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For most of the information age, companies looking to scale invested in server farms and hired teams to run them.
At one of my startup jobs, I drove in one day to meet two sleeping colleagues who spent the night setting up servers at a shared location 60 miles away. Not long ago, when I worked at a publicly traded company, our on-premises data center was strong enough to withstand a moderate earthquake.
The relatively recent advent of cloud computing promises to lower costs and increase productivity, but “cloud-first strategies may be hitting the limits of their effectiveness, and in many cases, decreasing ROIs,” writes Domino Data Labs COO Thomas Robinson.
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I started knitting at home after I got my last bill, but with “ML, AI and deep learning programs requiring dozens or even hundreds of GPUs and terabytes or even petabytes” workloads, companies at scale simply can’t call. Return data usage.
As the “great repatriation” currently underway among public companies has direct implications for startup devOps teams, Robinson shared suggestions on “a few things that can be done to ensure flexibility in the future workload environment.”
Thanks for reading TC+ this week,
Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@your main actor
When it comes to early stage growth marketing, imitation is often better than creation.
Image Credits: George Greil (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
I am pleased to announce the arrival of self-proclaimed “growth marketing nerd” Jonathan Martinez as a frequent TC+ contributor.
Martinez, who has worked on Uber, Postmates and Coinbase’s development teams, is the founder of SalesKiwi.
In his final article, he explains why copying your competitors’ most successful marketing strategies is one of the fastest ways to attract new customers.
“There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every now and then,” he advises. “Save your resources to invent high-probability experiments that you’ll be excited to try at different stages of your startup’s life.”
SaaS is still open for business, but it takes more time to buy and sell
Image Credits: Ruslan Malysh/Em (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
More than 225,000 technology workers were laid off last year, which is having a direct impact on SaaS renewals and purchasing cycles.
A reduced number of SaaS customers are buying seat licenses and sales cycles are taking a little longer than they used to, said Ryan Nu, CEO and co-founder of SaaS-buying platform Vendr.
“Over the past three years, our data has shown a steady decline in multi-year contracts,” he wrote in TC+. However, we have seen a significant increase [average contract value] From mission-critical and sticky software categories from acquisition to renewal, like CRM or email.
How to install CVCs
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As individual VC firms pull back and begin gathering dry powder in 2022, corporate venture capital (CVC) funds have surged.
Pitchbook found that CVCs played a role in 56.2% of all venture deals last year, “just a hair above 25.6% in 2021,” says Rebecca Skutak, who spoke to a few experts to find out how startups in fundraising mode are doing. They got on their radar.
“If we didn’t have a product integration angle and we didn’t see or get evidence that our or their customer wanted to work together, it would be difficult for us to work together,” Andrew Ferguson said. VP of Corporate Development and Ventures at Databricks.
10 tips for risk-free hardware products
Image Credits: Frisco/Getty Images
With the right team, a software startup can go from idea stage to charging their first customers in just weeks.
On the contrary, all hardware startups face high capital costs and need time to increase production, which is why it is so important to test and evaluate demand, Narek Vardanyan, founder of Prelaunch.com, recently closed a pre-seed round.
“You have to make decisions based on the actual behavior of people,” he said in an interview with TechCruach+. “You have to make sure the data you’re tracking is coming from the right types of people.”
Thinking about pulling the plug on your startup?
Image Credits: Sean Gladwell (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
I will read now. A Twitter post by angel investor Gokul Rajaram Founders who raised a lot of money before the downturn but didn’t find the product market favorable are “going through a sad psychological journey,” he asserted.
Entrepreneurs are designed to pursue success at all costs, but “chasing endless pillars trying to find PMF is a bridge to nowhere,” writes Rajaram, who shares the story of a founder who returned his money to investors before shutting down operations:
“The relief felt when investors and employees realized they were on board and supported their decision 100% was palpable. (All employees received strong severance payments before the company closed.)”
If you’re a founder (or an investor giving advice) who has decided to shut down, please consider sharing your story with TechCrunch+. To get in touch, send a note to guestcolumns@techcrunch.com.
Driven by the promise of the technology, corporate investment in AI is growing.
Image Credits: Carl Tapples (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Global investors poured $77.5 billion into AI startups last year, up 115% YoY, according to Tortoise Intelligence.
According to Kyle Wiegers, corporate adoption of generative AI is fueling investor interest, and so are the sector’s earnings: According to a poll by 2022, 92 percent of large companies are “getting a return on their data and AI investments.”
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