Recent content on Tobi Knaup
Open-weight models are becoming the foundation for the next AI ecosystem. The US should compete in it, not wall itself off. I have seen a version of this story before. In 2013 I co-founded Mesosphere, an open source cloud-native software company. We built on Apache Mesos, which my co-founder Ben Hindman had helped create at UC Berkeley. We later built DC/OS (Data Center Operating System) around…
Der Wohlstand, den wir derzeit noch genießen, steht durch fehlgeleitete Politik auf dem Spiel. Um ihn zu erhalten, braucht es nicht nur eine ergebnisorientierte Politik, sondern auch ein gesellschaftliches Umdenken. Der berühmte Wahlkampfslogan von Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid!” , ist heute aktueller denn je. Deutschland war einst weltweit führend in zahlreichen Branchen — von der…
Platform engineering as a replacement for DevOps has become a hot topic, with provocative critics stoking the controversy by pronouncing DevOps dead . The underlying reason for these pronouncements is that the once-radical DevOps model is at odds with the new cloud-native container management model to which the now-obsolete DevOps model is being applied. Let’s take a closer look. A Misapplied…
by Robert Iger 10 Principles Necessary for True Leadership “As I near the end of all of that and think back on what I’ve learned, these are the ten principles that strike me as necessary to true leadership. I hope they’ll serve you as well as they’ve served me." Optimism One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the…
Developers and security experts are now tasked with bolstering, extending and adjusting cloud and Kubernetes security to protect against cyberattacks that are ever more complex, volatile, and frequent. To foil attacks and create a secure foundation for applications and infrastructure from the beginning, DevSecOps (development, security and operations) has become the trending development and…
by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle "If the top manager always makes decisions it’s not the best ideas that win but those from the people that are best at lobbying. In other words politics. That’s why it’s important to let the ensemble make decisions. Like in improv comedy." Below are the boxes from the book that summarize each topic. It's The People The top priority of any manager is…
What is a pre-mortem? According to Wikipedia, pre-mortem, or premortem , is a managerial strategy in which a project team imagines that a project has failed, and then works backward to determine what potentially could lead to the failure of the project. Applying this concept to a Kubernetes deployment can prevent your organization from wasting time, resources, and money, and help you achieve…
In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal , CIOs and industry analysts shared how they are adjusting their strategies in light of a potential economic downturn. Unlike past downturns, especially the tech bubble in 2000, tech executives are not looking to reduce spending across the board, but are becoming more selective about which initiatives to invest in, which ones to cut, and which ones to…
Leading organizations around the world are adopting cloud-native technologies to build next- generation products because cloud native gives them the agility that they need to stay ahead of their competition. Although cloud native and Kubernetes are very disruptive technologies, there is another technology that is probably the most disruptive technology of our generation, and that is artificial…
In August 2011, Marc Andreessen wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal entitled “Why Software Is Eating the World.” Andreessen predicted that the leading companies in any industry would be software companies. And indeed, a wave of online software companies arose in which Netflix ate Blockbuster, Apple and Spotify ate Tower Records and the CD, and LinkedIn disrupted the recruiting industry.…
2020 has revealed the benefits of Kubernetes are unmatched, but the path to adoption isn’t always clear, as many companies looked to accelerate their digital transformation. Challenges and complexities increase as developer teams work to keep pace with accelerating market demands. Companies must adapt to these challenges and remain agile as they look to 2021 and beyond. Demand to overcome…
Building the infrastructure to support cloud computing now accounts for more than a third of all IT spending worldwide, according to research from IDC . With spending anticipated to reach nearly $500 billion in 2023, organizations need to be mindful that all this investment doesn’t lead to redundant and disparate efforts that are impossible to govern. Many organizations are now just beginning to…
This list is useful for when you can't / don't want to use an AWS cloud service, for example when you need to run the same service on multiple clouds, or on a mix of datacenter, cloud and edge. Please help me grow this list on Github ! Groups covered: Storage, Database, Analytics, Compute AWS Service What it does OSS Alternatives S3 Object store Minio , Swift , Ceph , … EFS File system FSx File…
by Daniel Pink Most leaders I meet still operate on a faulty assumption: that people are primarily motivated by external rewards. Money, bonuses, promotions — the classic carrot and stick. Daniel Pink's Drive dismantles this idea and shows what actually moves us, especially in creative and knowledge work. The Problem with Carrots and Sticks The traditional reward-and-punishment model comes from a…
My brother in law recently introduced me to the Nova Tunes series from the French label Nova Records . It's a fresh sounding compilation of a variety of styles, including modern Jazz, Funk, and Hip Hop, with a tad bit of electronic sprinkled on top. Nova Tunes on Discogs Listen on iTunes
I recently switched to using ELB with SSL termination and had to upload a GoDaddy server certificate to the load balancer. First, I tried uploading the certificate using the AWS command line tools like so: {% highlight bash %} $ iam-servercertupload -b server_cert.pem -k server_cert.key -s Server-Cert-2011 arn:aws:iam::123456789:server-certificate/Server-Cert-2011 $ elb-set-lb-listener-ssl-cert…
In your model, if you have {% highlight ruby %} accepts_nested_attributes_for :attachments {% endhighlight %} And you limit the accessible attributes with something like {% highlight ruby %} attr_accessible :title, :text {% endhighlight %} make sure to also include the virtual attribute for the nested model to that list, like so: {% highlight ruby %} attr_accessible :title, :text,…
In a paper I published last year , I introduced a novel algorithm for sentiment detection in movie reviews. I used data from Metacritic , which consists mostly of brief reviews (only a few sentences). In that sense, they are pretty similar to tweets. So I thought, why not try the algorithm on data from Twitter's streaming API ? The idea was to follow a developing story and graph the sentiment…
Awesome minimal 70's disco tune. Sounds clumsy like a high school band and just as adorable. Listen on iTunes
Given you have two blueprints for users: {% highlight ruby %} User.blueprint {} User.blueprint(:admin) {} {% endhighlight %} Then this is how you reference them from a Cucumber feature definition: {% highlight cucumber %} Given a user exists Given an admin_user exists {% endhighlight %} Took me some digging into the Pickle code to find that out. If you haven't checked out these amazing tools yet,…
Today's winner in the category "honest songs". Listen on iTunes
Today's winner in the category "beautiful songs". Listen on iTunes
I spent way too much time today figuring out why this doesn't work as expected: {% highlight ruby %} def test_something get :list, nil, {:user_id => 1} get :list, nil, {:user_id => 2} end {% endhighlight %} I expected the second request to have session[:user_id] == 2 . That's not the case. Functional tests in Rails are designed to make only one request per test and thus the second assignment…
I grew up in Germany and co-founded my first web consulting and hosting company at 15. I studied Information and Communication Technology at the Technische Universität München (TUM) , earning a B.Sc. and a Dipl.-Ing. Univ. (equivalent to M.Sc.). Along the way I attended the International Graduate Seminar on Smart Homes at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and returned to spend a full…
Crises reveal whether a leadership team has real trust, clear judgment, and operational discipline. The work is to move quickly without becoming careless, and to communicate directly without creating panic. Principles Own the situation. Do not blame the market, board, investors, employees, or bad luck. Communicate what you know, what you do not know, and when people will hear more. Make decisions…
Process Aim for as much process as needed and as little as possible. Good process lets people do their best work; bad process gets in the way. Estimation : Story points are a lightweight way to estimate work and enable planning. They let you track velocity over time — did the team accelerate or slow down? — and give the whole team something concrete to celebrate. Backlogs : Keep one backlog for as…
Vinod Khosla teaches a masterclass in fundraising in his video 📹 Nail Your Raise: Luring VCs . I agree with pretty much everything he says in the video and highly recommend watching it before building your fundraising deck. Sequoia Capital published a Pitch Deck Template which is a great foundation for the overall structure of a fundraising pitch deck. This is the format many VCs are familiar…
Getting Started These are good resources to help with your first few enterprise sales. 📙 The Enterprise Sales Playbook 📝 Nate Nasralla's LinkedIn 📝 A Guide to Enterprise Sales for Early-stage Founders Founder-Led Sales In early markets, founder-led sales is not optional. If the founder cannot sell the product, nobody else will be able to sell it reliably. This is especially true when: The…
These are the painful lessons learned from building companies - the kind of insights that only come from making expensive mistakes. Save yourself time and money by learning from these experiences. Interest vs. Need One of the most dangerous traps for founders is mistaking interest for need. People will often express excitement about your product because it's cool, new, or intellectually…
Customers care about who they work with. We won deals because customers liked our people better. Interview: 6 factual areas of skill, score 1-5. Prefer candidates that have done a similar job maybe at a slightly larger firm. Don’t go for high potential. Value Creation vs. Value Protection Before hiring an executive, decide what kind of role this is. In early startups, most leadership roles need to…
There is a lot to talk about but here are the key things I learned that were surprising or made a big difference. Before you go in, have a clear understanding of the Mission, Outcome and Competencies for the role. Candidates will ask you about it and it helps design the interview process. Mission is what you want them to do over the next 12-18 months. Outcome is how you’re going to measure…
This is a collection of interview questions from various sources. For Any Candidate What’s your background, how did you end up where you are? Talk about a recent project. What did you do personally? Why do you want join this company? Talk about a mistake you made, and what you learned. Why are you leaving your current gig? What's your understanding of our mission? What are you into in your own…
This is a collection of tools and behaviors for startup leaders. Behaviors Say thank you Invest in infrastructure Talk to your customers every day, so they can't talk to a competitor Candor Candor needs everyone's participation Many more ideas get surfaced and improved, people learn Candor creates speed, faster decision making and fewer mistakes, waste Make public heroes of people who display it…
Mission and vision statements serve as foundational elements of a company's strategic identity. They provide clarity, direction, and inspiration, helping the organization navigate challenges and seize opportunities. Here's why they're crucial: Guides Decision-Making : They act as a compass for leaders and teams, ensuring that daily choices, resource allocation, and long-term strategies align with…
Building and managing great teams is one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of startup leadership. Understanding what motivates people and creating an environment where they can thrive is essential for success. What People Want Most people are motivated by three fundamental needs: Mastery People want to learn new skills, solve challenging problems, and create meaningful work. They…
Planning is where strategy becomes resource allocation. A good plan creates focus, makes tradeoffs explicit, and gives teams enough context to make good decisions without asking for permission every day. Bad planning usually fails in predictable ways: Leadership gives no context and asks teams to invent plans in a vacuum. Leadership over-specifies the work and kills team creativity. Every team…
Positioning is one of the highest leverage decisions a founder makes. It determines who cares, what they compare you to, why your product is different, how much you can charge, who should sell it, and what investors believe you can become. Start With Who Loves You The most useful positioning insights often come from the small number of customers who are unusually excited. Talk to them until you…
Product with a Capital P The product is not just your app, website or whatever you're coding. Your "Product" starts with the experience a user has the first time they see your brand somewhere. On your website, in an ad, at a tradeshow, etc. The onboarding experience of your product is also part of your Product and so is your documentation, the emails you send, your newsletter, your slide decks…
It may sound obvious but Product Managers must use their products constantly. You can't be an effective Product Manager if you don't know what it's like to use your product. The questions below will help Product Managers make better decisions and improve the efficiency of their processes Customer First Check the community mailing list and Slack every day and make sure your team answers questions.…
Ask these questions for better reference calls. "Where do you see this person in 3 years?" Most people say 5 years. But that's too long. 3 years gets the reference thinking about ideal shorter-term outcomes for the candidate. Focus on getting intel that will help you be an impactful manager. "When was the last time you didn't see eye-to-eye?" It's a softer way to ask how the candidate deals with…
Strategic thinking is what separates successful startups from those that struggle. Strategy is about making clear choices about where to compete and how to win. The Hedgehog Concept From Jim Collins' "Good to Great," the Hedgehog Concept requires you to find the intersection of three circles: What can we be the best in the world at? - Not what you want to be the best at, but what you realistically…