 Next is Andy Palmer. My intention is that he is a CEO of Vertica, serial entrepreneur who's been collaborating with Mike on Mike's various startups here in New England for the last about 10 years or so. Can I plug in? Yes, you got to take this. I've just got one slide. That's it? That's it. That's bold. I know, exactly. I spent all morning digging this out of the depths of my PowerPoint. The cool thing about the Vertica 2x2 matrix is that it's attacking everyone else. It's not just happy to be up there in the upper right, that it's actually out there actively attacking everything else. This is a little aggressive. I don't think we actually used this one when I came to our marketing. So this is really emotional. My wife kept asking me if I was going to cry when I got up here. And I said, well, I'd be the only one. There's a lot of laughing going on. But this one means a lot to me. So I'm going to give it a shot. So first, there's this really great quote by Winston Churchill. I'm sure you've all heard it. You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give. And Mike has truly made a great life. He's given so much to all of us that are in this room. And many, many more people that are not actually here today, but I'm sure would like to be. And for me, as a business person and a sort of a former software engineer, I'm surrounded by people every single day who think about business and the business of software as being about money. And the amazing thing about Mike is that it's never about money. The money is a tool. It's in one piece of the pie. But it really isn't what primarily motivates him. And that's pretty incredible. My first experience, or the first time I was touched by Mike, was back in the mid-1980s when I was a young college boy. I was, yes, group groping was involved. Now, I was an intern at a small company in Chicago, small family business. We were building a system to automate our quoting and sales configuration. And we had picked this database system called Double Helix that was the first database system for the Mac. It was a pretty good one, actually, back in the day, even though it was a little bit simple. And I spent a good chunk of the summer, three, four months, trying to get this thing to work in Double Helix. And the whole time I was doing it, I was programming on a little Mac sitting next to the computer room where we had a PDP-11. And I finally got to the end of this thing, and it just didn't work. And so I had to figure out a different plan. And after doing a little reading, the only plan I could come with was to actually get Ingress running on the PDP-11, re-implement everything I had built on this little hack of a database called Double Helix in Ingress, and actually make it work. And I did all that in a matter of two and a half or three weeks. And so I think that my experience how Mac influenced me is how many, many people have been influenced by Ingress or Postgres or Vertica or many of these other systems. If you use systems that Mike Stonebreaker has been involved in designing and building, it's almost always a good bet. It really, the discipline and the effort that goes into figuring out how to make database systems work is exceptional and results in many, not just hundreds or thousands, but millions of people actually being able to do things with computers that they thought was previously impossible. And that, for me, started when I was young and carries through to this day. And it's an honor to have been a part of building a really one of these companies that has a product that makes a difference in the world. So, another thing that's really important to Mike other than building things that matter in the world is people. And the fact that we're all here today and we all have these stories, the Postgres team was amazing, right? Like what a blast, what a lot of fun. And it's always fun with Mike, no matter what. And I think in many ways, Mike is radically misunderstood. There are a lot of people, especially business people out there in the world, that come to me all the time and they say, well, how can you work with Mike Stonebreaker? He's impossible. Right? Like what's wrong with that guy? And I think that there's a radical misunderstanding. A lot of these business people are taking their own values where they care a lot about money and they don't really care whether or not people can use the systems or the software that they're involved in building. And they're projecting those things onto Mike. And so that rough exterior hides core fundamental primary motivations that are actually good in the world. And that was my experience with Mike when we started Vertica. That he first came to me and suggested I was living in Portsmouth at the time, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and commuting down to Cambridge. And after Joe Tango, where's Joe? Is he here? Still no. Joe introduced Mike and I in a boondoggle actually through our wives. So we had both been invited to this VC boondoggle. And my wife Amy and Mike's wife Beth met and got along. And then I think Beth went to Mike and said something that was essentially like Amy and I really get along and so you and Mike have to start a company together. And Mike at the time was working on what became Vertica. It started off as C-Store along with Sam and Mitch and Stan and Dave and a whole bunch of other phenomenal folks that were working on the academic project. One of the first things that Mike insisted that I do was go out to Brandeis and have a meeting in Mitch's office and sit down and have a discussion to see whether or not I could get along with the academics. And it was a fascinating meeting because they were both asking me questions to figure out whether I was a money hungry bag of cash kind of a thing. They were fresh off of their stream-based project. So seeing Stan's slide actually kind of makes sense now, right? They were trying to figure out are you the bag of cash guy? And but coming out of that meeting I had this really distinct impression that Mike had started the process of building yet another team. And I didn't know him well enough to know then that this is something that he had done over and over and over again throughout his entire career. But I was the recipient of the Stonebreaker team building process. And every organizational development professional in the world would probably cringe. But the things that Mike does in building teams is absolutely exemplary. And it's the way that you should do things. So when Mike came to me and pitched me on starting Vertica with him, he said, listen, you don't have to do this in do this commute to Boston all the time. I live in New Hampshire. You live in New Hampshire. Let's just start a company in New Hampshire, and we'll stay up there. And it'll all be nice. And of course, at the time, I was going to be, we have what you work at MIT. Like, how is this going to happen? I said, oh, no, I'm just going to trust them and see what happened. So about three months into the project, Mike says, well, it's really hard to recruit people in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. So maybe we should go up and recruit out of the DEC RDB team up in Nashua. So let's locate the company in Andover. And so it felt like a really kind of a major compromise. But in Mike's fashion, I kind of describe how he said this. But what he basically said is something like, we're going to put the company in Andover, Massachusetts. So I just agreed and went along with it. Then we go about raising money. And Ray Lane, who's one of our early investors from Kleiner Perkins, happened to be over at the offices of EMC. And we walk in and we're talking to Joe Tucci, he's the CEO of EMC. And Ray Lane grabs Mike and he brings him up to Joe. And he says, Joe, you got to talk to Mike Stonebreaker. This is the only guy in the entire database industry that actually tells the truth. And I'm kind of like, wait a minute. This is the guy that just told me we're going to have a company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This is not true. But whenever Mike bends the truth a little bit, it's almost always because he's trying to satisfy these fundamentally good primary motivations. And it's never about money. One of the other really funny, it's been great listening to all the stories this morning. One of the other great stories I have is when Kleiner Perkins invested in Vertica early on, was really at the behest of Jerry Held, who had obviously known Mike from way back in the day. One of our first due diligence calls that these venture folks like to have, Jerry and Ray Lane and I are out in California. Ray Lane's the guy who used to run a Oracle. So he was kind of like looking to beat up on Larry Ellison or something. So Jerry and Ray and I are out in California at Kleiner. Mike's on the phone in Lake Winnipezaki, probably, or somewhere else. And so we sit down and Mike clearly had in process kind of what was going on in this meeting. And he just drops into his pitch. And the first thing out of his brain is like, well, I'm Mike Stonebreaker. I'm the guy that wrote Ingress way back in the 1970s. And Jerry's sitting there. And Jerry's like, hey, I'm the guy that wrote the code. That guy never wrote a line of code. What's going on here? And he looks at me like, really? And Mike, of course, just continues to go on and talk about how great column stores are and how wonderful the world's going to be without Oracle. It was really amazing. Then other things that happened as we went through the process of starting Vertica. And I'm going to try really hard not to repeat the kind of anecdotes that have been described before. But Mike really early on had this meeting with Jim Gray. God rest his soul. And Mike came back to me. And what he said was basically, well, I took Jim through all. He read the paper, and I took him through everything we're planning to do. And he thinks that we can't do about half of the things that we can do, or that we've said we want to do. And I'm like, well, jeez, you know, Mike, maybe we should sort of like, you know, rain it in a little bit. Like, are you sure you really want to do that? Maybe Jim's right. The guy does kind of know what he's talking about. And Mike's like, nah, screw him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. We're going to do all that in three times more. And so irrationally, I went in and said, great, let's go raise $15 million. Let's go. One of the things that we did early on, and it was mentioned, you know, Mike has this sort of tendency to want to create lots of access to the stuff that he works on. And so we had this idea really early on at Vertica. We had to decide if we were going to open source the code. And we decided not to for a whole bunch of reasons. But one of the things we did believe in was what we call open access, that it was going to be really ultimately, it was going to be really easy for lots of people to get our code. And so we couldn't pull that off in the early days. But over time, it became possible. And Mike and I together recruited a guy named Colin Mahoney, who runs Vertica Now. And one of the things that I'm most proud of is, you know, I sat down with Colin for breakfast earlier this week. And Colin told me that the quantity of downloads of Vertica's community addition is now measured in the hundreds of thousands. And that we've, you know, delivered on that promise. And there were a lot of, you know, sort of ups and downs as there are in every startup. But when push comes to shove, I'm really proud of the fact that we built a great product and that we've now made that product available to lots and lots of people. And again, the money really was just a tool to build something that mattered in the world. One of the amazing dynamics that went on at Vertica that was really cool to watch was when Dave came out for the sabbatical, as he mentioned earlier, Mike had been basically taken the paper and kind of like telling everybody what we're going to do. And we had all these great engineers that were doing this stuff. And Dave comes in and like, I don't think anybody kind of says, Dave kind of says, yeah, no, I don't think we're going to do that. Like, let's stop. And he starts going through methodically one by one all these great ideas that Mike had had in figuring out how we were going to actually map that to real code. And it was cool to watch the two of them work together. Clearly the level of trust was exceptional. And again, it was clear to me that when we were building that product, when we were building something that was significant and new, that a part of the magic was these really grand ambitions and this great vision that Mike had and the attention to detail and the discipline that they've provided. And Mike has a real passion for doing that, bringing people together around him in order to make sure that great things get built and that the world results from all the time, energy and investment that we make in terms of engineering these products. No, I don't think so. Well, it was a really great dynamic. And again, it was really fun to watch. So that being said, I remember the day at Vertica when we got select to work. That was a real achievement. We had actually sold a little bit of software before then although we're really not too much. So we prided ourselves on satisfying our customers. And this whole dynamic that went on with the NoSQL community was really fascinating and it's come full circle. The latest release of Vertica has this feature called Flex in it now where basically you can access the Vertica system through JSON. And so all this sort of hyperbole that goes on about SQL and NoSQL and object versus relational. Ultimately at the end of the day, there are users out there that don't really care about any of this stuff. And it's really about building great systems that behave in ways that satisfy users. And sometimes the database community I think can get sort of insular in trying to compare and contrast these various differences between these systems. But Mike has a really unique ability to cut through that and help design and build systems that actually make a difference for users. And that's something that as his business partner I appreciate because the marriage of business and technology together really depends on first and foremost and great engineering and building new stuff that makes a difference in the world. So the number of folks that were involved in Vertica is again sort of a testament to Mike's ability to bring great people together. There are a whole bunch of folks here from Dimitri to Minzao to Chuck Baer and Shilpa Lawande who was here earlier, Colin Mahoney, Nabil Hechem, Sam, Mitch and Stan. Just amazing memories and incredible contribution from everybody involved. Our good friend JR who Stan mentioned earlier was really critical to the whole project. Again, the dozens and dozens, hundreds of people really involved in building that system and bringing it to market were the result of Mike's energy, enthusiasm and passion that he invested in the project. And I was really lucky and blessed to be a part of bringing that system into the world. So just to wrap up, Mike and I now have worked on five or so different projects here in New England. The statement that Sam made earlier in terms of Mike as an inspiration to the entrepreneurial community in Boston is a radical understatement. The pace that Mike has set for us here in Boston with regards to doing new startups is extreme. The expectations that he has are the kinds of expectations that everyone in Silicon Valley has of themselves every single day. He's brought some of that West Coast mojo here to Boston and it's radically transformed my career and in my life and I really, really appreciate that. I think we need more of this in Boston. And the thing that's so remarkable is he's doing it at 70 years old. Whereas, I just hope I'm alive and walking around at your age, Mike. I mean, it's really fantastic. And so there's been so much that's been said. And again, I've gotten through this without shedding a tear but in my heart, there's no one in my professional life and no one in my career that I appreciate more than you. You're an amazing friend and a tremendous business partner and I really love you. So, thank you. Thank you, Mike. I also, I really, more than Mike, I really owe everything that's happened with us and our partnership to Beth. And you know, at the core, you know, anyone that works as hard as Mike does can't do so and isn't capable of doing so without an amazing spouse. And Beth, thank you for everything you've done for Mike over the years. Thank you for being a part of every startup and all the contribution that you've made to all the people in this room and everyone else that he's touched. Thank you.