Enterprise tech has gone from a yawn to an excited scream over the past year.
Businesses that sell to other businesses, with their steady revenues and more-predictable growth, are now the darling of tech investors.
That means they're good places for employees, too.
So if you're gunning for a new job with stock options that could make you a millionaire, consider this:
- VCs are throwing money at enterprise startups.
- They would like to throw more money at them, if they could find more good ideas.
- In 2012, the enterprise IPO market was red-hot. Companies such as Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, and Workday had extremely successful opening days in spite of the Facebook IPO fiasco—or maybe because of it, as investors veered away from consumer Web plays.
- Some of the Valley's brightest minds are working on enterprise software.
So if you're thinking of making the jump, where should you go?
FireEye: Great tech and a golden-touch CEO
Company: FireEye
Location: Milpitas, Calif.
No. of Employees: 400
FireEye is a hot security startup for a whole bunch of reasons. It solves the hard security problem of protecting enterprises against previously unknown, so-called "zero-day" attacks. It just landed a $50 million round of financing on a $1.25 billion valuation, and hired an experienced CEO, Dave DeWalt.
DeWalt joined in November after turning down some 40 other job offers. He's had a string of leadership successes, including the turnaround of McAfee through its $7.68 billion sale to Intel. Wouldn't you want to work for a guy with that track record?
Box: Big IPO pending
Company: Box
Location: Los Altos, Calif.
No. of Employees: Over 500
Box is a venture capital darling, run by its young and brilliant founder Aaron Levie. Box is widely expected to go public in 2014 and to be a big hit with investors when it does. Meanwhile, the money folks can't stop throwing millions at it. In 2012, it landed a massive $150 million Series E round.
The reason it's so hot? Box has turned its secure file-sharing service into a development platform that enterprises love.
Okta: Everyone wants Okta's action
Company: Okta
Location: San Francisco
No. of Employees: About 75
Okta was the first cloud startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz. That's significant because Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz pioneered the concept at their previous company, Opsware. Okta has been going gangbusters ever since.
Okta helps companies manage employee identifies in the cloud. This is such a hot area that big guys Salesforce and Oracle now want in. (Okta's founder and CEO, Todd McKinnon, cut his teeth running the engineering department for Salesforce.com.)
The competition has helped Okta up its game. In 2012, it signed on 140 new enterprise customers.
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