>> I really think the markets for DO and AWS are different. DO aims at the "I need a few boxes" sort of user, and AWS aims at the "I boxes and other infrastructure" where other infrastructure is databases, auto-scaling services, etc.
This is the typical pattern for market disruption: competitor enters the market at the low-end and moves up-market to eventually dislodge the incumbent.
Is that really disruption though? It kinda just sounds like regular ol' business. I only ask because your comment is making me question my understanding of "disruption".
Thanks for the feedback, one thing to remember is that the other companies mentioned in this thread have had quite a few years to put their products and service together.
We spent most of last year dealing with the challenges of scale as we grow quite a bit.
There was the need to scale infrastructure, engineering, customer support, as well as the misc odds and ends of running a business (office space, etc.).
As we grew from 5 people to over 50 today that definitely slowed us down on our product roadmap substantially but now that we've scaled out most teams (and we're still hiring! =]) we are able to once again refocus our efforts on engineering.
That means more updates to the backend for stability and also rolling out new features. During the next couple of months customers should see the benefits of those efforts.
There are other challenges that come from scaling rapidly including making sure that we can retain our culture as new team members join. Aside from rolling out new features and diving into some of those we'll also be writing blog posts on the scale challenges we faced as a startup so that it hopefully provides some insights to other startups as they go through their growth phases as well.
As always if there are any questions please reach out to me direct - Moisey -- digitalocean.com - It may take me a day or two to respond depending on how much work is piled on top, but I always read every email and get back to everyone and we very much appreciate the feedback.
I thought "disruptive innovation" was things like car vs horse, e-mail vs postal mail etc - things that are fundamentally different, not an evolution of the existing market.
AWS vs DO seems more like Ford vs Toyota than cars vs horses.
Sometimes the 'different' thing is inferior though - one of the examples in the cited book talks about excavators:
> An example that has nothing to do with “high tech” comes from the mechanical excavator industry. This industry was dominated by steam shovels until the 1920’s, when gasoline powered engines began to replace them. This was, however, not a disruptive innovation, but a sustaining one, even though the design of the machines changed radically from that of a steam-powered system of cables, to that of a gasoline engine driving a system to extend and retract the cable connected to the bucket. The new engines were more capable than the old ones, and were better at doing more work more reliably, and cheaper than the old system. Despite the radical change in the industry, the same firms that were strongest in steam shovels stayed on top. The disruptive change came with the introduction of hydraulic-actuated systems after World War II - a change that eliminated nearly all of the established players by about 1970, in favor of companies that entered the market with hydraulics. The first hydraulic-based excavators were less capable than the cable systems that were in existence, and certainly couldn’t compete with them. However, they were small enough that they could be deployed for jobs previously done by hand, opening up a new market, in which the desired attributes were quite different from the big jobs that the cable actuated excavators were used for. The technology involved in hydraulics continued to improve, however, and with time eventually equaled and then surpassed the needs formerly filled by cable-based systems. In the meantime, though, the established firms were still going strong, and didn’t do much, if anything, to deal with the new competitor (because it wasn’t really seen as a competitor, not being sufficient for their existing clients’ demands) until the new arrivals were “in the midst of their mainstream market”. By the time the established companies introduced their own hydraulics, however, it was too late, and the later entrants were by then better positioned with the new technology.
This is the typical pattern for market disruption: competitor enters the market at the low-end and moves up-market to eventually dislodge the incumbent.