Vote for Ksplice! by Paul B. '11

(One sentence executive summary: If you’re willing to support an amazing example of what MIT alumni can do after MIT, please click here to cast your vote for Ksplice in the Forbes “Boost Your Business” Competition!)

One of the aspects of MIT culture I most enjoy is the Institute’s culture of entrepreneurship. MIT students (and professors!) don’t just want to learn about science and technology — we want to apply our knowledge to make the world a better place.

Another cornerstone of MIT culture is that we’re highly collaborative. Instead of competing with one another, we work together and rely on each other to pull through.

So, in the spirit of entrepreneurship and collaboration, I’m doing something I don’t normally do on my blog. I’d like to ask you all to do me a big favor and consider voting for Ksplice, an MIT-founded tech startup, in Forbes “Boost Your Business” Competition. Their concept is actually a beautiful example of tackling hard problems on a foundational level. Ksplice was founded by four MIT alums and friends of mine (Jeff ’07, Waseem ’07, Tim ’07, and Anders ’08) on the principle that security updates are incredibly valuable for companies, but restarting servers to apply these updates cost thousands of dollars in uptime or other costs. Ksplice’s answer? Make reboots obsolete by “ksplicing” in security patches on the go, without any loss of uptime. The Linux world has really taken hold of their concept – they’ve won a ton of competitions and awards already (including the MIT $100k Competition and being Slashdotted) – and winning the Forbes contest would really be another feather in their metaphorical cap.

If you’re willing to support an amazing example of what MIT alumni can do after MIT, please click here to cast your vote for Ksplice! The competition ends on Friday, so vote soon. (The vote will require an email validation, but you won’t get any spam.)

Thanks everyone, and happy Thanksgiving!

(P.S. Amusing side story: when Waseem asked me if I’d be willing to post the voting link for him, I asked him if he actually thought it’d be effective. To figure it out, he compared data from when I posted the link to whatamiforgetting.mit.edu, which netted that site over 400 hits in the first day, and 700 hits overall in the next four days. Swayed by that data, I knew it was more than worth my while to write up a short little piece for the Forbes Competition.)