I told the person I met in the lobby at Sandforce, a processor startup in Saratoga, that I was there for an interview.
"Oh, he said. "For which position?"
He thought I was there to discuss a job.
Along with having an unusual technology and product, Sandforce also stands out from a lot of other companies in high tech because it is hiring. I only know of one other company – Limbach Energy Solutions, the Pittsburgh-based construction giant – that is aggressively hiring.
On some days, CEO Alex Naqvi says he interviews 10 people a day. I even ran into someone I knew from another company in the hallway.
So what do they do? Sandforce has a chip that, theoretically, will let large data center owners like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, JP Morgan, etc. replace banks of hard drives with flash memory. Flash is faster for many functions and it consumes about 95 percent less energy. (Hard drives spin. Flash doesn't.) Unfortunately, flash also breaks down. Sandforce's chip effectively masks the technical shortcomings of flash. You can read more in the complete story here.
The company has already released its first chips and the first drives made with its technology will come out later this year. Technologies like this could save megawatt hours of power a year. Perhaps more importantly, the technology is directed at the IT industry, which has shown a willingness to embrace green concepts and energy efficiency. If the idea works, the willing customers exist. IBM, Sun, etc. have all talked about marketing solid state drives.
The company has received funds from DCM and two storage vendors. It also is packed with a lot of semiconductor die-hards, who understand how to survive through boom and bust cycles. Navqi, for instance, worked at Chips & Technologies. If you are old enough to remember that name, you're probably old enough to know why that's an interesting tidbit.
If you're looking for a job, you probably want to be an engineer. The 60-person company is tech heavy and sells to other component makers.
Check out the story and the company.
Update: the story now spells his name correctly. It is Naqvi, not Navqi (as originally stated.)
