Every decade or so a new computing platform takes the industry by storm. The latest is the Distributed Computing Fabric, with Hadoop in particular generating intense interest.

Dan and Alex follow an independent path well outside the industry dogma - such orthogonal, cross-grain thinking stands behind the biggest entrepreneurial success stories.

Krish Ramakrishnan has an uncanny ability to detect fuzzy, early market signals and turn them into clear-eyed strategy. Blue Jeans is the latest example.

I first met Jahangir Mohammed, founder and CEO of Jasper in 2002 when he was the CEO of Kineto Wireless. I was struck by his clarity and audacity.