Uncrating the Oxide Rack | Bryan Cantrill, Steve Tuck (Oxide)

Uncrating the Oxide Rack | Bryan Cantrill, Steve Tuck (Oxide)

Author: Ronak Nathani, Guang Yang September 24, 2024 Duration: 1:26:35

Oxide co-founders Bryan and Steve are back on the show to give an impromptu peek at the Oxide server rack and to chat about writing their own manufacturing software, overcoming false summits before shipping the first rack, the #1 reason startups fail and more. Don't miss the full-circle moment on their "meet cute" story from last time, shared at the end of the conversation :)

 

Segments:

(00:00:00) The Oxide rack uncrating experience

(00:02:40) The office tour

(00:04:03) Challenges of shipping and unboxing hardware

(00:11:04) Hybrid hardware company?

(00:13:38) Custom designing a crate for the rack

(00:18:12) Optimizing for time to value

(00:20:43) Writing custom manufacturing software

(00:23:25) Taking ownership of the customer experience

(00:25:29) Buy vs build

(00:27:46) The false summits before shipping the first rack

(00:30:05) "Missing just enough context to be optimistic"

(00:33:07) The #1 reason startups fail

(00:38:49) Hiring the first sales role

(00:44:53) The dangers of "happy ears"

(00:47:18) The pitfalls of rushing to market

(00:51:03) The "third VP of sales" problem

(00:56:06) The value of a good sales leader

(01:00:07) Curiosity and empathy in sales

(01:03:41) Grooming sales skills as an engineer

(01:07:33) Learning from current customers

(01:09:13) Talk to prospective customers "that we have 0% chance of closing"

(01:11:25) Actionable bad news

(01:14:11) The role of GPUs in data centers

(01:18:50) Cloud repatriation

(01:24:23) Full circle to the "meet cute"

 

Show Notes:

Our previous convo: https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/oxide-ditching-the-rules

Bryan on Twitter: https://x.com/bcantrill

Steve on Twitter: https://x.com/sdtuck

 

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com


Behind every line of code, there's a person with a story, and that's where Software Misadventures finds its pulse. Hosts Ronak Nathani and Guang Yang pull up a chair with engineers, founders, and investors, but the conversation rarely stays in the technical manual. Instead, it wanders into the human territory of career detours, hard-won insights, and those unpredictable stumbles that often teach the most. This podcast is built on the idea that the journey is just as important as the destination, especially in the fast-moving tech world. You'll hear guests recount the projects that went sideways, the decisions they'd rethink, and the moments of clarity that emerged from the chaos. It’s a refreshingly honest look at the industry, emphasizing that expertise isn't just about what you build, but what you learn when things don't go as planned. Tune in for conversations that are less about perfect solutions and more about the real, sometimes messy, process of creating with technology. Each episode offers a blend of professional wisdom and personal narrative, making it a compelling listen for anyone curious about the lives woven into our digital landscape.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 55

Software Misadventures
Podcast Episodes
Impact Driven Development | Matt Klein (Envoy, bitdrift) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:18
From creating Envoy to co-founding bitdrift to reimagine mobile observability, Matt joins the show to chat about being told to simply "write some proxy in Python" in the early days of building Envoy, early influences fro…
Build the scary stuff | Bryan Cantrill (Oxide) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:19:41
From being a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems to co-founding Oxide Computer Company to build a new kind of server, Bryan joins the show to chat about being told that he's on a suicide mission when starting Oxid…
Lessons from the early days building Kafka and Confluent | Jay Kreps [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:08
From writing the first lines of Kafka over a Christmas break as a LinkedIn engineer to running a public company as the CEO of Confluent, Jay joins the show to chat about how he and his co-founders convinced investors to…
Become a LLM-ready Engineer | Maxime Beauchemin (Airflow, Preset) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:05
If you've worked on data problems, you probably have heard of Airflow and Superset, two powerful tools that have cemented their place in the data ecosystem. Building successful open-source software is no easy feat, and e…
Life as a Distinguished Engineer | Joakim Recht (Uber) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:43
Out of thousands of engineers at Uber, there's only a handful of Distinguished Engineers and Joakim was one of them. In this conversation we chat about Why software engineering is a lot like a sausage factory. Considerat…
Learning in public | Kelsey Hightower [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:26
We're super excited to have Kelsey back on the show! Our last conversation was around his incredible career journey - from working at McDonald's after school to starting his own computer store, to hacking on python infra…
Engineer's guide to startup advising | Kelsey Hightower [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:50
We're super excited to have Kelsey back on the show! Our last conversation was around his incredible career journey - from working at McDonald's after school to starting his own computer store, to hacking on python infra…