Just don't call 25-year-old Stratus a 'survivor'

Stratus Technologies of Maynard marks its 25th anniversary this month. The company, which makes industrial-strength server computers, is one of the few survivors from its 1980s-era peer group, which included Apollo Computer, Prime Computer, Wang Laboratories, and Digital Equipment.But chief executive David Laurello doesn't like the term ''survivor." ''I see us as a company prospering and going forward with a strategy that will continue to grow the company," he says. ''We're looking forward very optimistically to the next 25 years."Founder Bill Foster, who left Data General to start Stratus (then known as Stratus Computer), was part of the anniversary festivities last week, reminiscing about the company's early days, from the $1.7 million in venture capital he raised in 1980, to the IPO in 1983, to the many technical puzzles the company's engineers had to solve to ensure that its servers remained competitive.

Stratus remained a public company until 1998, when it was purchased for $822 million by Ascend Communications. Half of the company, which served enterprise customers, was later spun out as Stratus Technologies, and in 2002, that piece was reunited with the other half of the company, which served telco customers.

Curiously, Laurello says a second IPO isn't out of the question. ''When the market is right, and we're right, we'll consider that," he says.

The company has 750 employees today, after a 20 percent workforce cut in January, and is located in Digital Equipment's former headquarters. Three current employees have been with Stratus since 1980.

Foster points out that Stratus alums are sprinkled throughout the tech sector; they include John Morgridge, the chairman of Cisco Systems, who once served as Stratus's top sales and marketing exec.Betting on bloggingThe first Boston venture capitalist to start a Web log doesn't work for one of the august Route 128 firms like Greylock or Matrix Partners. And that's not surprising.

Jeff Bussgang is a general partner at IDG Ventures in Boston, which was created in late 2001, and is still forging a reputation. Bussgang's blog, ''Seeing Both Sides: VC Perspectives from a Former Entrepreneur," will be a significant influence on that reputation, though Bussgang says he didn't intend it to be a marketing tool for the firm. (The address is www.bostonvcblog.com.)

''As a former entrepreneur, the VC business was always a total black box to me," says Bussgang, who was a cofounder of the college savings program Upromise.com. ''There were many surprises to me about how VCs run their firms, how they think, how they process deals, and it just struck me that it'd be helpful to demystify things."Bussgang posts an entry only about twice a month, but they're more essays than jottings. He has explored the reasons to raise venture money, as well as the way an entrepreneur's ownership of a start-up changes when VCs come in. He has filed a dispatch from a VC conference held at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus last month, as well as listed the Top Five Reasons Entrepreneurs Dislike VCs. Reason number two: Venture capitalists ''Take credit for successes, abandon failures. VC: 'I was like a cofounder there.' Entrepreneur: 'Funny, I didn't see you at my 7 a.m. weekly staff meetings.' "

''My intention is for it to be real and honest, rather than a marketing vehicle," Bussgang says. He hasn't yet plugged any of his portfolio companies (which include PanGo Networks and Brontes Technologies, a 3-D imaging start-up), or noted the fact that IDG Ventures, an arm of the publishing conglomerate International Data Group, raised a $180 million fund in May.

Already, Bussgang's blog, started in February, is read by about 1,000 people each week. Before he flipped the switch, he asked his fellow partners for their OK. ''They were supportive," Bussgang says. ''I think as a new firm, we're willing to take some risks, and do some things that are unconventional."

Who's gonna be next?

Media mogulsHoward Anderson turned out the lights on YankeeTek Ventures earlier this year. But in YankeeTek's old Memorial Drive offices, a new venture capital firm is taking shape.

This one, Spark Capital, is being started by Todd Dagres, a protégé of Anderson's who most recently worked at Battery Ventures, and Santo Politi, a partner at Charles River Ventures who'll leave that Waltham firm at the end of this month.

The pair is out trying to raise $200 million to make investments in companies that sit at the junction of media, entertainment, and technology. Dagres's big deal at Battery was Akamai Technologies, which speeds the delivery of content over the Internet. Politi is a former new media executive at Blockbuster.

Dagres and Politi occasionally invested together when they were at Battery and Charles River. One such deal was Broadbus Technologies, a Boxborough company that makes servers to support cable systems' video-on-demand offerings. After leaving Battery, Dagres started a company, BeGyle Entertainment, to help produce movies, including ''Pretty Persuasion," starring James Woods and Evan Rachel Wood, which comes out in August.

''We aren't ready to announce anything," Dagres writes via e-mail. ''We should be ready in August."Building buzzCambridge-based Maven Networks, which makes software to distribute digital media to PCs, has been helping 20th Century Fox promote two of its summer releases, ''Mr. & Mrs. Smith" and the upcoming superhero flick ''Fantastic Four." Fox is the first Hollywood studio to adopt Maven's technology, which sends high-quality movie trailers to people who've signed up to get them, along with ''making of" footage that will eventually appear on the DVD.

Maven founder Hilmi Ozguc hints he's close to signing a second big-name customer in Hollywood. He says a previous collaboration between his company and Fox, tied to 2004's ''Master and Commander," prompted 12 percent of all viewers to buy tickets, something Maven's application supports. (Sno-Caps still must be purchased at the theater, however.)

The BlackBerry bunchThink you've got the fastest thumbs in the East? Do you dash off 300-word missives while waiting for the elevator? I'm planning a BlackBerry Invitational Tournament as part of a column. It will involve responding to three e-mail messages from me. (And you don't have to be a BlackBerry user: Treo 600s or other e-mail devices with keys smaller than aspirin are eligible.) If you want to compete, send me an e-mail before June 27 with your name, the device you use, and how long you've been using it.

Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Fast Company. He can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com.