Hi folks--Vivek Saraswat here from Mayfield. I invest in early stage infrastructure and product development tools startups, including partnering at the Series A with the amazing team at DEV (hi @ben @jess @peter 👋). Prior to investing, I managed the primary enterprise product at Docker, launched the Storage for Cloud Native Apps product initiative at VMware, and worked on EBS Snapshots at Amazon Web Services.
In talking with many founders and developers, I've found people often have questions around areas like open-source commercialization, monetizing dev tools, enterprise product and go-to-market strategy, and early-stage company building. Recently I joined @the_prion on Software Engineering Daily where we discussed topics like what to consider when building an infrastructure startup, the evolution of the cloud native ecosystem, and strategies for bottoms-up adoption and product-led go-to-market. I also previously gave a talk at the Open Core Summit organized by @asynchio on commercial open-source product strategy, architecture and teams.
Since many of us are holed up remotely right now, I'm here to answer any questions you might have around these topics or any others--I'm also a singer/guitarist, video/tabletop gamer, and sci-fi/fantasy fan.
AMA! (and follow me on Twitter at @theVSaraswat for more on these topics)
Latest comments (53)
Hey Vivek, I'm fascinated by your story! What is your advice for young people who're just starting off their career in tech? Niche down into on specific domain (namely Tech, Design, Product) and focus on that or going as broad as possible?
For example, right after school I did an apprenticeship in a German bank. Right after that, I went back to school to get my A levels for being able to study computer science. Thanks to my apprenticeship, I'm good at valuating ideas and all that product/management stuff, but I'm just a mediocre developer atm. I'm going to got the university this summer and I don't really know what to focus on - either side hustle hard, build my own startup and treat my university half-hearted or focus completely on university and cs skills.
What would you do?
Hi Louis! I subscribe to the T-shaped Skills theory of development. Basically, the idea is to develop deep base in a specific area, while broadening your skillsets in related areas to augment this base. I also believe in having a growth-oriented mindset meaning that one's traits are not set and can improve through effort and persistence. I don't know the European system as well but all can I say is that I didn't treat my university studies half-heartedly; I focused on them hard, and then when I started working, I focused on that hard as well. If you have a burning startup idea that really excites you and you want to build it, that's one thing. But there is something to be said about developing the skill sets that will help make that dream a reality.
Hi Vivek,
Do you only invest locally or do you look at opportunities globally?
What makes you decide to take someone’s call and let them pitch you?
Which type of tech startups are going to be next billion dollars startups? Because THE APPS are too much and do you think if someone creates an APP, it may do a million dollar business?
Which domains are going to be next Facebook and Google.
Artificial Intelligence? AR/VR? Quantum Computing? What do you think?
Hi Muhammad! If somebody knows exactly which startups would be the next billion companies, please let me know =). I certainly have my theories, which I outlined in this post from January. To reiterate briefly, they are Cloud Native Day 2 (operations that keep modernized apps aand infra running in a production setting), Developer Augmentation (workflows for product development personnel that augment repetitive tasks, provide actionable insights for executives, and facilitate remote collaboration) and ML for the Masses (provide infrastructure platforms for machine learning and unlock its potential for non-data scientists).
Hello Vivek,
Good to have you around, what I would like to ask is...
Mostly what I have observed before the innovation years started, I am talking like in the 90s and following, there was a very thin timeframe in which innovation, as its meaning says, did play apart but what I saw before and now is the same. All goals converge to just one point whether a startup or an open-source or similar and that goal is getting the most MONEY OUT IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE..
Now money was supposed to solve problems and give a peaceful route to our lives but yet it has brought more problems that it was supposed to solve. Therefore, the innovation and the growth that we as a human race was supposed to be taking, that leap of growth, I see it exponentially fading away.
with more poverty, famine and disease (highlighting COVID-19).
To summarize, all one wants is to sell and nothing else, kind of seems pointless and leading towards our own extinction.
What are your thoughts about it?
Hi Muhammad--I agree with you that if all someone wants is to sell and nothing else, that is rather pointless indeed. I don't look for founders who are in it only for the money, I am looking for people who also want to make a real impact by building large-scale companies. In venture people often talk about "missionary" versus "mercenary" i.e. are you motivated by money or a mission? I think it is possible to do both--you can have an impact while being commercially successful at the same time. That is why cultivating values and culture are so important when building your startup, or anything else for that matter.
Well as far as my experience goes, being at CollissionConf in New Orleans and exhibiting there as well. I might have to say that I disagree with you based on query for venture people. All I see is pure inclination towards profit in terms of financial gains.
Ex. I created a Geo Tagging application for locating blood donors in your area, that was way back on 2016 but I did got appreciated while spending all the money and time on it but didn't get anyone interested because all they wanted was ways to earn money from it and no one cared if it could actually be used to save human lives.
What I see is a total shift of priorities of the human race and maybe that's why we have the COVID-19. Only if people thought about well being more than money.
Hi Vivek,
Besides developing, I'm also interested in markets, investing, stocks, strategies and everything that is related to companies. How would you advice to start out if there is only a relatively small amount of money to invest (say <10.000€) and I want to learn how to invest in companies or get to know when there is an opportunity to invest?
Hi Robin!
Well, public and private investing are very different beasts. For what it's worth, when it comes to public markets, I prefer things like index funds, mutual funds, ETFs etc, and not individual stocks.
That said, one option to consider is looking at platforms that do fractional shares of investment. This allows you to study the market and experiment without committing larger amounts of capital.
Hi Vivek, thanks for your answer. I know this is not a topic that can be discussed in a couple of sentences here but I appreciate you taking the time to reply ☺️
Fractional shares sounds like a good idea to start, I did an investment at such a platform years ago (MicroVentures) but the problem was the language barrier. As English is not my native language, it can be hard to understand all the documents in the beginning. I'll take that and search for a German platform to get familiar with the topic 👍
Hey Vivek, I'm here to ask non-tech questions.
:) Here it goes
First computer?
Macintosh II. I was all Macs growing up, then started building my own PCs in high school and college, and then switched back to Macs somewhere in my late-20s.
Favorite TV Show when you were a kid?
I'm dating myself here, but the Super Mario Bros Super Show, and especially the days they had Legend of Zelda. "Well Excuuuuse me Princess!"
I'm also a big anime fan, so I grew up on a steady diet of stuff like Gundam Wing, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Robotech/Macross, Pokemon, Tekkaman Blade, etc.
Sports
Do you play any?
Do you watch any?
Play: I used to run cross-country and do martial arts (Jeet Kune Do & Eskrima). I had a foot injury awhile ago which more or less stopped that, so now I use the gym instead (elliptical, weight training, etc.).
Watch: Tennis and College Football (Go Stanford Cardinal!) Though tbh not as much time as I used to have.
Favorite movie in the last year?
This is tough...trying to avoid covid19 wfh recency bias.
I think I'll have to go with Joker. Incredibly dark, fantastically freaky performance by Joaquin Phoenix, and a hauntingly surreal soundtrack.
Runner-up goes to Marriage Story which was IMO underrated. Adam Driver and Scarlet Johansson convincingly portray flawed yet sympathetic characters in what could have been a real story.
Thanks for doing this ama Vivek!
What's your opinion on licensing as it relates to commercial open source recently?
Once upon a time, you had only three real license choices when building a commercial open-source business--Apache 2.0, MIT, or GPL. Times have changed, there are a dizzying array of licenses now being introduced into the ecosystem, and the debate has gotten rather heated (witness the Twitter firestorm during the Open Core Summit last fall). There are many who feel that the cloud vendors in particular unfairly benefit from open source code. There are just many who believe that the restrictive licenses will make enterprises less likely to adopt open-source code in their infrastructure for fear of losing control of their code--which is a death knell for any startup looking to build a bottoms-up adoption based commercial go-to-market process.
I don't have a strong ideological opinion about what should or should not be considered "open-source." That said, it is very early to determine which new licenses will be truly successful within the market, and as a founder you need to consider whether to risk your startup's success on this. The safest bet for a startup is probably to use a tried-and-true tested license (e.g. Apache 2.0 or GPL) and then build a proprietary layer on top (e.g. OpenCore, managed SaaS, etc.). However, if one of the newer licenses ends up having the right checks and balances to be useful for community, startups, and enterprises alike, it may see widespread adoption. Time will tell.
Hey Vivek, thanks for doing this!
Over the past 5 years, what would you say has surprised you the most about the open-source community?
Hi Alex! I think one thing that surprised me is how quickly open-source became mainstream--the community itself has seen a huge influx of developers from all kinds of backgrounds over the last few years, which I believe is an awesome and needed thing. On the commercial side, open-source has also become the norm as well. It used to be that enterprises were wary of using open-source code and preferred proprietary solutions. That era has long passed, and as a result of that now if you are building an infrastructure or developer-oriented startup, you strongly have to consider why you shouldn't use open-source as your code choice.
First of all, great episode Vivek....
(Coming at some point to DEV: Tagging users in industry podcast appearances they've made)
Anyway, what would your advice entrepreneurs in identifying trends in software adoption and validating ideas before devoting to projects which might not have a realistic path to adoption?
Hey Ben, sounds like a great feature to build =P
Really good question. I think there's two potential pieces of advice I can give here:
Hi Vivek! Thanks for doing this AMA. What did you like and dislike about working at Amazon?
Hi Nick! Great question. I touched upon some of my thoughts on Amazon in my Software Engineering Daily podcast earlier this week. Will add thoughts here:
Awesome. Thanks for the response!