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Countless AWS instances with less than 1% utilization costing millions of dollars a year. It's easier to raise more money than try to fix it, so it just keeps g

by aianus 9y ago

Countless AWS instances with less than 1% utilization costing millions of dollars a year. It's easier to raise more money than try to fix it, so it just keeps getting worse. Focusing on pumping vanity 'growth' metrics when our product has negative gross margins. We have no idea if anyone likes using our product or if they're just using us to buy dollar bills for $0.97. However management is ego-driven (we're going to "change the world") and it's easier to raise another round than to make a profit.

matthewbauer 9y ago
> or if they're just using us to buy dollar bills for $0.97 This kind of thing confuses me. I've heard similar thoughts before, but as someone out of the loop, aren't investors still expecting a return on their investment? Sure VCs have high toleration of risk but they need at least one or two of their companies to make money eventually, right? If investors really are buying dollars for $.97 this seems like the best indication yet that we are in a huge tech bubble.
- aianus 9y ago
  It's a big company and there are lots of other products and opportunities that have positive gross margins. Just not the product my office primarily works on.
daxfohl 9y ago
The first one is even valid on a personal level. (well at a smaller scale). There was a big thing on NPR a year ago about this, what they called "zombie money" or something like that. I know I have various AWS/DO/Heroku/Namecheap/GApps/Dropbox accounts that I've been paying for for years and haven't canceled "just in case". Granted I've cleaned up a lot as it used to be 2-3x that. I have to imagine I'm not the only one. This is actually possibly a good problem for a real startup. Though somewhat technical, there's certainly quite a bit of tedium there, per http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html, so it's potentially really profitable.
- thecolorblue 9y ago
  Do you see the work being converting standard EC2/Heroku/DO... servers to lambda/cloud functions?
mahyarm 9y ago
I'm not a backend dev, but it feels like something lambda is trying to partially address.

by aianus 9y ago

matthewbauer 9y ago

> or if they're just using us to buy dollar bills for $0.97 This kind of thing confuses me. I've heard similar thoughts before, but as someone out of the loop, aren't investors still expecting a return on their investment? Sure VCs have high toleration of risk but they need at least one or two of their companies to make money eventually, right? If investors really are buying dollars for $.97 this seems like the best indication yet that we are in a huge tech bubble.

aianus 9y ago
It's a big company and there are lots of other products and opportunities that have positive gross margins. Just not the product my office primarily works on.

daxfohl 9y ago

The first one is even valid on a personal level. (well at a smaller scale). There was a big thing on NPR a year ago about this, what they called "zombie money" or something like that. I know I have various AWS/DO/Heroku/Namecheap/GApps/Dropbox accounts that I've been paying for for years and haven't canceled "just in case". Granted I've cleaned up a lot as it used to be 2-3x that. I have to imagine I'm not the only one. This is actually possibly a good problem for a real startup. Though somewhat technical, there's certainly quite a bit of tedium there, per http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html, so it's potentially really profitable.

thecolorblue 9y ago
Do you see the work being converting standard EC2/Heroku/DO... servers to lambda/cloud functions?

mahyarm 9y ago

I'm not a backend dev, but it feels like something lambda is trying to partially address.