Linuxcare Inc has closed a first round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers. We are intrigued by the rapid growth of Linux and the opportunities for companies supporting the open source model, admitted John Doerr, the fabled venture capitalists and general partner in KPCB, we’ve made a strategic investment in Linuxcare because of its central position in the Linux market. Ted Schlein, the KPCB general partner who will be joining Linuxcare’s Board of Directors added: Linuxcare fills an immediate, important and fast-growing market need.
With the injection of capital, Linuxcare also gets a new chief executive officer, Fernand B. Sarrat. Sarrat is the former president and CEO of security and cryptography firm Cylink Corp, which he joined after spending 25 years with IBM. Linuxcare has built a strategic business model that puts the company at the center of the accelerating global adoption of Linux as an enterprise computing platform, Sarrat said. Linuxcare’s founding CEO, Arthur Tyde, remains with the company as executive vice president focusing on operations and external relations. Given our growth and the massive opportunities before us, we long ago determined the need for experienced, world-class leadership, the displaced Tyde conceded.
