Infrastructure Software
topic on 5 shows · 6 statements across 6 episodes
In Depth 
Innovators & Investors 
A Product Market Fit Show 
the a16z Podcast 
20VC
6 statements about Infrastructure Software, every show
Katz: Revenue durability is the single biggest risk for AI applications
“If you were to come down to one, if you were to say this, what's the single biggest risk would be durability of revenue because the switching costs that you and I talked about are very high for infrastructure software. The switching costs can be very low for a…”
UI mockups get the best customer discovery feedback, even for infrastructure
“Even for infrastructure product, that where UI is not that important, having a UI, being able to show the different concept on a screen, an experience on the screen, This is what gets you the best feedback. And then it's also much easier to iterate.”
Varanasi: Core infrastructure software does not need customer design partnerships
“The job there is just get it working first, then make it fast, then make it secure. You don't need design partnership there. Can you actually process packets? Is it actually working? Is it fast and is it secure? Because no customer actually understands that pa…”
Li: API and infrastructure products have much higher switching costs than SaaS
“It just turns out, in general, the switching cost of infrastructure piece is so much higher. Even with like API business, people tend to think you can just like switch over to another API. There's so much logic embedded in Calling the API in the software itsel…”
Todd Smith: Infrastructure engineers avoid new tech to protect vesting equity
“This product, right this product is very attractive, or more attractive, easier to sell from a top-down perspective today. It's new tech. It's brand new tech that so nobody is an expert leveraging this tech yet, and there's a lot of experts out there that are …”