Aaron and Brian talk with RedPoint Ventures (Scott Raney (@sraney) General Partner at RedPoint Venture Capital (@redpointvc)) about the evolving role of Venture Capital, the Cloud Native Landscape, open source business models, how to many rapid change, and competing / partnering with AWS.
Show Links:
Show Notes:
- Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. We always love to get a Venture Capital perspective on the show from time to time. Tell us about yourself and maybe a little bit about your current areas of focus.
- Topic 2 - At the recent CNCF event (KubeCon, etc.), Dan Kohn introduced the Cloud Native Landscape, which was built in partnership with RedPoint Ventures. Help us understand the framework and how people are using it today.
- Topic 3 - Many of the things on that landscape are either open source projects or companies that are commercializing some aspect of those projects. We’ve heard various theories on what those business models look like, but I’m curious about how you advise your companies in this space.
- Topic 4 - Let’s talk for a second about the pace of change. Things are moving faster than ever. How do you advise companies to build their business, whether it’s long-term or IPO or M&A, or just survival techniques?
- Topic 5 - Twilio is one of your portfolio companies, and they were highlighted at AWS re:Invent last week. AWS often creates services that overlap companies that run on the platform. How much does someone like Twilio worry that there will be something like “AWS Telephone” being announced in 2017?
- Topic 6 - We just had an election here in the US and a certain amount of uncertainty and change is inevitable with any new administration. How does RedPoint think about this transition and how it impacts existing portfolio companies and your investment thesis for the future?
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