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Back to His Customers Died. He Grew 51% a Month Anyway. | Ivan Burazin, Daytona, with Ivan Burazin.

Why Do AI Buyers Need Servers the Same Day?

Ivan Burazin says AI buyers will not wait, because the teams sprinting toward more capable systems want capacity today. A customer recently asked Daytona for 100,000 concurrent sandboxes starting the next day. He treats 100,000 cores as a serious amount of compute. Holding that many machines empty costs a lot of money, and the hardware cannot be ordered in a smooth line. Daytona has to buy ahead, run in the red for a stretch, and then fill the machines.

If the capacity is missing when the customer calls, the customer leaves. His test for an infrastructure company is two questions. Do people know who you are, and can you serve them when they show up? The software differences between Linux CPU sandboxes are smaller than founders like to admit. Attention, and the ability to burst, come first.

Transcript

His Customers Died. He Grew 51% a Month Anyway. | Ivan Burazin, Daytona ·

The Peel with Turner Novak

More from this episode

  1. Why Does Prompting an AI Agent Produce a Hack?Ivan Burazin expects widespread hacks because prompting an agent toward a task will inevitably produce a hack as the path to the solution, and agents can now…
  2. Why Will Every AI Agent Need Its Own Computer?Ivan Burazin has put the same line in his pitch since Daytona began: every agent will need a computer.
  3. Why Do AI Agents Use a CPU Like a Calculator?Ivan Burazin says a CPU is the calculator an agent should use instead of doing every calculation inside the model.
  4. Is a CPU Shortage Coming Because of AI Agents?Ivan Burazin says a CPU shortage is coming, even though one machine is still easy to get.
  5. How Can a New Cloud Provider Win Against AWS?Ivan Burazin says a new cloud provider wins when buyers are hunting for something the old clouds do not have, or do not make easy to buy.
  6. What Happened to Daytona's Early Customers?Ivan Burazin says Daytona's entire early customer base was startups trying to compete with Lovable, Bolt, and Replit.
  7. How Fast Has Daytona Revenue Grown Since the Start?Ivan Burazin says Daytona's revenue has grown at 51% month on month since the beginning, every month, not only in a recent stretch.
  8. Why Does a Startup's First Act Have to Be a Home Run?Ivan Burazin says a startup's first act has to be a home run, or there is no next act.
  9. How Do You Spot Room for a New Agent Sandbox?Ivan Burazin spots room for a new agent sandbox when buyers know no rivals, or only one or two, and the funding gap is one round or maybe two.
  10. Why Do Companies Pay AWS So Much?Ivan Burazin says companies pay AWS because it takes the infrastructure work off their plate, not because it is a luxury brand.
  11. Why Do AI Agents Still Need Windows?Ivan Burazin has bet since Daytona started that agents need Windows, Mac, and Linux, not one operating system. The Windows case is a job inside a large company.
  12. Why Did Daytona's Series a Not Happen?Ivan Burazin says Daytona's Series A, on the new product after the pivot, did not get done the first time.
  13. Why Do AI Labs Offer Bring Your Own Sandbox?Ivan Burazin reads a bring-your-own-sandbox option as a sign that a lab's customers want a sandbox other than the one bundled with the product.
  14. How Did Daytona Grow Without Any Salespeople?Ivan Burazin says Daytona grew fast without salespeople because Daytona is a product-led company, and the team still grows the same way today.
  15. Should I Move to San Francisco to Raise Money?Ivan Burazin says a founder does not have to move to San Francisco, but does have to spend real time there.
  16. Why Did Ivan Burazin Get Good at Soul Calibur?Ivan Burazin got good at Soul Calibur out of personal spite after an older next-door neighbor kept beating him and making fun of him.

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