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Our $100M Series B

oxide.computer

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Re: Our $100M Series B

#471

Post by esseph »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #447
sudomateo wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to what others noted earlier I'm having trouble understanding exactly what you're trying to communicate here. I'll respond based to points I am clear on. Selling a customer a contract for on-premises computing and giving them a fake metal box and SaaS is borderline unethical depending on the terms of said contract. I understand the sentiment of that point though. There are many reasons a customer chooses to o…

there's seriously nothing complicated about this. Define ownership. Who cares about owning a bunch of computers? If you can get the compute, and you pay up front for it once, and then you can sell "it" later, and it's cheaper than renting, what does it matter if the compute comes in the form of a physical box or if it is in the cloud? So these are all things that matter about ownership! To me, occupying a physical sp…

Oxide is selling a technical solution to technical customers with ownership needs or desires for security, regulatory, or other reasons. Access to the complete stack source code is another. I know a bajillion of these customers and they all have very, very deep pocket books.

They are specifically going after features in a way that no other vendor is, with an extreme care of execution of their crafts at the highest level.

The problems oxide is solving for these customers is something Amazon has shown no interest in. Could they? Sure, they could do anything they put their pocket books to doing, but they haven't.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#472

Post by suprgeek »

In the era of anything even remotely AI-adjacent raising ridiculous amount of money - and proving to vaporware - this is one raise that makes me happy. We need more of the Bryan mindset (and less of Larry) to ensure that when the AI-Enabled future shows up we have some semblance of a fair society that works for all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2047s

Re: Our $100M Series B

#473

Post by steveklabnik »

throwmeaway222 wrote: post #466

I remember when OpenStack was a big thing, what happened to them? They were everywhere- free swag at events. So what is Oxide and why would I use that over OpenStack?

OpenStack is software. Oxide is selling hardware + software, made together. We believe that's a better approach.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#474

Post by ekianjo »

ArnoVW wrote: post #53
ekianjo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so basically everything converges to having specific reasons to have different salary schemes.

One exception, for sales. I don't see how they could have done it differently. We have a "one rate per level" rule. The rates are published, and so are the definitions of the levels, and everyone's level (i.e. indirectly you can know everyone's salary) Worked great, untill we started to look for sales. Doesn't work. They only know incentive-based schemes. So now they have an incentive-based scheme just for the sales,…

> One exception, for sales.

either you have a rule or you dont. the moment you start to do exceptions this will call for more down the road.

there is tangible reason for sales to be commision based. you could say its just like another regular position. An engineer can also be a sales multiplier if they improve a product yet they dont get a commission. Same thing. Having boots of the field is no justification.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#475

Post by jjav »

diggan wrote: post #120
darren0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty fundamental to the personality of people in sales to be driven by getting the sale and getting compensated based on the deal size. If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work. Some sales people will make millions, some will make nothing.

> If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work How come it works for basically every other job on this planet? Developers aren't paid per feature implemented/bug fixed, and we still do those things, how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

> How come it works for basically every other job on this planet?

In sales it is uniquely easy to identify your contribution since it's literally measured in dollars coming in.

There's no way to quantify that for feature implemented/bug fixed, it would devolve into endless politics.

> how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

Sure they are able, but no good sales person is interested. Presumably you'd want to hire the good ones. You can certainly staff a mediocre sales team on a fixed salary, they just won't do much selling.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#476

Post by Too »

nemothekid wrote: post #309
rtpg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200k a year. In US dollars. American dollars. Now you have families, debt, etc. There are things. Minimum expectations for family etc. But come on! It’s not poverty wages! “I am willing to take a pay cut for a thing that I’m passionate about” is such a normal thing that everyone serious I know in this industry says. Or like… even just ethical choices to leave money on the table (there’s a reason online casinos pay th…

Focusing on the raw dollar amount is a red-herring that always comes up in these conversations. 200k is plenty! is a sleight of hand. If I am building something with 10s of millions of value and you give me 200k and expect me to shut up cause it's plenty, you are deceiving me, full stop. The "we all get paid the same" is a dishonest by omission. They don't all get paid the same, and while the peanut gallery may think…

In other threads, the voice of HN tells us to consider equity in a startup as worthless and only ever count on base salary.

Here we instead hear that equity is as important as the air we breathe.

Yes, 200k is not life changing but at least it’s not pretending to be, like many other inflated equity schemes that never vest. It’s just an honest decent salary, better than what you can find in many places of the world.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#477

Post by jperkin »

mystraline wrote: post #98

I applied here. Basically anti-llm long form one-sided interview writeup. Took them 3 months before a "we're not interested" email was sent. No reasons, either. I probably should have just used an LLM to generate good sounding garbage. Probably the same chance to get even a stage 1 interview.

> Took them 3 months before a "we're not interested" email was sent. No reasons, either.

Yeh this is really really tough. They have an excellent RFD that explains the hiring process and it contains a section on this here: https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0003#_rejection_of_non...

I ported their Hubris kernel to RISC-V and ARMv6 before applying for a role to work on it, so thought I had reasonably strong materials, but got rejected.

I fully understand and empathise with their reasons for not providing feedback, but it does mean you're left not knowing whether you were a hair's breadth away from getting in but were behind a better candidate and it would be worth trying again in the future, or rejected for other reasons that no improvement in materials will make up for. As a fully signed-up member of imposter syndrome club I'll obviously lean towards the latter ;)

Re: Our $100M Series B

#478

Post by gruturo »

keeda wrote: post #334
zer00eyz wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do the people making buying decisions at this scale care if their sysadmins have better tools? Look at who oxide is selling to and for what reasons. It's about compute + software at rack scales. It does not matter if it is good it matters that it's integrated. Gear at this level is getting sold with a service contract and "good" means you dont have to field as many calls (keeping the margins up). > Everything we he…

As someone only tangentially familiar with this domain, I have questions about this: > Look at their CPU density and do the math on power. It's fairly low density. Look at the interconnects (100gb per system). Also fairly conservative. It's the perfect product to replace hardware that is aging out, as you wont have to re-plumb for more power/bandwidth, and you still get a massive upgrade. It sounds like the CPU densi…

Datacenters seem to be increasingly power/cooling (i.e., power)/water (if they use it) limited. I'm wondering if the lower CPU density really matters when 75% of a DC risks remaining empty because the power budget is maxxed out already.

And yes the 1-for-1 replacement of older racks is probably a key selling point too.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#479

Post by stefan_ »

jjav wrote: post #475
diggan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work How come it works for basically every other job on this planet? Developers aren't paid per feature implemented/bug fixed, and we still do those things, how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

> How come it works for basically every other job on this planet? In sales it is uniquely easy to identify your contribution since it's literally measured in dollars coming in. There's no way to quantify that for feature implemented/bug fixed, it would devolve into endless politics. > how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary? Sure they are able, but no good sales person is interested.…

> In sales it is uniquely easy to identify your contribution since it's literally measured in dollars coming in.

This logic about stops working as soon as you sell something that is not some immediately exchanged mass produced commoditized gadget. Sales people on commission have tons of incentive to saddle the company with demands and imaginary product features they can't actually deliver on and be long gone before the bill comes due.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#480

Post by aspenmayer »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #464
keeda wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone only tangentially familiar with this domain, I have questions about this: > Look at their CPU density and do the math on power. It's fairly low density. Look at the interconnects (100gb per system). Also fairly conservative. It's the perfect product to replace hardware that is aging out, as you wont have to re-plumb for more power/bandwidth, and you still get a massive upgrade. It sounds like the CPU densi…

For a small company, a limited TAM isn't a problem (and honestly is probably an advantage) if the overall market is big. Datacenters as a whole are a ~$30B market per year. The last thing you want as a small company is a bunch of different customers pulling you in different directions. By limiting your TAM, you limit the number of problems you need to solve for a few years, and if everything goes well and you start o…

Is there a risk that the established players can commoditize oxide’s complement here? Is oxide’s product a feature that the big companies can just clone? I’m not sure to be honest. I have followed oxide through the news and am happy to see some progress in this area, I just want to know how to understand their success in the proper context.
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