hoped that learning an instrument for the first time would enrich my appreciation of the artform.</li></ul><p>I also set myself a few goals - some strict, and some more nebulous.</p><ul><li><strong>Pass my Grade 1 piano exam by the end of 2016.</strong> If you're not familiar with the system, you can take exams as you learn instruments, from Grade 1 through to Grade 8. A clear target of reaching Grade 1 by the end of the year would give me something to work towards, a way to measure my success or failure.</li><li><strong>Improve my knowledge of classical music.</strong> I had no strict timeframe for this, or a set point when it would be "completed." But I've never known my Bach from my Beethoven, and I wanted to change that.</li><li><strong>Learn "Metamorphosis II," by Philip Glass.</strong> This was a longer-term goal, beyond 2016 - it's a beautiful, flowing, and technically tricky bit of music that I wanted to work towards as I got better.</li></ul><p>How did it go? The short version is that it was fantastic - I'm extremely glad I did it, and I'd strongly urge&#xa0;to anyone thinking about taking up an instrument to do it, whatever your age.</p><p>It wasn't all plain sailing, however.</p><h2>Learning something new is a lesson in humility and patience</h2><p><em>Note: The following sections go into some detail on what and how I learned. If you just want to know whether I passed the exam or not, skip down to the "arcane mystery" section below.</em></p><p>Let me make this clear: Piano is hard. Really hard. It requires you to think in a way you've never done before, juggling a thousand balls simultaneously. Interpret the music. Keep the tempo. Vary the volume. Move both hands independently of one-another. Make sure it all actually sounds <em>good</em>.</p><p>You know that brain-straining feeling when you try and multiply three three-digit numbers together? That's what it felt like to be interpreting and playing music on the fly.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5864d541dd08953f208b4b73-2400/388c268faf7544598bd05921313da25712075.jpg" alt="yamaha p45 electric piano keyboard stand" data-mce-source="Yamaha" data-mce-caption="The Yamaha P45."><p class="source"><span>Yamaha</span></p><p class="caption">The Yamaha P45. Mine doesn't have the fancy stand</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>To learn, I bought myself a new Yamaha P45 electric piano to learn on. (It goes for £350 in the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="100" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword>, and $400 in the US.) I needed something with a full 88-key keyboard (like a traditional acoustic piano), touch-sensitive weighted keys (so it actually sounds and feels like a piano), and I didn't care about fancy voices and modes.<p>I also decided when I began that I was prepared to invest real time and money into this, and pay for a tutor to give me lessons on a (near-)weekly basis. This obviously isn't an option for everyone. But having a tutor means you get expert guidance and avoid learning bad habits - and I'm very glad I did it. For me at least, learning independently would have been far more difficult and infuriating. If you care about something, invest in it.</p><p>Though I had committed to learning piano by the end of 2015, an accident involving a very sharp knife and my thumb meant I was only in a position to buy the piano and start learning at the end of January 2016. For the first week or two, I tried learning using Yousician, a freemium app that can teach you piano and other instruments. It was better than nothing - but it was also limited, and I quickly began looking for a human tutor.</p><p>My first songs were simple, five-note affairs: "When The Saints Go Marching In" was a particular favourite. But an early frustration was the basic-ness of the stuff I was playing, often simplified versions of popular songs. I wanted to be better than I was. I wanted to play stuff I wasn't capable of.</p><p>In that sense, it was a lesson in patience and humility. It's increasingly rare that I go into something completely blind, starting from first principles. You gravitate towards fields and pursuits you're good at, and away from those you're not. Learning piano forced me to face my ineptitude head on, and try to change it.</p><p>Slowly and surely, I improved - and it made a world of difference when I could begin playing stuff that didn't feel dumbed-down. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmXAG2mYY4">John Cage's "In A Landscape"</a> is haunting, and relatively technically simple. And Philip Glass's Metamorphosis II is actually very manageable, <a href="https://youtu.be/FH55ordbsR8?t=2m19s">before the rapid-fire arpeggios begin</a>. Without a doubt I've played it more than anything else in my repertoire - to my flatmates' resigned amusement.</p><p><em>Can you hear the mistake? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa3CIMEYdXo">Here's a live version of the full song</a>. The finger-melting arpeggios start around the two-minute-thirty mark.</em></p><p>I expect I could have progressed faster had I applied myself more. Lessons, nominally once a week, sometimes happened much less frequently, and I had a gap of a month or two during the summer when I didn't play at all.</p><p>But in the early Autumn, I agreed to try for Grade 1 before the end of the year - and that's when it got frantic.</p><h2>I forgot how much I hate exams</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5864d541dd08953f208b4b70-1200/screen%20shot%202016-12-28%20at%20154748.png" alt="piano music rob price keyboard" data-mce-source="Rob Price/BI"><p class="source"><span>Rob Price/BI</span></p><p class="caption">Having a play on the piano at my parents' house.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>Exams! Studying! Tests! Revising! I thought I'd left this all behind when I left university.<p>Music exams are set and administered by external exam board organisations (I went with ABRSM). It involved learning and performing three pieces from a selection available, memorising scales and broken chords, doing sight-reading, and an aural test (listening to music, identifying traits, and singing it back as an "echo.")</p><p>In short, it aims to test the full range of skills required for you to be considered "good" at playing a given instrument.</p><p>It's all scored out of 150. You need 100 or more to pass, with 120 to 130 considered a "merit," and 130 above classified as a "distinction," the highest grade. The lion's share of the marks come from the three prepared pieces, worth up to 30 each, with the other three around 20 each.</p><p>After agreeing to take the test, I quickly realised I was nowhere near ready. My tutor must've rescheduled it at least half a dozen times to give give me more time to prepare, and I was practicing morning-and-evening by the end to try and get up to speed.</p><p>I ended up taking it in the first week of December - the last week available to do it before Christmas. I turned up with only minutes before it began, butchered the sight-reading, and actually felt my hands shaking at one point while performing. Not a great experience.</p><p>So, how did I do?</p><p><em>The Lincolnshire Poacher, above, was one of my exam pieces. Playing from memory without the sheet music in front of me, I'm wobbly on one or two bits.</em></p><h2>Music is an arcane mystery I wanted to unravel</h2><p>Part of the allure of learning music for me was the arcane mystery of it all. From the outside, the rules of music bear to no discernible relation to the "real" world. It has no clear grounding in scientific thought. Why are there only seven notes? Why is it written the way it is? Why do some notes have sharps or flats, and others don't? Why are some combinations of notes good, and others bad? Why is everything in Italian?</p><p>And yet somehow, it all comes together, like nothing else on earth. Like <em>magic</em>.</p><p>However I did in the exam, I knew that I'd made a little progress down this new road. I had learned the basics of a beautiful alchemy, of organic aural creation.</p><p>At least, that's what I told myself as I anxiously waited for my tutor to get back to me with the results.</p><p>After two long weeks of waiting, I finally got a text on Wednesday December 21, 2016. I passed!</p><p>In the end I did rather better than I thought would be, scoring 126, a merit. Even my sight-reading - which I had thought was diabolical, out-of-time, and incorrect - scored 16/21.</p><p><em>Na Krmitku, by Czech composer Petr Eben. This was my best exam piece - I scored 28/30.</em></p><h2>I've got a long way to go - but I'm proud of what I achieved</h2><p>All my life, I've loved drawing and painting. As such, I'm pretty good at it, and it rarely feels difficult. While I'm sure I struggled with it in the past, because I have two decades of experience to fall back on - much of it as a child - I can now produce relatively sophisticated pictures fairly easily. I don't really&#xa0;remember being "bad" at art.</p><p>Piano is not like that. I have to work at it constantly. I remember clearly when I sat in front of the keyboard, barely able to create a simple melody. Every plodding step and slow improvement I make, I have earned. And that makes it all the more satisfying.</p><p>Sure, I've got a long way to go until I'm as good as I want to be. Grade 1 is an exam more commonly associated with eight-year-olds than grown men. My rendition of "Metamorphosis II" is incomplete, and my education in classical music is still largely restricted to composers I have direct experience playing.</p><p>But I'm proud of what I accomplished, and I'd recommend it to anyone, regardless of age or ability. Take the plunge, you won't regret it.</p><div><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/FH55ordbsR8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div><div><div id="ooyala-post-container"></div><script>var playerParam = {'pcode': 'BhdmY6l9g002rBhQ6aEBZiheacDu','playerBrandingId': '3fa6999d63a34b9fbcf1cbbb67046fe6','skin': {'config': 'http://player.ooyala.com/static/v4/stable/4.4.11/skin-plugin/skin.json'}};OO.ready(function() {window.pp = OO.Player.create('ooyala-post-container', 'QwbjdtODE60DwlxkNVO7RCByKarG9glf', playerParam);});</script></div><div><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NgOER0tZ1TE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div><div><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/upRhyMjnH6E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-199-intravenous-treatment-thats-meant-to-cure-a-hangover-2016-12">I tried the £199 intravenous treatment that's meant to cure a hangover - here's the verdict</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="d2NWZqODE6zRh1S45ucDcnR1D2zvqV7W" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'd2NWZqODE6zRh1S45ucDcnR1D2zvqV7W',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

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