ykumar6

Also, there is this notion that somehow open-source solutions are competitive with SaaS solutions.

Give me one example where the distribution or usage of an open-source solution is comparable to it's SaaS competitor People misunderstand what open-source really is. There is a selfish reason to maintain open-source projects. Developers are above fixing their own problems when working on open-source. This is the only reason companies and developers invest in open-source.

Hence, the type of projects that become massively successful are components, frameworks or platforms... things that are re-usable for the solutions or apps these developers are creating for their companies. There is real economic value being unlocked there. Recent examples being Docker, AngularJS, etc that are supporting by lots of companies

Creating an app or solution is a whole different ballgame. They are usually side projects because there is little or no incentive for a company to take away resources from building their own apps/solutions, to save a few bucks.

I look at things through a different framework. The products that end up winning in the very competitive world of software are the products that evolve very quickly.

Almost all the value creation that's happening in the cloud is about enabling agility, and very fast release models.

Agility is far more valuable then the time/effort it takes to maintain these apps.

Agility is the ability to launch a new product or feature faster than your competitors

When agility is no longer valuable to a business, they already have a dominant position in the market or have been disrupted by something else.

The guy is Turkey or France building an app on sandstorm has bigger challenges than worrying about how to manage infrastructure.

He needs to figure out how to create a viable business, and his first order concern is getting to P/M fit by rapidly iterating and delivering product (often making several changes a day).

If they create a viable business, they have enough leverage and margins (given SaaS has very favorable unit economics) to pay for a infra and a dude to manage it,

Also, are business style corporate/internal apps going out of existent when they are faced with a fierce SaaS company competing for that business.

It's almost like the SaaS DNA is to move very quickly (break things) and react to customers.

If your developers cannot continuously deploy to their customers and make changes behind the scenes, how will your developers compete with a Slack?

Is your only value proposition data security?

Makes sense, but mobile developers have realized why this update model is a problem, and have created frameworks that wrap content served up by a server. It gives them the ability to continuously iterate.

Simple question to the founders, in a world where software is increasingly the sum of not just code, but cloud services and APIs; how does Sandstorm scale to real-world SaaS? Are you going to require your users to configure lots of API keys and services manually and manage these vendor relationships?

How does Sandstorm create an update-model for SaaS when developers are deploying hundreds of changes a day?

I like the idea, but I wonder if this idea would have worked better in an era when software wasn't always continuously evolving to the needs of customers

I think this study is trying to make statistical predictions based on a limited dataset. The industry has shown the outliers (or statistical anomalies) are the ones that result in the biggest companies.

We run 10 repos in our sandbox

Runnable.io makes it very easy to run all your Github branches, using containers. Here's is how it works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uwPKIH990E&feature=youtu.be

In the article posted, participating liquidation preferences (like you mention) seem extremely rare.

Equity is an investment, and like any investor you need to be smart it. You should evaluate how your investment (stock options) are doing on a regular basis (quarterly or semi-annually) with your management or CEO. Ask the tough questions, talk about metrics/milestones, talk about growth, talk about future prospects. Evaluate and re-evaluate.

If you believe in the company, where it’s going, and the company has the numbers/growth to back-it-up, your equity can be extremely lucrative and life-changing

But it’s only lucrative if you’re willing to go the distance (3-7 years). Over this time, you should receive multiple grants and can build significant ownership in the company (along with earning a market salary)

I'm surprised they even got a notice

I wonder if there are counter-examples of successful companies that ignored some of these rules?

I think it's the other way around. Airbnb had to be solving a problem on the demand side for a supply to arise.

Similarly, Apple/MS must have found an early market of professionals to sell to that need excel, calculators, whatever - solving a problem for them.

You don't start by automating out secretaries. You start by solving a problem for an existing set of people.

You can't create opportunities for people without solving a problem first.

Airbnb offered affordable rentals compared to hotels, it solved a problem/need. This created an opportunity for other's

Uber made hailing a car much easier (solving a problem), creating an opportunity for other's

I don't see how tackling this in reserve works. How can you create an opportunity (let says for truck drivers) without solving a problem somewhere?

A $125K floor-rate in the SF-bay area sounds about right. The competition for developers hasn't let up, and many startups ($10M+ in funding) are using cash as a weapon.

This IMO represents the biggest threat to early-stage startups out of YC or other incubators. Anything less than $100K is not a liveable salary in San Francisco.

Great post by Fred Wilson on Perez's technological surge cycle http://avc.com/2015/02/the-carlota-perez-framework/

She predicts every major technology has a breaking point and turning point.

I can't see why the same isn't true for docker. Rapid adoption leads to growing pains, which leads to introspection, which leads to fixing of issues to create better product.

If you've been around the block, it's hard to see Rocket as competition. There is a lot of sunk cost already in Docker (Amazon, Google, Joyent, lots of startups), if it's not obvious to CoreOS already.. Docker will be the predominant way we package our applications for the next 5-10 years

Read only flags? Streaming stats? Docker's API gets more and more powerful everyday! Very excited about this release

I don't understand how this is a good deal for Twitter, Stackoverflow and any website that generates content and makes money using ads

Google generates revenue via ads, the same business you are in. And Google has a huge advantage. Embedding content into their search stream makes Google better, and stickier.

If Twitter is giving away it's content to Google, it's probably not at the premium it could charge for ads on it's marketplace but at huge discount via an API

This doesn't fair well for any website in this category. Google has found a way to compete with you for page views

Upstream speeds vs downstream speeds will still likely be governed by the laws of economics

Hipchat is down for me

Is bootstrapping really a viable path to an exit in 2015? Most of the companies indie.vc mention were founded in the early or mid 2000s, so these are bad examples to follow.

Back then, there was much less competition for eyeballs, resources, developers, etc. You could grow slowly, without worrying about VC-funded company X or Y or Z catching up.

Today, that seems much much harder.

If you are getting disturbed in an open-office space, buy a set of good quality headphones. Also, we use Slack internally. Set your status to busy and no one is going to bother you.

Can't let the ecosystem fracture. Docker creates a set of standards that are badly needed. This creates value for everyone

This article is ridiculous. As a founder of a small startup in the bay-area, I can tell you it's absolutely impossible to find mid-level engineers experienced with Javascript, Node, Go, RoR, etc.

And if you can, you're paying 30-50% more than just a year ago.

Good feedback. Thanks

We support Python http://runnable.com/?filter=Python&page=1

We are considering iOS support

Thanks for the feedback. We're optimized mainly for desktop browsers

Runnable provides containers across high-performance AWS virtual machines. We launch millions of containers every month. Publishing your own image is as simple as installing packages in our terminal and hitting "publish"

- Yash (Founder, Runnable.com)

Give http://Runnable.com a shot too :-) It's 100% free, and will remain so.