Recent content on Ross Lazerowitz
There’s been a lot of discourse lately about the end of software. Comically named the “SaaSpocalypse” in reference to the meltdown of SaaS stock valuations in the public markets. Investor reactions have been stark, leading some to stop backing software companies at all. This meme is flawed because building products was never about the code in the first place. Nothing has…
When I started Mirage, I went hunting for “desperate” customers to validate direction. The playbook for enterprise seemed straightforward: cold outreach → design partners → first cohort. It worked. But then I learned a crucial lesson that turned my assumptions upside down: desperation != urgency. In enterprises, the person feeling the pain rarely controls the budget. Executive buyers…
The Right to Your Feed I don’t need to bore you with stats, but here’s one that’s hard to ignore: since 2011, the share of teen girls reporting persistent sadness has jumped from 36% to 57%, while suicide rates for kids aged 10 - 14 have tripled. If you have a pulse, you’re on social media, and you’ve probably experienced a version of this—the quiet drag of feeds, reels, images, all vying for…
The Case for Personal AI It’s been an inspiring last few weeks for AI models. The major labs have released huge advancements in video generation and reasoning models. OpenAI’s o3 model scored a record high of 75.7% on the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC), a series of brain twisters that are easy for humans but hard for AI. While these are significant developments, they are abstract to the…
I met with two founders recently, exploring a new idea. As a habit, I always try to make time for founders. Paying forward the way other founders did for me in the early days. These founders were exploring an AI tooling idea, and I was a prospect. I asked them a simple question: “Have you ever built a production AI application like ours?” “No.” “Ok, why should I trust you to provide a solution to…
After nearly a decade of working on observability products, I’m taking a much-needed break and working on the first human security company. With all those years under my belt, I still have an axe to grind. This post is my best effort to summarize some of the trends and opportunities I see in this space. An ELK-Like Stack Built on Top of an Open-Source Data Warehouse At Splunk, I watched the…
After 3 spirited months of grinding my co-founder Nick and I have decided to pivot. In September we were accepted into the South Park Commons Founder Fellowship and our journey started. We had a lot of ideas but after stack ranking them according to founder-market fit, technical risk, and market risk, we went with our AI Observability idea. The plan was to sprint on the idea for 3 months and see…
After 4 years at Observe, I’m excited to announce that I’m starting a company with my longtime friend and abettor Nick DiRienzo! Today marks a unique occasion where an unexpected encounter from nearly ten years ago profoundly altered the course of my life. In 2012 I met Nick DiRienzo at a Startup Weekend hackathon in Rochester NY. Working late into the night fueled by knockoff energy…
I recently started using the Smart Connections plugin for the Obsidian note-taking app. It generates embeddings for all of my notes and allows me to chat with them using GPT. Over the weekend I used it to generate Twitter and LinkedIn posts for a blog piece I was working on. While it produced quality content it had a lot of trouble replicating my writing style. The completions didn’t feel…
Code Yellow: The Secret Weapon for Tackling Product Disarray Are you a startup that’s been heads down racing to build features and now finds yourself with more bugs than time or people? Or maybe you are a larger company that’s let your product fall into disarray? If this resonates with you, it’s time to call for a Code Yellow and establish a War Room. What is a Code Yellow? The term…
I’ve been internally conflicted about the rapid developments of Large Language Models (LLMs), like GPT4. HN Denizen Jason Hansel left a comment on Tim Bray’s The LLM Problem that is the best summary of how I feel: “I agree with the general point that there is, at present, far too much uncertainty to understand the long-term effects of LLMs. It will be somewhere on the scale between…
In my day-to-day role at Observe Inc., I work with a lot of vendors. I’ve been involved in all stages of vendor management, from procurement to rollout to renewal, for both software and contractors. The following is a list of tips I’ve found helpful when dealing with them. Whether they’re a SaaS provider, recruiter, web development shop, or more this advice is generally applicable. Output is…
In part 1 , I talked about why you should implement a usage-based pricing model, now let’s get into the meat of how you actually implement one.
Inspired much by the success of companies like Snowflake, Observe Inc. set out to build a usage based pricing model. I’ve learned a ton from this process and continue to do so each week. This blog series will catalog our journey and things I wish we had known on day 1. It’s broken up into 3 parts: Why Usage Based Pricing? How you implement it Its challenges
As the first product hire at Observe Inc. , I was tasked with bringing in a lot of tooling to solve problems. I’ve put together this list in the hopes of making the journey easier for others. Feel free to submit a PR if there’s more you think I should add.
I’m currently building something new at Mirage Security with my longtime friend Nick DiRienzo. In prior lives I was Head of Product at Observe Inc, and a PM at Splunk. This blog was put together to capture my ramblings and lessons learned about startups, product management, and product marketing. Outside of work you will find me reading and watching anything scifi fiction, brewing beer, and…
Follow me, @rosslazer or email me at rosslazer dot gmail dot com.
The following is a list of books that have had a profound impact on me. I’m always looking out for exceptional reads, so please send them my way. Software & Engineering The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco | Goodreads The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing…