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When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

gkogan.co

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Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#21

Post by mey »

gk1 wrote: post #18
gawi wrote: post #17

Nice plug in the middle of middle of the article, exactly at the right spot: > By the way, I write an article like this every month or so, covering lessons learned from growing B2B software startups. Get an email update when the next one is published This is the closest I got to subscribing to a newsletter.

> This is the closest I got to subscribing to a newsletter. Almost got you, huh? :) I've A/B tested various locations and the inline-embed is the best, by far. This is also why many news sites now include related stories in the middle of the article, not at the end.

Wish the rss/atom was better represented, rather than only existing in metadata on your site. I must be a dying breed, but I refuse to sign up for email newsletters. I refuse to hand over that much of my attention.

Edit: https://www.gkogan.co/feed.xml

Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#22

Post by generatorguy »

gk1 wrote: post #14
m_ke wrote: post #9

If you're doing anything ML related your best bet is to niche down and solve a very narrow problem for a specific industry / market segment. Building generic AI tooling sounds great but rarely solves anyones problems.

Agreed. One of the possible differentiators I list in the article is being an "end-to-end solution." It's going to be a long while before AWS builds AI for accounting, or for optimizing industrial operations, or for... you get it.

I have yet to hear of an example of a factory or plant using AI for optimizing industrial operations. Anybody known of any?

Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#23

Post by nilkn »

gawi wrote: post #17

Nice plug in the middle of middle of the article, exactly at the right spot: > By the way, I write an article like this every month or so, covering lessons learned from growing B2B software startups. Get an email update when the next one is published This is the closest I got to subscribing to a newsletter.

Pro-tip: create a dedicated email for newsletters so you don't feel like they're spamming you or clogging your inbox. Ever since I did this I really enjoy finding the occasional unique newsletter.

Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#24

Post by mttddd »

generatorguy wrote: post #22
gk1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. One of the possible differentiators I list in the article is being an "end-to-end solution." It's going to be a long while before AWS builds AI for accounting, or for optimizing industrial operations, or for... you get it.

I have yet to hear of an example of a factory or plant using AI for optimizing industrial operations. Anybody known of any?

I imagine there are some, a lot of factory operation optimization uses heavy operations research which isnt a huge jump to some sort of AI/ML

Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#25

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

> Think Twice Before Open-Sourcing

I think it is a problem that it is very hard to monetize open source infrastructure libraries. In the past, you could try to do consulting or else offer paid hosting. Now with the cloud providers doing "zero management" hosting of open source libraries, both those avenues have been seriously curtailed.

Honestly, it seems like if you are the primary author of a popular open source library, your best bet is try to leverage that notoriety into getting hired by one of the cloud companies, and try to work on the open source library as a side project. Trying to use that open source library to support yourself any other way, seems destined for penury and misery.

Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#27

Post by digsy »

generatorguy wrote: post #22
gk1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. One of the possible differentiators I list in the article is being an "end-to-end solution." It's going to be a long while before AWS builds AI for accounting, or for optimizing industrial operations, or for... you get it.

I have yet to hear of an example of a factory or plant using AI for optimizing industrial operations. Anybody known of any?

https://nordcloud.com/10-examples-of-ai-in-manufacturing-to-...

Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#28

Post by jb_s »

gk1 wrote: post #5
aynsof wrote: post #2

It misses a couple of big ones: 1. Offer a great user experience. Many cloud providers are just pumping products out the door with little to no concern for UX. 2. Have great personality. That could be through offering outstanding support, or through being the kind of company that people root for. (Honeycomb.io is a good example of this.)

At the level of five- and six-figure software licenses, "personality" doesn't matter much to buyers. True UX—not UI, which often gets confused with UX—could matter only if it affects org-wide adoption or ease of use for non-technical users.

UX doesn't usually factor into purchasing decisions at bigcorps anyway. It's usually a matrix with products on rows and desired features in columns. The chosen product is the one that ticks all the boxes. Engineers who bring actual domain knowledge into the discussion are ignored because more complex background information and criteria means more work and more discussions with the board.

Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#29

Post by alexis_fr »

mey wrote: post #21
gk1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the closest I got to subscribing to a newsletter. Almost got you, huh? :) I've A/B tested various locations and the inline-embed is the best, by far. This is also why many news sites now include related stories in the middle of the article, not at the end.

Wish the rss/atom was better represented, rather than only existing in metadata on your site. I must be a dying breed, but I refuse to sign up for email newsletters. I refuse to hand over that much of my attention. Edit: https://www.gkogan.co/feed.xml

That’s interesting. So RSS didn’t stick because it didn’t allow advertisers to harvest email addresses.

Which is stupid because you still can’t reach to your audience if you just buy harvested addresses, so if it’s just people who subscribed to your newsletter, you’re just better off letting them subscribe to your RSS. Perhaps the quantifiability of newsletters vs RSS makes email win. If only RSS had embedded ways to count views and see what users looked at.

Re: When AWS, Azure, or GCP Becomes the Competition

#30

Post by techntoke »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #25

> Think Twice Before Open-Sourcing I think it is a problem that it is very hard to monetize open source infrastructure libraries. In the past, you could try to do consulting or else offer paid hosting. Now with the cloud providers doing "zero management" hosting of open source libraries, both those avenues have been seriously curtailed. Honestly, it seems like if you are the primary author of a popular open source li…

If it is being heavily used just invest in making a nice website where you can offer professional services and SaaS deployment with advanced features.
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