I wanted to share some of my ~spicy~ takes that apply best to developer and infra-centric, earlier-stage startups. As always, there’s nuance to all advice, so apply with care. Don’t do unlimited free tiers If you’re running a cloud service, offer a free trial period with a time limit. Limits based on the number ofContinue reading “My ~spicy~ startup takes”
Category Archives: Product
PLG is not always the answer
PLG or product-led growth has become the status quo in SaaS companies. The general premise is that the product itself helps acquire and convert users to paying customers, thus reducing the reliance on sales teams. Following this train of thought, it is often true that the easier a product is to set up and getContinue reading “PLG is not always the answer”
$how me the money
One thing about me – if I’m ever trying to learn something new, my first instinct is to check if there are good books available on the topic. Case in point, I once read: “How to Buy a House in California” and I would recommend (the book anyway; the decision is between you and god).Continue reading “$how me the money”
Two months of life at a startup
After deciding to leave big tech, I wanted to join a startup because I wanted to ~learn~. I’m pleasantly shocked at how much learning I’m doing every day. I’ve had to learn stuff at previous jobs but it was almost always limited to learning a new technology (Heroku, Kubernetes, Borg, whatever). At my current job,Continue reading “Two months of life at a startup”
Mo cloud, mo problems
I’m always surprised when I find infrastructure problems that transcend company size and scale. A few have been coming up for me recently, all of which make me think there’s a startup idea or two in here somewhere. The first is capacity management. Most cloud consumption models today are consumption based, i.e. you pay-as-you-go forContinue reading “Mo cloud, mo problems”
What is Temporal?
It’s fairly difficult to explain what Temporal is, not necessarily because the product is so complex, but because the product means so many different things to so many different users. In a nutshell, I’ve come to think of Temporal as a platform that engineers can turn to when they’ve pushed the limits of what theyContinue reading “What is Temporal?”
Why I joined Temporal
I’ve been in a creative rut for the last few months, but I recently started a new job at Temporal and I finally have my writing mojo back! Thanks for sticking around. I would be remiss not to share my appreciation for my time at Google. Understanding Borg and its role in creating best in-classContinue reading “Why I joined Temporal”
Wasm – all roads lead to serverless
Writing my previous post about serverless at the edge was an education. The space is moving quickly and the reality is that the big clouds are at the periphery of this. They’re keeping a close eye on things though; post-Kubernetes container solutions are new but growing quickly. Another way of doing containers in serverless modeContinue reading “Wasm – all roads lead to serverless”
Serverless at the Edge
Apparently I missed the memo but somewhere in between 2020 and now, edge computing became cool again. The old-school definition of edge compute was to bring processing power closer to where the data is instead of trying to lug all the data back to a datacenter. This included use cases like point-of-sale systems, automated retail,Continue reading “Serverless at the Edge”
Pricing for serverless compute
Recently I’ve been thinking about pricing models for serverless compute consumption in the context of my role at Google. Serverless per its definition means that the end-user does not have to manage virtual machines or a “server” – applications can simply request compute resources in some dimension whenever they need. This in theory at leastContinue reading “Pricing for serverless compute”