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I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

catonmat.net

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Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#31

Post by cmurphycode »

First, I have to say that this looks ambitious. There are some pretty exciting things in the gameplan; I am especially interested in the vmcasts idea. While I have to wonder if they can accomplish all of the ideas they lay out here, given the posts I've seen from catonmat.net before, I think they can do it. From what I can tell, Peteris is not just clever, but very motivated and loves to code and introspect his talents. This is usually a winning combination.

I am excited you decided to open everything, but I wonder if you're going to be able to raise the money necessary to fund the infrastructure. Do either of you have a lot of business experience? If you can seize your opportunities well enough, you can probably monetize your idea while letting others do what they will with the code.

Looking forward to see how this evolves.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#32

Post by pkrumins »

surki wrote: post #29

That's pretty neat. If you are going to support Windows, how does stackvm compare against "Terminal Services Web Access (TS Web Access)" [1] [1] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771908(WS.10).a...

Well, right here:

"You must install TS Web Access on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008."

With stackvm you don't have to install anything, no plugins, not even flash and you don't need a modern web browser.

We're making our software work in all the browsers, even as old IE as 5.5.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#33

Post by surki »

pkrumins wrote: post #32
surki wrote: post #29

That's pretty neat. If you are going to support Windows, how does stackvm compare against "Terminal Services Web Access (TS Web Access)" [1] [1] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771908(WS.10).a...

Well, right here: "You must install TS Web Access on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008." With stackvm you don't have to install anything, no plugins, not even flash and you don't need a modern web browser. We're making our software work in all the browsers, even as old IE as 5.5.

OK, didn't see that one. But technically it should be possible to do that(i.e., pure web rendering through JS) for TS as well.

What I meant to ask was - how does it compare using VNC against RDP. Probably you have through and rejected RDP, so was curious to know the technical details. (xrdp for Linux exists as well)

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#34

Post by substack »

blueberry wrote: post #28
substack wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I had no idea! StackVM is all html and javascript and we've taken great care to make sure it works on all browsers without any silly plugins.

you might want to rethink about plugins depending on your expected audience. People who are looking for good remote desktop solutions would be OK with installing plugins. I played the game on the front page on spoon.net and there was very little lag, it was a smooth experience. People who use remote desktop would prefer smooth experience over ease of installation.

We plan to offer some kind of rdesktop or vnc backend for powerusers, since our software hooks into these on the backend anyways. This is a useful point!

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#35

Post by michael_dorfman »

pkrumins wrote: post #3
michael_dorfman wrote: post #2

That is a very cool idea, Peteris. I wish you the best of luck! A question, though: how do you plan to monetize it? Without a business model, it's a web app, but not really a startup.

I thought the monetization was pretty obvious. I also mentioned it in the post. We're simply going to take care of your virtual machines (host them and make sure they always work) and give you awesome software to work with them!

Sorry, my bad-- I don't know how I missed that paragraph!

Doing this as a paid service from day one is definitely the right way to go. Again, good job.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#37

Post by barrkel »

I wouldn't be so positive about open-source everywhere. I'd recommend keeping some amount of the server-side closed source. The risk I see is that competitors can simply use your code and run the cheapest hardware they can find, while you have to run the cheapest hardware you can find and maintain and improve the software. Unless you have a different edge on the hardware side, you have no sustainable competitive advantage.

So I'd suggest you stick with the open API, and perhaps have an open reference implementation, but add value in a secret sauce on the server side which competitors can't simply copy.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#39

Post by pkrumins »

blueberry wrote: post #11

Looks really impressive, congrats. I don't really see why it is called VM though, did you actually implement an emulator? How does this differ from online remote desktop solutions (say logmein)? Also if you want to reach beyond the geek community you might want to focus on a few of the ideas instead of the many ones that you currently have. For example, making the screencast great or making the demo of an application…

Hey, thanks.

We didn't implement an emulator but since we're bringing virtual machines to the web, we decided to add 'VM' to our title to give an idea that this is related to virtual machines.

Addressing your other questions, sure, we won't have like 100 features where we get lost ourselves. We'll have a small set of standard features and we'll have an API that will let developers hack on stackvm and make it do all other wonders.

I don't know much about logmein at this point but they are corporate company and we are awesome and enthusiastic hackers.

Re: I am doing a startup (putting virtual machines on the web)

#40

Post by flyosity »

FWIW I think saying "doing a startup" sounds pretty childish. Why not say that you're starting a company? "Doing a startup" sounds like you're just messing around with a concept, testing the waters. "Starting a company" makes you look more serious, like you know what you're doing. Just my opinion.
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