Seeding the next generation of startups
With hundreds of startups looking to become the next big thing, all parts of the ecosystem are trying to figure out how to have skin in the game and lower the cost of capital and services for entrepreneurs. For example, Charles River Ventures launched a QuickStart seed funding program and Amazon's Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) and S3 offer a low cost, pay-per-use way to provision a hosted environment.
Sun is also trying to woo startups with at-cost pricing of hardware and software in hopes that if a fledging company blossoms, Sun would be a primary infrastructure and professional services provider. James Hilliard interviews Mark Herring, a director of marketing at Sun and also the sponsor of David's StartUp Camp, who pitches his company's efforts to tap into the startup commmunity.