Rob Walling

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.

There are replacements available, again, AWS, GCP, Azure, and others, but there's no lead flow or customer concentration. We'll see you next time. The machine learning engineer they helped me hire was very professional and even learned a new tech stack to set up an environment to train and deploy machine learning models.

There are replacements available, again, AWS, GCP, Azure, and others, but there's no lead flow or customer concentration. We'll see you next time. The machine learning engineer they helped me hire was very professional and even learned a new tech stack to set up an environment to train and deploy machine learning models.

He documented his work clearly so I could train it in the future with additional data. I'm super happy with the results. And longtime listener Chaz Yoon hired a senior developer from Lemon.io and said his hire, quote, definitely knew his stuff, provided appropriate feedback and pushback, and had great communication, including very fluent English. He really exceeded my expectations.

He documented his work clearly so I could train it in the future with additional data. I'm super happy with the results. And longtime listener Chaz Yoon hired a senior developer from Lemon.io and said his hire, quote, definitely knew his stuff, provided appropriate feedback and pushback, and had great communication, including very fluent English. He really exceeded my expectations.

Chas said he'd definitely use Lemon.io again when he's looking for a senior level engineer. To learn more and get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer, head to Lemon.io slash startups. That's Lemon.io slash startups. The fourth level of platform risk is the one that I added for the WordPress kerfuffle. And here's the interesting thing.

Chas said he'd definitely use Lemon.io again when he's looking for a senior level engineer. To learn more and get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer, head to Lemon.io slash startups. That's Lemon.io slash startups. The fourth level of platform risk is the one that I added for the WordPress kerfuffle. And here's the interesting thing.

I just have, I have open source software like WordPress. And so that's kind of vague as the fourth level. Here's the thing. There's no customer concentration. There's no lead flow. The question is, is there a replacement? Is it easy to switch? And is it priced the same? Well, you know, open source software doesn't have to be free as in price, free as in beer, but most of it is, right?

I just have, I have open source software like WordPress. And so that's kind of vague as the fourth level. Here's the thing. There's no customer concentration. There's no lead flow. The question is, is there a replacement? Is it easy to switch? And is it priced the same? Well, you know, open source software doesn't have to be free as in price, free as in beer, but most of it is, right?

I think the majority of it is. So price is probably less relevant. The question is, how hard is it to switch and is a replacement available? And the further question that begs is, well, how deeply are you integrated? Because if we look at WP Engine, that is obviously reliant on WordPress, couldn't WP Engine just fork the WordPress code? Because I believe it's GPL, right? They fork it.

I think the majority of it is. So price is probably less relevant. The question is, how hard is it to switch and is a replacement available? And the further question that begs is, well, how deeply are you integrated? Because if we look at WP Engine, that is obviously reliant on WordPress, couldn't WP Engine just fork the WordPress code? Because I believe it's GPL, right? They fork it.

Now, I guess then there's a whole plugin ecosystem. I don't know what happened with there. So that's an I don't know. It feels like there's risk there, but they have options.