We had the opportunity to interview Ian Eyberg, the Founder and CEO of NanoVMs. The industry's only unikernel platform available today. NanoVMs runs your applications as secure, isolated virtual machines faster than bare-metal hardware without an OS.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and NanoVMs?
A: My name is Ian Eyberg, and I am the CEO/founder of NanoVMs. NanoVMs started out as a different type of company, mainly focused on APM (application performance monitoring), I was continuously reading academic papers on unikernels which lead to the expansion. Unikernels help restructure virtual machines into more modular components that are flexible, secure, and reusable. I have a security/operations background, and I was drawn to the idea and what it could offer the future of cloud infrastructure. We created the first unikernel written in Go, and booted it up on KVM (a Kernal-based Virtual Machine) which was a real turning point. I was able to see the true intrinsic value in this venture. I haven’t looked back since.

Q: Are you looking for additional funding or have a crowdfunding campaign? If so, what are you looking for in a potential investor, and how can interested readers get in touch/learn more?
A: We are currently running a crowdfunding campaign at Republic.co/nanovms. We are always looking for investors that can help broker introductions to new prospects. If you work at a company of 50 or more people, I guarantee that we can help save your company money. If your work has cyber problems- we can help solve them.

Q:What makes your company different from others in your space?
A: We are not afraid to be ambitious. In our space, there are a few direct competitors but they are as tiny as we are. Most of the large companies like IBM (IBM), VMware (VMW), and others have research teams looking at unikernels but they aren't taking the space seriously right now- giving us a massive head start. I presume they are waiting for someone else to do the early go to market work, with the goal of swooping in and taking the clientele base. Most large companies don't know how to innovate, even though they have people that work for them that do see the future.

Q: Was it always your goal to have your own company?
A: I think so. My dad owned a construction business, and I was raised with the mindset that "normal" people can easily have their own business, if they are willing to work for it. I have a deep desire to succeed. Lastly, there are certain things I would like to do in life that I simply cannot do without being able to direct large amounts of financial resources to each of these endeavours. You cannot go asteroid mining with a software engineer's salary. ;-)

Q:Where do you see the company in 5 years and how do you plan to get there?
A: Right now, my head is at “growth, growth, growth”. I want to grow this company into a Godzilla. Hundreds of thousands of customers, massive revenue, offices throughout the world, thousands of employees, etc.

I think we have something that we can really take over the world with. The space is so ripe. Someone would have to write a fairly large check to get me out of the game right now. Every single time we make a new product leap, or take a new round, or close a new customer, that check goes higher. One of my friends asked why I hadn't sold yet and the answer is that I want to get to the next level and the level after that. There are a thousand things you simply don't know when you start, and you have to learn as you travel down the road - that's part of the adventure.

Q: How has creating NanoVMs changed your life?
A: I started out with an innate drive to create a company- with the long term goal of selling it for enough money that I could be happy with.That has changed in the past few years though, as I now have a new mission. From a timing perspective, there has never been a better time to launch a new systems company. Both commercialized virtualization and the cloud have laid the groundwork. Edge compute is on the horizon and cyber security is a thousand times worse than it was back in the late 90s. This can be a winner-take-all trillion dollar company, and I want to do it just because I know I can.