Our $100M Series B • Hacker News Board

Re: Our $100M Series B

#291

Post by steveklabnik » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #197

They're a cool team and I like the idea so I hope it works. In our case, for the few million, we could get a hell of a lot more hardware (Epyc 9654 based machines to start with - much better operating cost / compute) so the magic must be in the software.

It is true that because we're a young company, we currently have the initial SKU that we started selling two years ago. Like every hardware company, we'll be releasing new products with new hardware every so often. Totally hear you if the current product doesn't fit your needs though, that's just going to be the case when we're so young, but as we grow and scale, we'll be able to release more variations that could make sense for more people.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#292

Post by dmoy » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

transpute wrote: post #272

sethops1 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was skeptical as well, if only because just being a better product isn't enough to win the market. Everything we hear about Oxide sounds like an impressive green field implementation of a data center, but is that enough? Do the people making buying decisions at this scale care if their sysadmins have better tools?

What percentage of enterprise IT compute has not moved to a public cloud?

I'm not sure anyone really knows

uptime institute publishes some good numbers from survey, which puts on prem + colo still at >50% last I checked.

And still some additional 5% in like... on prem in closets.

Last year Amazon said it was 85% on prem. I dunno who has the right numbers.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#293

Post by steveklabnik » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

guywithahat wrote: post #268

cdaringe wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What observations have you made that they are not or would not be focused on solving customer problems?

That they're instead focused on standardizing employee salary, or promoting their company through niche political websites. These are decisions that the CEO is making, which means they're distracted. This is fine when you've received nearly 200 million in total funding, but won't work once you're expected to add the same level of value while being profitable.

> promoting their company through niche political websites.

Just to be clear, you mean that we have a BlueSky account, in addition to X? I struggle to think of what you mean.

Generally speaking, advertising on a wide array of platforms is considered a good thing, as you reach different audiences.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#294

Post by steveklabnik » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #285

steveklabnik wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep quality notes that make it easy to recap a quarter or half. (But like I said, I'm good at my job.) The point is not that my friends don't do a good job, the point is that this is work that does not actually further the organization's goals directly, but is necessary in order to keep their job. They'd rather be doing the actual work they are hired to do.

Oh, come on. Administrative overhead is a reality of business everywhere and at every level; the idea that to manage an organization somehow necessarily impairs it is absurd. So is purporting falsely to eliminate that overhead on behalf of others, when basic professional competence instead involves for oneself learning to minimize it - to dispose of it, not by panicking or catastrophizing or sweeping it under a rug,…

The issue is, you're speaking from the position of the organization itself. Yes, staff work is just as important as line work. The issue with perf isn't that it's staff work, it's that people who are ostensibly hired to do line work are forced to do staff work just to keep their jobs. And sure, you can argue "tough, that's just life," but it's not hard to see why people resent it. They want to be writing code, not putting together promo packets.

Anyway this is mostly just one example, it's just one that comes up often when I speak with my peers about how Oxide works vs other companies.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#295

Post by bcantrill » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

wetwater wrote: post #287

If only they bring back their "On the metal" podcast. That podcast scratched an itch I didnt knew I had .

Check out Oxide and Friends[0]! We've been doing it for several years now, and it's a much more flexible format that allows the team to be heard in its own voice -- and allows us to weigh in on whatever's on our collective mind.

[0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/

Re: Our $100M Series B

#296

Post by tshaddox » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

tock wrote: post #89

abxyz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argued this in the previous discussion about oxide’s compensation structure: I disagree that sales must be commission based. Yes, finding sales staff that are willing to work for a salary and equity shrinks the pool but the same is true of engineers willing to work for a flat rate across the company. Sales might seem mystical and magical to engineers but it isn’t. A small company with a small sales team can absolut…

> Just because we can measure a sales person’s contributions in dollar amounts does not mean we must measure it in dollar amounts. This is the fairest form of compensation. It's unfortunate that engineering contribution cannot be measured the same way. If we could engineers would all be getting a nice pay hike.

It's still just a market. You've got to make offers that people will accept. It's mostly silly to try to come up with some objective theory of value, except in the context of what potential employees will consider to be fair, which is right back at "you've got to make offers that people will accept."

Basing compensation on supposedly objective things like "the dollar amount a sales person brought in" might be important to a given pool of potential employees, but resist the temptation to think of it as objectively determining the value of the employee's work. Remember that all you're doing is making offers that people will accept.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#297

Post by gtirloni » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

transpute wrote: post #270

throwpup666 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still dont get it. If someone else's software is running the hardware, what difference does it make if its on-prem or offsite?

Is the software open-source with reproducible builds of any runtime binaries? Oxide has been remarkably transparent about the development and architecture of critical system components. We can only hope they succeed and inspire others to follow their transparency lead.

Open source is a requirement but not the only one. There are countless examples of companies building integrated solutions based off of open source projects that, when they went bankrupt, there was nobody to pick up the available pieces and continue moving the stack forward. Just pointing out that open source is not this magical escape hatch that some people think (at least not in corporate environments).

Re: Our $100M Series B

#298

Post by sunshowers » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #285

steveklabnik wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep quality notes that make it easy to recap a quarter or half. (But like I said, I'm good at my job.) The point is not that my friends don't do a good job, the point is that this is work that does not actually further the organization's goals directly, but is necessary in order to keep their job. They'd rather be doing the actual work they are hired to do.

Oh, come on. Administrative overhead is a reality of business everywhere and at every level; the idea that to manage an organization somehow necessarily impairs it is absurd. So is purporting falsely to eliminate that overhead on behalf of others, when basic professional competence instead involves for oneself learning to minimize it - to dispose of it, not by panicking or catastrophizing or sweeping it under a rug,…

I moved from Meta, infamous for its performance reviews, to Oxide. The culture difference is night and day. The level of self-interested behavior seen at Meta just doesn't exist here.

By the way, I received every rating from Greatly Exceeds (including an additional equity grant) down to Meets Most, and the rating I got overall had very little correlation with either effort or impact. I got Meets Most for some of the most valuable and industry-impactful work I've done in my career, and Greatly Exceeds for something that got replaced in a year.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#299

Post by derangedHorse » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

After scrolling the site for 5 minutes, I still don't understand what they do. Do they offer on-prem servers? Then how does it bring cloud scalability? Is their selling point modular computer components so that you can order things online to achieve cloud scalability? Whatever it is, I expect it to have a poor user experience if I can't find a simple 'about' page.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#300

Post by oooyay » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #56

mrcwinn wrote: post #13

Everyone at Oxide makes the same salary: >We decided to do something outlandishly simple: take the salary that Steve, Jess, and I were going to pay ourselves, and pay that to everyone. [ https://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-... ] Does everyone at Oxide have the same equity grant?

> Does everyone at Oxide have the same equity grant? I thought I saw this question answered in a previous thread and the answer was basically “no”, but the question has been avoided a lot. Aspects of equity compensation would inherently need to be different over time due to valuation, fundraising stage, and so on. However I always thought it was strange that they made a big deal about paying everyone the same base sa…

> The old Oxide compensation discussions were interesting. There was discussion about how they thought candidates asking about compensation to be something of a negative signal because they wanted people who weren’t in it for the money, basically.

I can't say anything of Oxide because I don't really know the people involved other than reading their writing.

This is an attitude a lot of industry veterans have. Most of them were in software pre-2015 and have long made their money and paid their debts. They saw the haydays of job hopping, massive salaries, massive equity, and "rockstars" (that never were). The people I know that joined software post-2015 and onward are not in the same financial position.