Must be early stage startups pursuing a single-cloud, multi-cloud, or on-prem strategy if you’re just starting out?
Well, the simple answer to that question is just one cloudbut in the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, redundancy has become sexy again: who wants to depend on a single provider for mission-critical activities?
TechCrunch+ is currently surveying startup founders and CTOs regarding their cloud usage and best practices.
If you are interested in participating in this research, we would be happy to do so hear from you!
But according to a TechCrunch+ survey of several startup founders and CTOs, the most important consideration doesn’t seem to be redundancy — it’s actually what kind of computational load a startup faces. In particular, the founders we heard from were generally optimistic about using a single cloud for young startups, with important caveats: if a young tech company only hosts software, a single cloud is enough to start with, but if the company works on AI related tasks like training models, it might need more.
Satyen Sangani, co-founder and CEO of Alation, described when it might make sense to use something other than the cloud:
If your business needs a huge amount of infrastructure to begin with (say, you’re training the next major language model), it might make sense to buy hardware instead. In general, the early days of business are filled with experimentation, and the flexibility that clouds provide is a huge advantage in those days.
A good question right now is what proportion of “AI-first” startups are training their own models rather than, say, remixing or redesigning the UI layer of existing LLMs. We think it’s not too high.
Anyway, after parsing the answers to our first question, the next time we ask something related, we’ll change our prompt to: When should a startup move to a multicloud configuration?
For now, read on for answers to our question: Should early-stage startups pursue a multicloud or on-prem focus if they’re just getting started?
We spoke with:
- Tobi Knaup, Founder CEO, D2iQ
- Mang-Git Ng, Founder and CEO, Anvil
- Joe Mainwaring, Director of Infrastructure, WorkTango
- Vikas Bhatia, co-founder, CEO and chief risk officer, just protect
- Satyen Sangani, Co-Founder and CEO, Alatie
- Steve Mullaney, President and CEO, Avitrix
- Ed Thompson, CTO, Matillion
- Adrian Estala, VP, field CDO, Starburst
- Shane Buckley, President and CEO, Gigamon
Tobi Knaup, Founder and CEO, D2iQ: As always it depends. But most software startups should start on one cloud and make sure you don’t create too much lock-in by using proprietary services, making it easier to optimize and migrate later.
If your business needs a huge amount of infrastructure to begin with (say, you’re training the next major language model), it might make sense to buy hardware instead. In general, the early days of business are filled with experimentation, and the flexibility that clouds provide is a huge advantage in those days.
