I spent two and a half years in 2000 to 2002 developing some sort of global cloud computing platform 10 years too soon :) -see below. Then I've spent another c

I spent two and a half years in 2000 to 2002 developing some sort of global cloud computing platform 10 years too soon :) -see below. Then I've spent another couple of years on and off, (re)developing an archive management system that may finally become a reality soon, at its 4th iteration and rewrite :) Anyway these were years well spent; I've learnt a lot. The first startup story: it ran out of cash, utter failure and sad ending. Basically we had glorious plans of world domination :) but we never had the money to actually make it. The CEO (who brought us 90% of the funding) ended completely broke after burning through € 15 millions in a couple of years. We went through quite a spectacular series of failures : * we started the project 6 months to 1 year late. Real work started in March 2000, just before the dotcom bust (Doh). * we weren't actually technically qualified to make it through, though we tried hard. The project was too complex and too ambitious from the start, would have needed literally 100s of millions to build. * our main partner and support (SGI) wasn't doing too well. * our CEO never managed to get any additional funding. Instead of calling a quit after the first year, he kept the sinking boat running, without enough resources and people. * he literally burnt money : we bought a huge stack of hardware, worth more than half a million euros, without having any resources to even *turn it on*, simply because he *promised to*. We had a huge colo with big iron hardware not even in a runnable state. Sigh...