Linuxcare

About Linuxcare

Linuxcare emerged in 1998, positioning itself as a cornerstone of the nascent open-source enterprise ecosystem. Founded in San Francisco by Dave Sifry, Arthur Tyde, and Dave LaDuke, the company's initial and ambitious mission was to become the primary, 24/7 technical support provider for the Linux operating system, effectively aiming to be "the 800 number for Linux". The business model was centered on providing a comprehensive suite of professional services to corporations deploying Linux. This included paid technical support on a contract or per-incident basis, system customization, training and education, hardware and software certification, and consulting services. A key aspect of their strategy was to contribute all knowledge gained from support incidents back to a public database, aligning with the open-source community's ethos.

The company quickly gained traction during the dot-com boom, attracting significant investor interest. In late 1999, Linuxcare secured a substantial $32.5 million funding round from prominent investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and Motorola. This infusion of capital fueled rapid expansion. Riding the wave of market enthusiasm for Linux, the company filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in January 2000, initially hoping to raise around $92 million. However, the market climate for tech stocks began to sour. The company faced internal shake-ups, including the departure of its CEO in April 2000, and ultimately postponed and never completed its IPO.

Following the scuttled IPO and the burst of the dot-com bubble, Linuxcare struggled financially. Despite having revenues of $1.5 million in 1999, it posted a net loss of $21.3 million. The services-based model proved difficult to scale profitably. In response, the company underwent a significant strategic pivot in 2002, rebranding as Levanta and shifting its focus to selling software designed to simplify running Linux on mainframe computers. This new entity eventually sold in 2008. In 2011, co-founder Arthur Tyde, along with partners, repurchased and relaunched the Linuxcare brand as an LLC, this time focusing on providing IT services related to cloud computing.