It sounds like Vectorized is a streaming platform built on top of Redpanda. Is that the right way to think about it? If yes, then why not build it directly on top of Kafka instead?
I think people LOVE the kafka _api_ but they have a hard time operating clusters at scale. So we decided to keep the same API but solve the problem of operational complexity.
That is very true, and this is what you should emphasise. Wish you the best of luck!
The actual speed of Kafka has rarely been a concern (but huge numbers of partitions are, which makes rebalancing a pain) in my experience, in fact it was mostly overkill. But operational complexity was definitely an issue!
Without scrolling, all the text thats displayed is this:
"Redpanda
A Kafka® API compatible streaming platform for mission-critical workloads.
Try Redpanda today"
It tells me what it is, which is good. It does not tell me why it is better, for that I have to scroll. Kafka is already suited for mission-critical workloads, so that is not a unique value proposition. Maybe:
"Redpanda - 100% Kafka API compatible, but without the headaches. Forget Zookeeper, forget rebalancing issues. Instead, enjoy reliable message delivery, 10x faster speed and ultra-low latencies due to our thread-per-core architecture."
Something like that, plus a visible "call to action" button, maybe "try it out" or "download".
Could also think about a pretty graph comparing latencies or smth. People love pretty graphs.