Author : zebethcontrol

Google Pixel 7 Pro’s camera has a fatal, really dumb, totally avoidable flaw • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Camera phone, Google, Google Pixel, Google Pixel 7 Pro, Hardware, OpinionNo Comments

A lot has been written about how incredible Google Pixel 7 Pro’s camera is. The camera itself gets no beef from me. Last week at ZebethMedia Disrupt, Brian and I were gawking in amazement at how well the 5x optical zoom lens does, for example. We had plenty of opportunities to contrast and compare. During Disrupt, I was shooting with about $6,000 worth of camera equipment and as my files were downloading from my mirrorless camera’s SD cards, I snapped this photo: Photo taken at ZebethMedia Disrupt using the Google Pixel 7 Pro’s 5x optical zoom lens. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia Granted, my dedicated Sony A7r3 with a 70-200 f/2.8 lens is still capable of taking better photos; a giant hunking piece of glass and a full-frame sensor is hard to beat: Photo taken at ZebethMedia Disrupt with a Sony A7r3 camera and a Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia But let’s be clear — for the purposes of shooting pictures for the web, in good light, the Pixel 7 Pro gives it a pretty serious run for its money, at a fraction of the cost. As soon as I saw the design of the Pixel 7 Pro (and, for that matter, the 7, which has the same stupid gaffe), however, I spotted a pretty fantastically stupid design flaw. That beautiful metal front surrounding the lenses does a great job for marketing purposes. If I point my Pixel 7 Pro at you, there’s no way you’ll mistake it for an iPhone, a Pixel 6 or any other camera on the market. Well done, Google’s industrial designers, for creating an eminently recognizable phone. No doubt, it’ll be a conversation starter for a lot of folks. The problem with adding any light or reflective surfaces, however, is that it becomes exponentially harder to take photos through reflective surfaces: windows, primarily. As a photographer, I wouldn’t generally recommend that you shoot through glass, but let’s be honest; sometimes we’re in a car, on a plane or in a building, and we might want to shoot a time-lapse or a photo or two. It’s a pretty common use case for most photography applications, which makes it all the harder to grok why Google went out of its way to make that experience worse. This really is a Camera Design 101 choice of epic stupidity. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia I have a number of friends who have vinyl cutters, and the solution is simple: a small strip of matte black vinyl covering up the high-gloss reflective surface on the front of the phone. I might be the only person in the world who cares about this, so it feels silly even to complain, but damn it, Google Pixel is positioning itself as the best camera phone out there, and this is such a fantastically n00b mistake that I’m truly flabbergasted at how the hardware giant could make such a dumb misstep, after getting it right for so long. I imagine there will soon be an aftermarket niche for stickers covering up the chrome, and I hope Google doesn’t made a mistake this silly again in the future.

Hyph set to launch a music creation app with an emphasis on remixing • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Apps, Music, SocialNo Comments

Music startup Hyph announced an upcoming mobile app, which aims to be a music creation and remixing tool for everyone to use. With the creator economy estimated to be worth $100 billion, Hyph is targeting the over 50 million people worldwide who identify as content creators. Hyph allows users to create original songs by taking music from the app’s library and customizing it by adding instrumentals like bass, lead guitar, strings, drums and piano, or a voice recording of them singing. Users can choose music based on genre or mood. Hyph will be available in the U.S. via an invitation this fall. The app is slated for a Spring 2023 launch and will be available on Android and iOS devices. Along with sharing to social media platforms, users can also share their creations in the app with a backdrop of their chosen photo or video. The music-creation-centered social media app will also let users take songs made by other users and republish them with new edits. Image Credits: Hyph The New York City-based startup was founded this year by Max Renard, Anthony Kennedy Shriver and Alexander Dessauer. It raised $26 million in seed funding from private investors. The company aims to launch an app that allows everyone with a smartphone to “create professional-quality music,” Hyph wrote in its announcement. “Hyph will do for music creation what smartphone cameras did for photography, which provided anyone with a smartphone the ability to produce quality photos without the financial commitment and time previously required,” Renard said. Renard notes that Hyph is targeted at Gen Z, a “hands-on generation who want to be a part of the creation process.” A recent survey found that 45% of Gen Z wants to make money creating content. The Hyph team says that the purpose of the forthcoming app isn’t for creators to make money as professional musicians but to have fun making songs and sharing them with friends. Hyph owns the rights to all songs created on its app, but the company plans to share the proceeds with song creators and music contributors. In-app ads will make Hyph accessible and free for all users. However, it will have paid features and the option to remove ads for a fee. Those premium options will range from $0.99 to $29.99, the company told ZebethMedia. Renard notes that Hyph doesn’t rely on AI-generated music, instead providing a catalog of songs recorded by session musicians.

Apex Space takes on satellite bus ‘bottleneck’ with seed round led by a16z • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in a16z, Andreessen Horowitz, apex space, katherine boyle, Space, StartupsNo Comments

Apex Space, a startup that aims to transform satellite bus manufacturing, emerged from stealth Monday with a $7.5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The Los Angeles-based company has set its sights on the satellite bus — the part of the spacecraft that hosts the payload — which it says is the “new bottleneck” hitting the space industry. Apex’s two co-founders, Ian Cinnamon and Maximilian Benassi, said in a blog post that they independently observed core changes to the industry that convinced them that a new satellite bus manufacturing solution was needed. Cinnamon, a technology startup founder whose company, Synapse Technology, was acquired by Palantir in 2020, said he saw payload customers being “held back” by the long and costly process associated with building custom satellite buses. Benassi, an engineer whose career includes a six-year tenure at SpaceX and nearly a year-and-a-half at Astra, observed changes to launch economics that make mass manufacturing — rather than the bespoke engineering process that’s characterized satellite buses thus far — more sensible. “Given this transformative change, we must begin to think about spacecraft differently and adapt to the new market conditions,” the pair said. “We cannot just build spacecraft. We must manufacture them at scale.” This approach, which Cinnamon described in an interview with ZebethMedia as scalable and product-led, is a major departure from traditional satellite bus manufacturing. Apex aims to deliver satellite busses to customers in a matter of months, rather than the status quo timescale of a few years. Apex will come to the market with a small satellite bus called Aries, which will be capable of carrying payloads up to 94 kilograms. That platform will be suitable for missions to low Earth orbit; the startup says on its website that future products will be compatible with other missions, such as those to geosynchronous orbit. Apex also offers add-ons like insurance and flight booking. Cinnamon said the company plans on delivering the first Aries platform in 2023, followed by 5 in 2024, and continue to scale from there. While the two co-founders praised the likes of Astra and Rocket Lab for transforming the launch sector, these companies are also competitors, each designing satellite buses as part of a full-stop-shop solution for customers. Other major players in the satellite bus manufacturing space are Terran Orbital, which announced plans last year to build a 660,000-square-foot satellite manufacturing facility in Florida, and York Space Systems, which landed a $1.12 billion valuation after selling a majority stake to Firefly Aerospace’s owner AE Industrial Partners. But Cinnamon said Apex is differentiating itself from these players in a few different ways: the first is that the startup’s “bread and butter” will be commercial customers, rather than government customers. He added that the company is aiming to manufacture on a scale of a matter of months to keep up with demand from the commercial sector. The call for large-scale manufacturing clearly found resonance at Andreessen Horowitz, which launched a new fund at the beginning of this year called “American Dynamism,” led by general partner Katherine Boyle. The fund aims to invest in companies that bolster the nation’s interest and solve problems in industries like supply chain, aerospace and manufacturing (amongst others). As Boyle argued in her sweeping investment thesis, “the only immediate way to kickstart American renewal is through startups building for critical problems.” To the Apex co-founders, solving the satellite bus manufacturing problem isn’t just critical to the space industry today. It’s also key to making humans a multiplanetary species in the future. “If we really think about that future, do we think that all of the other spacecraft that are out there, that are moving around goods and services, that are doing imaging of Mars and the Moon, that are providing communication services, etcetera, are all of those spacecraft truly going to be built by hand as custom one-offs like they are today? Or are they actually going to be manufactured at scale? And I believe that in order to enable that future, they have to be manufactured at scale, and we want to be the first company out there to truly scale up manufacturing of these vehicles.” In addition to a6z, the round also saw participation from XYZ Venture Capital, J2 Ventures, Lux Capital and Village Global. The number one priority for the new funding is hiring, Cinnamon said, and the company is looking for people from new space, traditional aerospace, and outside the space sector entirely. The company will also use the raise to continue developing the Aries platform, including ordering components and beginning to assemble the manufacturing line.

China’s XPeng wants to launch robotaxi network using G9 SUV • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in robotaxi, Robotics & AI, Transportation, Xpeng, xpeng tech day 2022No Comments

Chinese luxury EV startup XPeng is moving forward on its plans to launch a robotaxi business. The company’s latest G9 SUV became China’s first mass-produced commercial vehicle to pass a government-led autonomous driving closed-field test, the company said Monday at its fourth annual 1024 Tech Day. When XPeng unveiled the G9 in September, the company said it would come equipped with XPeng’s new advanced driver assist system (ADAS), the XNGP, which combines XPeng’s Highway Navigated Guided Pilot (NGP) and City NGP to automate certain driving functions in both highway and urban driving scenarios. Now, XPeng says the XNGP is good enough to lay the groundwork for a robotaxi network, and the G9 can help that network scale, according to XPeng’s vice president of autonomous driving, Dr. Xinzhou Wu. “Obtaining the road test permit by our mass-produced commercial vehicles — with no retrofit — is a major achievement,” said Wu at XPeng’s Tech Day. “Our platform-based robotaxi development aims to generate significant cost benefits, and ensure product quality, safety and user experience.” Image Credits: XPeng XPeng attributes its advances in autonomy to its next-generation visual perception architecture, XNet, which adopts an in-house developed deep neural network that delivers visual recognition with “human-like decision-making capabilities, drawing from multiple cameras’ data,” according to the company. XPeng says the neural network technology overrides manual processing logic to constantly self-improve. XNet is backed by Fuyao, a Chinese supercomputing center for autonomous driving, and supported by Alibaba Cloud’s intelligent computing platform, XPeng said. This helps XNet reach a supercomputing capability of 600 PFLOPS, which the company says increases the training efficiency of its AV stack by over 600 times. This is a bold claim, one that posits model training can be reduced to 11 hours, rather than the 276 days it took previously. XPeng says the upgrades to its AV stack have allowed the company to establish an entirely closed-loop autonomous driving data system — from data collection and labeling to training and deployment — that has been able to resolve over 1,000 edge cases each year and reduce the incident rate for Highway NGP by 95%. The robotaxis will also feature XPeng’s new AI-powered voice assistant, according to He Xiaopeng, co-founder and CEO of XPeng. The voice system incorporates Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) multi-zone technology to recognize commands from every passenger in the cabin and understand various instructions across multiple streams of conversations. XPeng says its voice assist tech doesn’t need an internet connection or an activation command (like “Hey Siri”), and is good enough to be accurate 96% of the time and operate in less than one second. XPeng will make the new voice assist technology standard on all new vehicles in China, the company said. XPeng’s robot pony and eVTOLs Image Credits: XPeng At XPeng’s Tech Day, the company also provided updates to its robot pony and flying car. Let’s start with the pony. It’s certainly cuter-looking than Tesla’s humanoid robot, but no less fantastical to imagine going to market anytime soon. Regardless, XPeng shared some design upgrades to support “mutlidegree-of-freedom” motion and locomotion capabilities that might get it closer to moving more naturally. This will help the robot adapt better to “complex indoor and outdoor terrain conditions such as stairs, steep slopes and gravel roads,” according to XPeng. Image Credits: XPeng XPeng also revealed an upgraded design for its electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flying car, which is being developed by affiliate XPeng Aeroht. When XPeng first unveiled its flying car concept, it had a horizontal dual-rotor structure. This year’s design features a new distributed multi-rotor configuration. The test vehicle successfully completed its maiden flight and multiple single-motor failure tests, XPeng said Monday. XPeng also provided some more information of how a driver would go from controlling a car to a flying car — in flight mode, the car will be piloted using the steering wheel and the gear lever will be used to control movement forward and backward, make turns, ascend, hover and descend, the company claims.

Launch House splits with law firm conducting its harassment investigation • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Brett Goldstein, Enterprise, investigation, Launch House, startup lawNo Comments

It’s been a little over a month since Launch House, a buzzy venture-backed founder’s club backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Day One Ventures, publicly faced numerous allegations of harassment and assault. In response to the allegations first surfaced by the news publication Vox, the startup claimed that it would undergo an independent, third-party investigation. But as some former members of Launch House have noted, the company is using the same law firm for both its defamation warnings and its independent investigation. While it’s not a violation to have the same law firm handle two somewhat connected legal matters – one on behalf of Launch House for defamation and one to look into the allegations raised by victims – it is an optical challenge. After all, Launch House advertised that the firm was expected to conduct a neutral investigation, but it’s not really “third-party” if the same firm is going after employees, members and journalists speaking about the allegations. Indeed, the appearance of conflict of interest – or the idea that the law firm, Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff, LLP – could provide a more favorable outcome to Launch House due to its other work with the startup, was enough to rock the boat. After a ZebethMedia inquiry about Launch House’s heavy reliance on the outfit, co-founder and CEO Brett Goldstein said that the startup has asked the law firm to end its investigation into the company and is turning to another law firm for its fresh perspective. Goldstein said in a statement sent via spokesperson to ZebethMedia: “Launch House has asked Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff, LLP to end its investigation and will be engaging a new law firm, one who has never worked with Launch House before, to conduct a thorough and independent investigation.” Goldstein added that a completely separate team within Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff has been working on the investigation, and that Launch House “trusted their ability to remain impartial with those standard separation practices.” However, he said in his statement, “we do not want there to be even the appearance of any conflict, so a new law firm will be engaged as soon as possible to conduct this crucial work . . .We must learn exactly what happened, so we can best ensure it never happens again.” ZebethMedia reached out to an attorney at the law firm but did not immediately hear back. The company’s most recent town hall, conducted at the end of September, laid out a forward-looking plan to its community. Beyond the investigation, the firm claims it is working with a diversity, equity and inclusion firm to audit and update its processes. It also said it is expanding its zero tolerance policy to cover a broader range of misconduct. The full deck, titled “What’s next for Launch House”, is available publicly.

Starlink signals could work as GPS alternative, whether SpaceX likes it or not • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in SpaceNo Comments

With some 3,000 satellites in orbit, the Starlink constellation is easily the largest in history and of course presents an immense opportunity for global connectivity. But its signals could also be analyzed and used as an alternative to traditional GPS, a new paper claims, with or without SpaceX’s blessing. Todd Humphreys and his team at the University of Texas Austin dove into the “signal structure” of the Starlink downlink, and while there’s only so much they can learn without insider info from the company itself, they did find plenty of useful data. Satellites must of course pass their signal down to the ground at some point, and in Starlink’s case it’s pretty much a constant stream. That doesn’t mean anyone can just tap in, though — the signal itself is structured and encoded in a proprietary way that, presumably, SpaceX has decided is best for the kind of orbital broadband it’s providing. The exact parameters of this signal are not known, but in order to make sure packets are arriving in order and intact, the transmission — like any data transmission these days — includes very precise timing data and other telemetry so the receiver and sender can stay in sync. By carefully analyzing an incoming signal from a single satellite, and combining that data with what is known about the satellite’s exact position, the time down to the nanosecond, and so on, Humphreys was able to decode the transmission to a certain extent. They document their results in a paper, currently awaiting peer review and publishing. A side effect of having precise telemetry coming from a few satellites (in addition to other measurements like doppler) is that you can use it to work out your exact location, and the paper describes how this might be done. As The Register points out, this idea isn’t new and in fact was being pursued as a possibility years ago, but ultimately SpaceX decided to focus on the consumer side of things. But the scientists at UT Austin had had a taste of the possibilities, and decided to pursue it independently with its own rig, without SpaceX cooperation. As they write in the paper’s intro: The signal characterization offered herein includes the exact values of synchronization sequences embedded in the signal that can be exploited to produce pseudorange measurements. Such an understanding of the signal is essential to emerging efforts that seek to dual-purpose Starlink signals for positioning, navigation, and timing, despite their being designed solely for broadband Internet provision. To be clear, no one is accessing Starlink user data here. The sync sequences are just strings of timings and other data that the machines use to stay in touch — the payload data is entirely separate. In the paper, due to the fact that the signal was being targeted at an actual Starlink user terminal, the location had to be for that terminal too, and they were able to get it within 30 meters. Not better than GPS, obviously, but it could be quicker and eventually more accurate if SpaceX were to give the project its blessing. A software update that slightly adjusts how the satellites send their signals, and a bit of data on correcting for variance between their clocks, and Humphreys suggests Starlink transmissions could be used to locate oneself to within a meter. It would be a public service and wouldn’t cost SpaceX much of anything to implement, but it’s also a valuable service that no business in its right mind (especially one that just committed to a deeply unprofitable connectivity deal in Ukraine) would just implement and provide for free. That said, it may be that the genie is out of the bottle — the data in the paper “illuminates the path” to this use, and someone might find a way to make it work no matter what anyone says.

To better thwart ransomware attacks, startups must get cybersecurity basics right • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in EC Cybersecurity, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, ransomware, Security, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

The Department of Justice (DOJ) famously declared 2021 as the “worst year” for ransomware attacks, but it seems that title could be in 2022’s hands very soon. Despite some rare wins in the war against hackers over the past 12 months — from the government’s seizure of $2.3 million in bitcoin paid out to the Colonial Pipeline hackers, to its successful disruption of the notorious REvil gang — the ransomware threat continues to grow. Over the past few months alone, we’ve seen threat actors ramping up attacks against public sector organizations, including hospitals, schools and in the case of Costa Rica, entire governments. The private sector is also battling a worsening ransomware threat, with attackers claiming a number of high-profile victims such as AMD, Foxconn and Nvidia. Enable multifactor authentication on everything you have. Katie Moussouris, founder, Luta Security Founders of early-stage startups will undoubtedly find it concerning to see even well-known organizations failing to protect themselves from ransomware despite their seemingly endless resources, particularly as it’s unclear exactly where these companies went wrong. “It could be a zero-day or it could be a failure to implement multifactor authentication (MFA) or an MFA bypass,” said Brett Callow, threat analyst at Emsisoft, during a panel discussion on the ZebethMedia+ stage at Disrupt 2022. “There’s no standard answer, and that is what makes this problem so difficult to deal with.”

YouTube rolls out new design with pinch-to-zoom on iOS and Android and other updates • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Apps, YouTubeNo Comments

YouTube announced a makeover to its interface today, including a new look, a pinch-to-zoom feature, precise seeking, new buttons, ambient mode and a dark mode that’s “even darker.” The updates will gradually roll out to all users beginning today. YouTube’s new pinch-to-zoom feature lets users on iOS and Android devices zoom in on videos so they can see more details. This feature was available as a test to Premium subscribers in August. Precise seeking will allow users to easily find an exact part in a video. Available on desktop and mobile, users can drag the cursor or swipe up on the video to see a row of thumbnails. This helps users find the exact spot in the video they want to rewatch. Image Credits: YouTube YouTube’s update also includes a new color effect called “ambient mode” that uses “dynamic color sampling” to match the app’s background color to the colors in the video that a user watches, Nate Koechley, UX Director, YouTube, wrote in the official blog post. To our understanding, the new effect is very subtle and mainly for aesthetic reasons. The purpose is to draw the viewer into the content and put “greater focus on our watch page,” Koechley added. Ambient mode will be available on desktop and mobile with YouTube’s dark theme. It’ll also be available on video playlists. Another visual change will be new buttons under videos. YouTube links in video descriptions are now buttons in order to “minimize distractions,” the company explained. To make the page even “easier on the eyes,” the like, share and download buttons will also get makeovers and be smaller in size. Plus, the subscribe button will now appear as a black-and-white pill-shaped button instead of the bright red “SUBSCRIBE.” These updates are unlikely to soften the blow of the latest price hike to YouTube’s Premium subscription plan for families. The plan will increase to $22.99 per month in November.

Mobile gaming review — Playing on the Logitech G Cloud with Shadow • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Daily Crunch, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

To get a roundup of ZebethMedia’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Good afternoon, and welcome to the final week of October! We’re confused how that happened. Haje is considering dressing up as “supply chain disruptions” for Halloween, whereas Christine is contemplating dressing up as a down round. What’s your spookiest startup-themed costume? Let us know on The Twitters! — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 On cloud 9: Romain chronicles how pairing up the Logitech G Cloud with cloud computing service Shadow not only made for a better gaming experience, but was also “a match made in cloud gaming heaven.” If you like your locks virtual…: Then Level has something you will want to see. Its new Level Lock+ with Apple Home Key support replaces your current lock and enables you to unlock your door and provides you with some exclusivity for now, Darrell writes. Helping hand: Pre-seed startups just got another investor friend in Africa. Annie reports that venture capital firm Flourish launched Madica, an investment program providing “funding, technology support and mentorship to underrepresented founders across the continent.” Startups and VC Haje was mildly surprised and pretty excited after reading Paul’s story about his favorite podcasting app Pocket Casts going open source. Paul points out that it shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise — WordPress makers Automattic bought the platform a while back, and Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg is a huge proponent of open source. To wit: WordPress is among the top open source projects on the planet. While the overall crypto markets have been in a rough spot lately, web3 venture capitalists have never had more conviction — or more funding at their disposal — to back startups and teams building in the space, Anita writes. She’s stoked that Chris Ahn, partner at Haun Ventures; Michelle Bailhe, partner at Sequoia; and Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly will join us onstage at TC Sessions: Crypto on November 17 in Miami. And we have five more for you: To better thwart ransomware attacks, startups must get cybersecurity basics right Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / ZebethMedia Creating systems that are resilient against ransomware isn’t top of mind for early-stage startups, but many companies don’t even follow basic best practices, much to their detriment. “Enable multifactor authentication (MFA) on everything you have,” said Katie Moussouris, founder of Luta Security. “Enable it on every account that you have.” Last week at ZebethMedia Disrupt, Moussouris and Brett Callow, threat analyst at Emsisoft, spoke about the need to invest early in locking down their systems, starting with MFA. “It’s a matter of stacking security layer upon security layer,” said Callow. “MFA in conjunction with staff training — in conjunction with other things — all serve to reduce risk.” Two more from the TC+ team: ZebethMedia+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Big Tech Inc. Make like a lobster and get your pinchers ready — YouTube rolls out a new design that features pinch-to-zoom on iOS and Android. Premium users got first dibs on this, and now all users will start to see it, Lauren writes. There’s also some new things, including “ambient mode” and new buttons under videos, so head on over there and see for yourself. And we have five more for you:

Why startups are better off prioritizing growth instead of optimizing cloud costs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in cloud cost optimization, cloud infrastructure, Enterprise, investor survey, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Everybody’s talking so much about cost optimization and extending runways that startups across the board are looking at every little expense as they seek ways to navigate the downturn. But some costs are better left untouched simply because the work involved may not be worth the payoff. According to several investors we surveyed recently, cloud costs are one such area that startups can afford to ignore, at least in the early days. As Zetta Ventures managing director Jocelyn Goldfein put it, the math needs to make sense if you’re prioritizing cost cuts over growth. “It’s not really worth optimizing your cloud spend until you can squeeze out at least half a month, better yet a full month, of runway. Usually, that’s not the case at the early stage.” It’s also increasingly important to not lose focus on product development if you’re a growth-stage startup. “I’ll always believe that getting things working end-to-end in a timely fashion and iterating on user feedback is the priority. Over-optimizing early is an anti-pattern,” said Menlo Ventures partner Tim Tully. “As they say in product teams, K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid). You can always go back and optimize later.” We’re widening our lens, looking for more investors to include in ZebethMedia surveys where we poll top professionals about challenges in their industry. If you’re an investor who’d like to participate in future surveys, fill out this form. Keeping it simple, though, isn’t always an option for startups these days with the plethora of cloud and component providers crowding the market. Multicloud is now a more viable option than ever in such an environment. “While choosing a single public cloud offers more simplicity and speed,” Team8 managing partner Liran Grinberg says, “a multicloud setup will allow you to leverage the best-of-breed offering from a functionality standpoint as well as optimize for cost down the line.” However, Grinberg added that startups should be mindful of the implications of using multiple cloud vendors down the road. “Firstly, egress costs can be expensive enough to make this not worth the while. Second, you need to manage more than one provider, so your monitoring, cost management, infrastructure as code, and security solutions need to support all the vendors you are using.” Besides the usual suspects, there are now more vendors and models available to startups than there were a few years ago. This includes virtual private clouds, which can be useful for companies dealing with privacy and regulatory concerns. For a company to run its own servers, all the investors agreed that founders should first carefully weigh the pros and cons of doing so, and only proceed if it’s going to be worth it. Tully said, “Going on-prem from a data center perspective, as opposed to cloud on-prem, i.e., virtual private cloud (VPC), would require a very compelling business reason to justify.” “For starting on-prem, you should have a really, really good excuse, as the overhead cost for running this kind of operation is almost never worthwhile for startups (and even for very mature companies, for that matter),” Grinberg added. Read the full survey to find out what investors look for in cloud startups, the best ways to approach and pitch them, why cloud marketplaces are a hit, and more advice on what to prioritize when it comes to cloud-related decisions.