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