Soo-Yung Cho

The Stoke Space team in Seattle has built a rocket company faster than many people can build software. Morgan Beller breaks down how this is helping them capture a huge opportunity: https://lnkd.in/gc5jv2-c 

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Check out how easy it is to gather all the data (backfill) you could ever need from Coinbase's BASE chain, using QuickNode ⚡Streams product 👉👇

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It’s eye-opening to see how AI model businesses are dealing with tight margins despite big investments. 🤯 Aidan Gomez’s comments about the “zero margin business” highlight the fierce competition and price cuts in the industry. 💸 With giants like OpenAI and Anthropic lowering prices to stay ahead, it’s a tough time for startups. The future of AI might depend on finding new ways to make these technologies profitable. 🚀 #AI #MachineLearning #TechTrends #Startups https://lnkd.in/ejkDu_wT

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An intriguing startup called Fragment is shaking up the ledgering game. 💡 If you’ve ever dealt with tracking customer balances, you know how tedious it can be—Fragment's API aims to simplify that by offering real-time, double-entry accounting without the accounting jargon overload.📊 Founders Thomas Neckel and Omi Chowdhury are onto something big here, especially with their track record of successful startups. With early adopters like TruckSmarter and Nala already onboard, it's exciting to see where this tech goes. 🚀 #Fintech #Startup #Innovation #AccountingTech #TechTrends https://lnkd.in/eUrC-tJE

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What a journey it has been. Just over a year and a half ago, we found ourselves in the heart of the bear market, reaching out to every investor who would listen to share our vision. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that OpenLayer has raised a $5 million seed round with the support of an incredible group of investors and angels. A huge shoutout to my co-founders, Yuchen J. and Chen Chen — the best partners I could ask for on this journey — and to the entire team for their relentless dedication. Together, we are reimagining data interoperability and working to change the status quo of today’s internet for a better future. This milestone is deeply meaningful because it represents the culmination of countless late nights, hard decisions, and unwavering perseverance. OpenLayer was built one step at a time, through moments of doubt and uncertainty, where we often questioned if we’d make it. But that’s what makes this journey so special — the challenges, the setbacks, and the grit it takes to push through. To my fellow founders and dreamers: Embrace the highs and the lows. Trust the process. Keep moving forward, even when the path isn’t clear. Surround yourself with people who inspire you, challenge you, and believe in your vision. Here’s to all of us daring to dream big and build something meaningful. The journey is worth it.

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Hey folks! Garrett Milster and I have only posted about Sacramento Labs once, so we figured it's time for an update 😊 **What is Sacramento Labs?** We’re a small team focused on launching software products that solve real-world problems. Think of us as a startup lab—constantly testing ideas, learning from feedback, and building tools that matter, and having an impact while doing it. **How do we decide what to build?** We like to build products that: -         Solve real-world problems in mostly ignored industries -         Are small, highly maintainable, and scalable codebases -         Make the world a better place directly, or by donating a percentage of profits to a relevant charity in that space You can learn more about our philosophy at sacramentolabs.com **What you can expect from us** We’ll be posting product ideas that are in various stages of our pipeline: Early Concept, Customer Development, In Progress, Launched, Scaling. We’d love to hear your feedback! **Our latest concept: Self-Hosted Security** Here’s the problem: - Businesses often use third-party URL shorteners to share internal tools, resources, or campaigns, but these services introduce serious risks. Enterprise companies like Google, Microsoft, and Stripe have built their own internal URL shorteners for this reason – but most businesses don’t have the resources to do that. - Phishing attacks are rampant, and links from external services can be spoofed or abused. - Branding and security controls are limited, leaving sensitive information exposed. - You can’t track link activity—who’s clicking what, when, or why. - When employees leave, their shared links still work, leaving potential vulnerabilities. Our proposed solution: Self-Hosted Security. It’s a plug-and-play solution for businesses to host their own branded URL shorteners with: - SSO for secure access tied to your company’s directory. - Link expirations to ensure old links don’t stay active indefinitely. - Audit logs to track activity and improve visibility into link usage. 📢 We need your input! Would this solve a problem for you? What features would make this indispensable? Check out the landing page and share your thoughts: selfhostedsecurity.com Want to chat? Email me at [email protected] 😊 💡 And here’s something we’re passionate about: a percentage of profits from Self-Hosted Security will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Your feedback not only helps us create better solutions, but also contributes to making a positive impact. Thanks for being part of the journey!

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Stripe held Sessions 2024, its yearly annual conference in San Francisco last week. Yes, there were a ton of announcements, including the return of crypto to Stripe, but the one that caught my eye was Stripe de-coupling payments from its software stack. This is HUGE, so let me explain. Historically, Stripe required its clients to use its payment services as a gateway to access its software stack such as billing, invoicing, and fraud prevention. However, this requirement has been removed to allow businesses to utilize Stripe's suite of services more modularly. This strategic pivot is intended to reduce friction for existing and potential customers who may only need specific components of Stripe's offerings, and not necessarily the payment processing solutions. Ok, so this means that you can use Adyen, Checkout.com or Worldpay as your payments processor and use Stripe as your Billing Engine! I distinctly remember how much of a hot button issue this used to be at Stripe and it's interesting how Stripe has come around to this outcome. At Xflow, we've architected our payments and product infrastructure very similarly to what Stripe used to do, which is that product and payments are tightly coupled. Maybe it's time to rethink this? For more details, check out the link to the TechCrunch article in the comments section. #paymentsinfrastructure #stripe #paymentsystems

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The birth of a $63B dollar idea. This is how DoorDash did their first public pitch ⤵ 1/ The Humble Beginnings ➠ A $63B Idea Started Small ➝ Tony Xu pitched DoorDash at YC demo day, August 2013. ➝ Back then, it wasn’t DoorDash; it was Palo Alto Delivery. ➝ Founders were the only Dashers. ↳ Office? School housing. ↳ Marketing? Dorm room flyers. 2/ The Leap Forward ➠ From Dorms to Domination ➝ Be ready to iterate. ➝ Listen to your customer. ➝ Be ready to pivot. ➝ Scrappy solutions can lead to scalable empires. ➝ Staying in the trenches sharpens your problem-solving skills. ➝ Investors care less about polish, more about potential. ↳ Even giants start scrappy. ↳ Relentless focus beats resources. 3/ Lessons for Fellow Founders ➠ Persistence Pays ➝ Stick with the grind—momentum compounds. ➝ Humble starts don’t limit massive outcomes. ➝ Small moves, smartly made, snowball into big wins. ↳ The only way out is through. What’s stopping you from launching that idea today? ▶ How much do beginnings really matter? ▶ Are we undervaluing grit over glamour? ▶ Could your “scrappy idea” be tomorrow’s billion-dollar breakthrough? // Repost this ⇄ // Source: via Kevin Jurovich 🙏 Follow me for daily posts on emerging tech and growth: https://lnkd.in/gqzS_9Tf

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Want a preview of what I'm going to be talking about in my keynote for RubyConf? You can catch a glimpse of it here!

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AI & SaaS: A Tale of Two Futures What if Excel and other SaaS apps don’t vanish but evolve, blending seamlessly with AI? In a recent Interview (https://reurl.cc/eGz06j), Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, suggests the “agent era” will replace traditional applications. That’s Nadella’s vision: AI as a co-star, enhancing our favorite tools—think Excel with Python instead of Excel replaced by something else. But here’s the twist: 🔸 I see AI’s disruptive power surpassing any need for standalone software. 🔸 Why open an app when a smart agent can directly pull, manipulate, and display data on demand? Nadella believes AI + SaaS = Harmony. He sees Copilot orchestrating tasks, quietly boosting productivity. Developers still matter, refining user experiences to work with AI rather than against it. I foresee a more dramatic shift. If AI can generate everything from sales forecasts to text summaries instantly, maybe the spreadsheets and CRMs we rely on will fade away. Where do you stand? 📌 Collaboration or Disruption? 📌 AI enhancing SaaS or AI replacing it? No matter which path emerges, one thing’s certain: AI is rewriting the rules—and the next chapter of SaaS will be far from business as usual. Your thoughts? Let’s discuss. #AI #SaaS #FutureOfWork #Microsoft 

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"Build in primitives" -Andy Jassy, #Amazon CEO https://lnkd.in/gHMYt7NX Happen to take the time to read this year's Annual investor letter from Andy Jassy. Deep in 2nd half, it talks about how Amazon started thinking about "building in primitives" and how it has been game-changing for them and their customers. Probably old news for some, but eye-opening for me. Definitely a good read!

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👩‍🚀 Fellow Tech People, we're exploring moving away from our custom API/websocket LLM interfacing at LEAGUES in favor of ELL. 🤔 The potential for streamlined API interactions, simplified prompt management, and reusable functions is really appealing. That said, I’m reaching out to the community: has anyone implemented ELL in production yet? I'm curious if ELL is the way to go for long-term scalability and maintenance reduction when interacting with LLMs. And what about Langchain—why choose one over the other? I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts! #LEAGUES #ELL #Langchain #AI #TechInnovation

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We had Linear event for founders in SF last night, and as part of that I had a fireside chat with Patrick Collison from Stripe. We covered some topics like the importance of craft, product management, good leaders, etc. Some highlights: The importance of craft: At Linear we see the craft as the requirement for quality. People who care about their craft, almost automatically produce quality. Patrick: "We want to employ really good people. Really good people just don't like working on kind of sloppy things. There's just a deep spiritual aspect to that." Power of small teams: In my experience in companies, some of the best work was always done by a small, focused team, most features at Linear are built by 2-4 team members. Patrick: "The original iPhone software team was 20 people. The kernel, the apps, the browser, the touch interface, like the whole thing. So when people are telling you that they need 40 people for some project, you can explain to them how the iPhone was built with 20 people. So how big would you consider your project in multiples of the iPhone?" How Stripe still builds products in a startup way: Patrick: "There is an internal recipe for this which first guides you to figure out the right user for the product, then the team should go talk to some of those people. Then you should get some of these people into the Slack channel or some other channel where you can get them to try it, get more feedback or try the product. Once you have 5 excited users for something, you can scale it to 100. Then you can start looking at some metrics, but again you look at things like is it actually solving their problems etc."

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Join Us for an Exclusive Partnership Leaders Meetup in San Jose 🚀 Calling all partnership leaders! Let’s tackle two of the hottest topics on your mind: budgeting and headcount planning for 2025. This meetup is the perfect chance to: - Share strategies on securing budget approvals - Discuss headcount needs and justification in a lean economy - Connect with fellow leaders facing similar challenges See you tonight, bring a friend!

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Three things I didn't know about launching on Product Hunt. ⤵⤵⤵ Shameless plug: If you like the following, Ubicloud is LIVE on Product Hunt (PH) now. Please support our launch: https://lnkd.in/eFZyy_tb 1/ When the PH day starts (one minute past midnight PST), your launch either gets featured or not. We didn't know ahead of time if Ubicloud would be featured. They say that reaching out Product Hunt and asking for feedback helps. So does creating a product teaser and building an audience ahead of the launch. 2/ The first hours (midnight to 4am PST) are crucial. If you're featured, everyone gets an equal amount of air time on the front page until 4:01am PST. After that, launches get sorted by popularity. I'm guessing launches that are above the fold get higher visibility. 3/ You can pick any day of the week (or month) for your launch. If you do well on a Monday, then you have a higher chance of winning the product of the week (because you're live for the entire week). We ran an analysis and found that surprisingly, Monday isn't the most competitive day. Competitiveness by day (lowest to highest): Sunday / Saturday, Friday / Monday, Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday. Again, if you like this, please support us on Product Hunt. Ubicloud + Kamal lets you deploy web apps anywhere using a completely open source stack.

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Here's something counterintuitive; taking on more investment risk reduces long-term returns: https://lnkd.in/gHwkjHmP This is only my second investment video, so I'm still learning. If you have any feedback, I would love to hear it. Based on the feedback from the first video, I tried to make the audio more balanced on this video. I also shortened the length, to make the content more digestible.

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Hiring and working with excellent people is what makes starting a company so fun

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