Checking back in on the Branch AWS bill; I think I last posted about 2 years ago, when it was still under $1,000/month. In the meantime, Branch has grown ~15X YoY for two years, and so the bill has also grown, to just around $10K/month.
As a reminder, Branch is fully serverless, and carries a complete copy of production into every staging/test/etc environment, as well as every developer environment. Every developer has his/her own AWS account (also too with every other environment).
Oct 16, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
One mistake I see entrepreneurs (enabled by VCs) making constantly is assuming that the ability to do greenfield development will necessarily lead to more nimbler, better, and faster systems than incumbents (especially very old incumbents)...
It is absolutely true that being able to build from scratch *can* be a huge advantage and *can* give organizations the ability to be more nimble, better, and faster, but it absolutely is not guaranteed, especially because most startup greenfield development is not done that well.
Oct 10, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
One of the most interesting things I see in talking to startups that have a plan/value prop similar to a company that came before it but pivoted is that they often have no curiosity about why that company pivoted.
1/
So for example, there’s a company that sought to do “plaid for insurance” with basically the same tech + monetization strategy as plaid, but has since pivoted at least on the monetization strategy (and honestly at least a little on the tech).
2/
Dec 7, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
#reInvent2019 thoughts: 1. AWS is the best choice for most organizations, and it continues to innovate at a faster rate than anyone else. 2. Biggest upside and downside of AWS remains the decentralization. Net positive; see #1. 3. Second biggest downside remains complexity. 1/4. AWS really needs someone at the VP level (like @adrianco has done for open source) to influence (but not dictate) easier, more-opinionated ways of using the services for the 80% use case (e.g., CRUD apps). ... 2/
Dec 3, 2019 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
And now @undef_obj walking us through DataStore (threaded).
“The ultimate distributed system is between clients and the back end.”
Aug 6, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I’ve been thinking about the highest-leverage activities of startup CTOs, and how they differ substantially from non-startups.
Specifically, I’m thinking about both software/systems architecture and related build vs buy choices, compared with recruiting and hiring.
If you have a company with an established tech stack that you’re not throwing away wholesale, then the highest-leverage activities of a CTO are almost certainly around talent: retention and hiring.
But where you are truly starting from scratch, this may not be the case.
Jan 26, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I’ve been thinking more and more that this piece by @rezendi is one of the better pieces written on software development management in the past year. /1
google.com/amp/s/techcrun…
However, I needed to hear / think about the thesis slightly differently for it to really click with me, and so I thought it might be helpful for me to write down the slightly-different conceptualization here. 2/
