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Honestly, while I'd love to try this out, I'm afraid of committing to a solution that might not be around long-term, which for me at least overrides concerns of

Honestly, while I'd love to try this out, I'm afraid of committing to a solution that might not be around long-term, which for me at least overrides concerns of peace of mind and ease of use, and I'm doing a hobby project at the moment. I'm using bare AWS at the moment because a) they gave me $5k in credits for YC SUS, b) they own the physical servers, and c) I can trust that they'll be around a long time, so I'd rather get locked into AWS proper rather than a service that might be built on top of AWS (e.g. CloudFormation vs. Terraform). But I get, better than I did two months ago, just how freaking hard it is to build something, anything. This is amazing work, and I couldn't do it. Kudos to you, and I look forward to hearing about your amazing success!

mrkurt 7y ago
We're not AWS, but: 1) we own physical servers and 2) we're profitable 3) have big public companies as customers.
- yingw787 7y ago
  Oh woah, profitable and own physical servers? You guys are gonna be just fine :)
- maxmcd 7y ago
  Physical servers in Vultr right? I believe your geo regions are the same.
  - michaeldwan 7y ago
    So far only Packet, but we'll be expanding soon edit: those regions are the same because it's the easiest set of cities to roll this out in :)
- OldHand2018 7y ago
  Congrats! I can see a lot of use cases for picking just a small subset of cities/regions and skipping Google/Amazon/Azure altogether.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  Weirdly I feel like the fact that you are profitable and have large customers could be as important a part of your customer pitch as it is your investor pitch - even if the tech is awesome that trust in the organization to stick around is super important (just look at the trouble around stadia haha). It's like those fintech companies that have "but how do we make money?" To make sure customers know "ok they can make money without screwing me over or ending up having to shut down"
- mayank 7y ago
  > 1) we own physical servers and 2) we're profitable 3) have big public companies as customers Ironically, these also make you a prime acquisition target (because the product idea rocks), which renders your long-term future unclear.
  - mrkurt 7y ago
    I was at a company that got acquired before. It was so awful. I'd rather just work on this forever than get absorbed by a big company.
    - optimiz3 7y ago
      > I was at a company that got acquired before. It was so awful. I'd rather just work on this forever than get absorbed by a big company. How do your investors feel about this / what's your exit plan?
      - erohead 7y ago
        We feel great about Fly.io :) (I am their group partner at YC)
        mayank 7y ago
        Could you elaborate? :) Because otherwise, you're possibly sending the same message as what I alluded to (i.e., we feel great because we're expecting a big exit).
  - tossAsimov 7y ago
    Well, whoever buys them would like to keep the customers, as it is already a profitable business. So, even if they completely close the business, they should provide a way to migrate, as nobody likes to loose money/customers.
eloff 7y ago
"I won't use anything from smaller or new companies or Google in case it goes away". That's silly, how is this the top comment? Are people that conservative in tech of all places? This is a docker runtime. If it goes away you'll be up and running again without delay on AWS or anywhere else, you just won't have the edge performance characteristics.
- yingw787 7y ago
  Yes, I'm very conservative. I'm in tech because I want to compound my achievements over time, and I can't do that if I fear the ground shifting underneath my feet. Hence Bezo's mantra "focus on the things that don't change". I hate O(N) efforts, I prefer O(N log N) efforts or better. Enterprise workloads are far more conservative than I am, those guys spend decades running the same servers. It's why they can focus on sales and customer success and rake in money, which is what actually puts food on the table for their kids.
LunaSea 7y ago
Depending on the region your infrastructure is located in, AWS doesn't own the datacenter. For example in the Paris (eu-west-3) region, their availability zones are operated on hardware owned and managed by Telehouse, Interxion and Equinix.
- yingw787 7y ago
  Huh, interesting, I didn't know this. Thanks so much for sharing! Do you have a link? I searched and found all three companies, but I only see links to AWS Direct Connect and hybrid cloud solutions. I just assumed if they're creating their own chips, they're probably creating their own servers, datacenters, networks, etc. but I guess I shouldn't jump to conclusions.
  - mrkurt 7y ago
    Datacenters are weird. They're basically a real estate market, check out Digital Realty Trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Realty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Realty Networks are crazy too, especially between continents, ownership of undersea cables is fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable
  - LunaSea 7y ago
    https://www.interxion.com/sites/default/files/2020-01/paris-campus-factsheet.pdf https://www.interxion.com/sites/default/files/2020-01/paris-... I'm guessing it's likely that this solution was adopted to quickly expand to a lot of countries due to data location and privacy questions being raised.

mrkurt 7y ago

We're not AWS, but: 1) we own physical servers and 2) we're profitable 3) have big public companies as customers.

yingw787 7y ago
Oh woah, profitable and own physical servers? You guys are gonna be just fine :)
maxmcd 7y ago
Physical servers in Vultr right? I believe your geo regions are the same.
- michaeldwan 7y ago
  So far only Packet, but we'll be expanding soon edit: those regions are the same because it's the easiest set of cities to roll this out in :)
OldHand2018 7y ago
Congrats! I can see a lot of use cases for picking just a small subset of cities/regions and skipping Google/Amazon/Azure altogether.
vikramkr 7y ago
Weirdly I feel like the fact that you are profitable and have large customers could be as important a part of your customer pitch as it is your investor pitch - even if the tech is awesome that trust in the organization to stick around is super important (just look at the trouble around stadia haha). It's like those fintech companies that have "but how do we make money?" To make sure customers know "ok they can make money without screwing me over or ending up having to shut down"
mayank 7y ago
> 1) we own physical servers and 2) we're profitable 3) have big public companies as customers Ironically, these also make you a prime acquisition target (because the product idea rocks), which renders your long-term future unclear.
- mrkurt 7y ago
  I was at a company that got acquired before. It was so awful. I'd rather just work on this forever than get absorbed by a big company.
  - optimiz3 7y ago
    > I was at a company that got acquired before. It was so awful. I'd rather just work on this forever than get absorbed by a big company. How do your investors feel about this / what's your exit plan?
    - erohead 7y ago
      We feel great about Fly.io :) (I am their group partner at YC)
      - mayank 7y ago
        Could you elaborate? :) Because otherwise, you're possibly sending the same message as what I alluded to (i.e., we feel great because we're expecting a big exit).
- tossAsimov 7y ago
  Well, whoever buys them would like to keep the customers, as it is already a profitable business. So, even if they completely close the business, they should provide a way to migrate, as nobody likes to loose money/customers.

eloff 7y ago

"I won't use anything from smaller or new companies or Google in case it goes away". That's silly, how is this the top comment? Are people that conservative in tech of all places? This is a docker runtime. If it goes away you'll be up and running again without delay on AWS or anywhere else, you just won't have the edge performance characteristics.

yingw787 7y ago
Yes, I'm very conservative. I'm in tech because I want to compound my achievements over time, and I can't do that if I fear the ground shifting underneath my feet. Hence Bezo's mantra "focus on the things that don't change". I hate O(N) efforts, I prefer O(N log N) efforts or better. Enterprise workloads are far more conservative than I am, those guys spend decades running the same servers. It's why they can focus on sales and customer success and rake in money, which is what actually puts food on the table for their kids.

LunaSea 7y ago

Depending on the region your infrastructure is located in, AWS doesn't own the datacenter. For example in the Paris (eu-west-3) region, their availability zones are operated on hardware owned and managed by Telehouse, Interxion and Equinix.

yingw787 7y ago
Huh, interesting, I didn't know this. Thanks so much for sharing! Do you have a link? I searched and found all three companies, but I only see links to AWS Direct Connect and hybrid cloud solutions. I just assumed if they're creating their own chips, they're probably creating their own servers, datacenters, networks, etc. but I guess I shouldn't jump to conclusions.
- mrkurt 7y ago
  Datacenters are weird. They're basically a real estate market, check out Digital Realty Trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Realty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Realty Networks are crazy too, especially between continents, ownership of undersea cables is fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable
- LunaSea 7y ago
  https://www.interxion.com/sites/default/files/2020-01/paris-campus-factsheet.pdf https://www.interxion.com/sites/default/files/2020-01/paris-... I'm guessing it's likely that this solution was adopted to quickly expand to a lot of countries due to data location and privacy questions being raised.