Vertex Ventures

Yesterday we gathered 40+ infrastructure software leaders for breakfast at AWS’ re:Invent conference in Las Vegas 🚀 We brought together the founders / execs of our portfolio companies LaunchDarkly Hasura Gitpod OpsLevel Cosmonic VGS Testlio Orkes with engineering leaders from eg Confluent ServiceNow Netflix and other infra founders in our close community. We discussed topics eg excitement about Amazon’s native support for Iceberg (S3 Tables), how founders are scaling global teams (or deciding to stay local) and how large orgs are starting to leverage AI across various IT and engineering functions. My brain is still spinning from the quality of the conversations💥 thank you to everyone that joined me and Noah Carr ! Want to join more events like this in SF or NYC? Sign up here - https://lnkd.in/g9AcyBRz 🫶

If you'll be at #AWSreinvent in Las Vegas, don't miss this great gathering of infrastructure software founders, builders, and technical leaders. There are a few slots left, so inquire below:

Congratulations to Trustero on its Series A round! We're proud investors and partners, and thrilled to be a part of its journey as it revolutionizes GRC with AI.

Informal hallway conversations at conferences often provide the best insights—what are people really talking about? 🤫 ... What are the hot takes, which technologies are in vogue, and which problems keep attendees up at night? My colleague, Paul Burt summarized what we heard from attendees at the Northflank booth during KubeCon. You can indulge in some of that hallway chatter here: https://lnkd.in/g9JwMjkw

Simon Tiu reports back from last week's KubeCon in Salt Lake City. His big takeaway: The dream of using AI in systems engineering is finally coming true, as founders take advantage of recent advances to automate, optimize, and generally improve the way we deploy and manage cloud infrastructure. The only catch is that the bar has been raised, and startups have to deliver more than just a flashy demo. As Kelsey Hightower put it in his on-stage KubeCon interview with Vertex's Megan Reynolds: “Look, the number one thing is that your product actually works. It literally does what you say it does.” Find more of Simon's thoughts on the AI age of systems engineering -- and his tips for founders to deliver real value with AI -- in this week's edition of the Vertex Angles newsletter. #startups #ai #kubernetes #kubecon #cloudcomputing

When it comes to being a CEO, the little things will often come to matter the most. That's according to Siadhal Magos, CEO and co-founder of Metaview, who says that business leaders need to take the small choices as seriously as the big ones. You never know which small tactical decision will have dramatic strategic events down the line. That's also an argument for making those decisions quickly, he says, rather than let them linger. Watch for more from Siadhal: #startups #startupadvice #ceoadvice #leadership

Vertex Ventures US will be at Slush for the first time this year. We've long been champions of founding teams from Europe who are driving forces behind infrastructure software and the automation of work, and bridging many of these teams to land and thrive in North America which continues to be a big early-adopter market. Here to meet new folks, build new connections and host an Investor Day Roundtable on Helping Founders become stronger CEOs and managers. Still trying to figure out why its called Slush.

Software complexity can kill the effectiveness of your engineering team. That's the pain that John Laban felt as the first engineer at PagerDuty, and what drove him to build OpsLevel alongside Kenneth Rose. Hear the origin story of OpsLevel and how we're helping teams of all sizes wrangle their complex infrastructure and empower developers to move faster on their own. Join NYSE Wired and SiliconANGLE & theCUBE as they dive into OpsLevel's history and how we help customers like Hootsuite, Duolingo, Keller Williams, and Nerdwallet scale service ownership across complex environments. 👉 Watch the entire interview today at 1 pm ET (cal link in comments)

Last week, Megan Reynolds hosted the first-ever InfraSF event -- taking the format of her successful infra.nyc events for infrastructure software developers, and bringing it to San Francisco for the first time. In this week's edition of Vertex Angles, Megan reflects on how even in a place like Silicon Valley, where the calendar always seems full of events and meetups, there aren't enough places for infra devs to get together and share their most technical challenges and triumphs without any agenda or sales pitch. Read more: #developers #developercommunity #devrel #community #startups

As a CEO, it can be challenging to figure out the best way to allocate your time. Ultimately, you're responsible for product, sales, marketing, finance, and everything else that goes into building a successful company. In a new video, Siadhal Magos, CEO and co-founder of Metaview (a Vertex US portfolio company) explains how he's come to thinking about prioritization as his company has grown: Only focus on things that you can uniquely help with. If any function can reasonably performed by somebody else on the team, let them. But there are places where a founder and CEO's personal touch can make an outsized impact. Watch the full video below: #startup #startupadvice #leadership #leadershipadvice