“Julie Hanna Farris was working as an entrepreneur-in-residence
with Mayfield, a prominent venture capital firm in Menlo Park,
California, when she came up with the idea of combining the
ubiquitous nature of email with the disruptive influence of Linux
technology.“The residency gave Ms. Farris, who had held key management
positions at several startups, a rare opportunity to scrutinize the
market for entrepreneurial opportunities. Ms. Farris, an 18-year
veteran of email and messaging, concluded that the underlying
infrastructure of existing email systems was being stressed beyond
the intentions of its original designers…”