Rob Walling

I believe we did this with Drip because we went from, we had three or four different email providers that we were using that were APIs that sent emails. And it would take us a matter of weeks to switch and we were sending hundreds of millions of emails a month. So Again, this is why it's probably the most realistic one that a lot of us are exposed to. And this is where it always bothers me.

I believe we did this with Drip because we went from, we had three or four different email providers that we were using that were APIs that sent emails. And it would take us a matter of weeks to switch and we were sending hundreds of millions of emails a month. So Again, this is why it's probably the most realistic one that a lot of us are exposed to. And this is where it always bothers me.

I'll be on X Twitter and someone will say, oh man, you build on Airtable or Bubble and there's platform risk. And some smart aleck comes in and says, oh yeah, well, you host on AWS and that's a platform. And you send emails through SendGrid and so that's also a platform and you have risk too. And it's like, but they're not the same. And that's the point of this list.

I'll be on X Twitter and someone will say, oh man, you build on Airtable or Bubble and there's platform risk. And some smart aleck comes in and says, oh yeah, well, you host on AWS and that's a platform. And you send emails through SendGrid and so that's also a platform and you have risk too. And it's like, but they're not the same. And that's the point of this list.

is to have them in order of increasing risk or exposure. And I think being reliant on a commodity, whether it's hosting or whether it is, you know, an API of some sort, I think at the same level as like, imagine if you have a VPS or you have like a Docker container and you're on commodity hosting somewhere and you can basically just pull that and spin it up in a

is to have them in order of increasing risk or exposure. And I think being reliant on a commodity, whether it's hosting or whether it is, you know, an API of some sort, I think at the same level as like, imagine if you have a VPS or you have like a Docker container and you're on commodity hosting somewhere and you can basically just pull that and spin it up in a

I don't know, half a day, a day, two days, whatever. It's that relatively low switching cost and it is commoditized. I think that fits in this category as well. So the third level of platform risk, which is just a little riskier than the one I just mentioned, is when you're using these large cloud providers, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Azure,

I don't know, half a day, a day, two days, whatever. It's that relatively low switching cost and it is commoditized. I think that fits in this category as well. So the third level of platform risk, which is just a little riskier than the one I just mentioned, is when you're using these large cloud providers, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Azure,

This is where they, you know, you still don't have customer concentration or lead flow. That's irrelevant, right? Obviously, those are more dangerous. And so those are in the, you know, the higher levels of platform risk. But moving away from AWS, GCP, Azure, whoever else, it's not just spinning up a Docker thing and moving the VPS or whatever.

This is where they, you know, you still don't have customer concentration or lead flow. That's irrelevant, right? Obviously, those are more dangerous. And so those are in the, you know, the higher levels of platform risk. But moving away from AWS, GCP, Azure, whoever else, it's not just spinning up a Docker thing and moving the VPS or whatever.

I think the switching cost is significantly more than moving away from an API, you know, like a SendGrid or an SMS, because this is the infrastructure where your entire app is and you start to get reliant on a lot of services. And so this one also has a varying degree. It's a slider of like, well, if I'm only using an EC2 instance and everything's there, then... maybe low-ish switching costs.

I think the switching cost is significantly more than moving away from an API, you know, like a SendGrid or an SMS, because this is the infrastructure where your entire app is and you start to get reliant on a lot of services. And so this one also has a varying degree. It's a slider of like, well, if I'm only using an EC2 instance and everything's there, then... maybe low-ish switching costs.

But by the time I have auto-scaling and I have six different types of servers because I have the front end and the API and I have a database and I have Redis servers and I have sidekick workers and I'm using Amazon's, not proprietary, but they're more like the Redshift thing and I'm using a bunch of stuff in Amazon. Switching away from that at that point becomes... very, very painful.

But by the time I have auto-scaling and I have six different types of servers because I have the front end and the API and I have a database and I have Redis servers and I have sidekick workers and I'm using Amazon's, not proprietary, but they're more like the Redshift thing and I'm using a bunch of stuff in Amazon. Switching away from that at that point becomes... very, very painful.

And migrating to another platform, again, that's why it's the third level, I think, of platform risk. Now, if it's such a pain to switch, why do I think the risk is relatively low? Because at least to date, AWS, GCP, and Azure are not in the business of being aggressive. They have no motivation whatsoever to, like their business model is selling you stuff for a certain amount of money.

And migrating to another platform, again, that's why it's the third level, I think, of platform risk. Now, if it's such a pain to switch, why do I think the risk is relatively low? Because at least to date, AWS, GCP, and Azure are not in the business of being aggressive. They have no motivation whatsoever to, like their business model is selling you stuff for a certain amount of money.

And so they want you to be happy. They keep rolling out new stuff. They keep dropping prices, right? It's the opposite of, you know, I'll get to it in a second, but like the no-code providers, right? Where they keep raising prices and where any of those could go out of business any day and they're not profitable.

And so they want you to be happy. They keep rolling out new stuff. They keep dropping prices, right? It's the opposite of, you know, I'll get to it in a second, but like the no-code providers, right? Where they keep raising prices and where any of those could go out of business any day and they're not profitable.

For the most part, I think most of the no-code providers have raised a bunch of money and are still not profitable. That's where Judge McCall, AWS, GCP, and Azure I don't think are going to be aggressive and make people want to migrate off unlike other startups that are still in that early monetization or growth phase. So that was the third level, which was medium to higher switching costs.

For the most part, I think most of the no-code providers have raised a bunch of money and are still not profitable. That's where Judge McCall, AWS, GCP, and Azure I don't think are going to be aggressive and make people want to migrate off unlike other startups that are still in that early monetization or growth phase. So that was the third level, which was medium to higher switching costs.