“Are you a nerdpreneur?”

Guest post by Patrick Moran, VP of New Relic (@patrickmoran of @newrelic)
The title of this post belongs to Marc Andreessen, in an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal.  The premise is simple:  All companies - airlines, coffee shops, shoe stores - all of them need to be experts in software development to succeed. 

From Marc’s WSJ post:  

Why is this happening now?

Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.

Over two billion people now use the broadband Internet, up from perhaps 50 million a decade ago, when I was at Netscape, the company I co-founded. In the next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day.

On the back end, software programming tools and Internet-based services make it easy to launch new global software-powered start-ups in many industries—without the need to invest in new infrastructure and train new employees. In 2000, when my partner Ben Horowitz was CEO of the first cloud computing company, Loudcloud, the cost of a customer running a basic Internet application was approximately $150,000 a month. Running that same application today in Amazon’s cloud costs about $1,500 a month.”

Marc isn’t just paying lip service to the geek community; this week he committed 
$100 Million to Github

Geeklist and my company New Relic have very similar missions:  To make the lives of geeks better every day.  We do so in different ways, but we’re both part of the nerd economy.  Geekli.st provides a platform for geeks to inspire each other and share their successes, while New Relic is on a mission to be a developer’s best friend - providing a service that lets you see how your code is performing out there in the wild.  Combined, we support over 100,000 developers who are using code to make the world a little bit better each day.  
Are you a Nerdpreneur?
We don’t use the term “nerd” or “geek” in a derogatory or negative context. Quite the contrary. We’ve given out thousands of shirts with “Data Nerd” on them.  We believe the trend toward engineers — coders, hackers — running businesses is a GREAT thing - and an unstoppable trend. This is a very healthy trend, and not a bubble or temporary phenomenon.  While you may be slinging code today, tomorrow you may be the next nerdpreneur.

A ^5 to all Geekli.st members

We think you should wave your geek flag high and proud. New Relic and Geekli.st have teamed up to give geeks like you a special 30 days FREE of New Relic monitoring for your app.  When you sign up and deploy their agent into your app, they’ll also send you a free #datanerd tshirt if you sign up from this link:  http://newrelic.com/geeklist.  No purchase necessary or expected.  Just a little way of saying “thank you” for your contributions to the future.

“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you‘ll end up working for one.”  - Charles J. Sykes

Notes

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