[tptacek]

A nit here: leaving Cisco to do a product Cisco should do itself is literally part of the cultural DNA of Cisco; it's practically what you're supposed to do. In years of working with/around Cisco, I saw people literally do startups for things that were just planned features for existing Cisco products.

[bc569a80a344f9c]

Completely agree, I expressed that poorly - that Mist didn't just get rolled back into Cisco seems like an aberration given Cisco's spin-out culture, and I'd be curious to find out some day what happened for them to get scooped up by Juniper instead.

"Normal" startups in this space that aren't just spin-outs designed to come back to the mothership if they're successful are incredibly rare.