Startup 1 The Life and Death of a Silicon Valley Startup Company Mark Stamp Department of Computer Science San Jose State University
Startup 2 Who Am I? 1992: PhD, Texas Tech : WPI : NSA : MediaSnap, Inc. 2002-Present: SJSU
Startup 3 What was MediaSnap? Silicon Valley startup company o Founded June 2000 o I joined in December 2000 Maximum of 15 employees Not a dot-com Funded by In-Q-Tel (CIA) Digital rights management (DRM)
Startup 4 Why MediaSnap? Three reasons 1. Money 2. Money 3. Money
Startup 5 What is DRM? Digital book example “Persistent protection” o Crypto is not the answer o Security by obscurity?
Startup 6 MediaSnap DRM for pdf documents For use within enterprise o Medical records o Insurance documents
Startup 7 Mathematics? Cryptography Obscurity o Our own “scrambling” algorithms o Key management/caching o Tamper resistance o Software uniqueness
Startup 8 Non-mathematics Dotcom meltdown 9/11/2001 Management In-Q-Tel Other
Startup 9 More info M. Stamp, Digital rights management: The technology behind the hype, to appear in Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, M. Stamp, Risks of digital rights management, Communications of the ACM, M. Stamp, Digital rights management: For better or for worse?, ExtremeTech, M. Stamp, Risks of monoculture, to appear in Communications of the ACM