Entrepreneurs Unplugged: With Niel Robertson, Founder and CTO of Service Metrics

Tags: Entrepreneurship

Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, and ITP present Niel Robertson, Founder and CTO of Service Metrics as our featured entrepreneur.

Mr. Robertson is a seasoned veteran of venture-backed startups. His in-depth experience is focused in technology companies, where new product research, software development, technical marketing and external evangelism were combined as effective tools for success. Mr. Robertson specializes in the development of enterprise system management, Web-based technologies, distributed computation and delivery, and internet infrastructure.

Mr. Robertson has been a CTO in Residence at Mobius Venture Capital. He has served as Venture Partner with Fidelity Ventures in Boston.

Prior to his work in venture capital, Mr. Robertson was the VP of Research at Exodus Communications, where he was responsible for building Exodus’ first research group. Mr. Robertson was in charge of all new product and service evaluation as well as the architect for Exodus’ content distribution strategy and streaming media initiative. He was also responsible for liaising with Wall Street and industry analysts.

Exodus acquired Mr. Robertson’s biggest success, Service Metrics, in October of 1999. As founder and CTO of Service Metrics, Mr. Robertson developed and delivered the product roadmap and original architecture and interface to the Service Metrics offerings. Service Metrics was a venture backed startup company focused on providing an end user perspective of web site performance. By building and managing a global network of measurement agents, Service Metrics was able to deliver real-time information on expected and actual performance of their customer’s complex web sites and environments. Service Metrics pioneered the Application Performance Management (APM) space which today stands as a known category of public and private companies.

Prior to Service Metrics, Mr. Robertson was an engineer at NetGenesis. NetGenesis (now part of SPSS) develops web site analytics software. With NetGenesis products, customers can understand the activity of users on their web site, turning this information into better site design and content resulting in increased buying behavior and sales converts.

Entrepreneurs Unplugged is a meeting place where faculty, students and community members with technical backgrounds learn about and get involved in entrepreneurship. In particular, the program offers students and faculty an opportunity to learn how a successful start up is created as well as an opportunity to network. Each Entrepreneurs Unplugged meeting features food, drink and – most importantly – an experienced entrepreneur to discuss his/her start-up experiences.


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