In follow-up to my post earlier this week on problems with Database-as-a-Service platforms, an email from

Adam:

I was just reflecting on some of our technology-stack choices, and I had an interesting thought that may be relevant to you.

We’ve recently tried out (DaaS service for App Developers).  Our experience was interesting.  At first, it was great to dive into product development with higher velocity (abstracting the backend saved us some time to get to a very basic prototype.)

However, we found that were constrained within a couple weeks, and that it we wouldn’t be able to expand our feature set without ‘rigging our own backend for the stuff the service couldn’t do.’  The problem with that, of course, is that it’s way more complicated to work with and keep two backends synchronized.  As a result, we had to write-out the service, and use our own backend for everything .

As I think about the future of DaaS / PaaS, that’s probably the biggest challenge for the space as a whole.  Engineers and technical decision makers as a segment hate to be constrained.  And there are very real challenges with abstracting-and-super-simplifying parts of the stack that will almost certainly create limitations in app functionality.  Once people have to circumvent the DAAS, they’ll likely just stop using it.

I guess what I’m saying is: the tech landscape is growing too fast to try to abstract away the backend pieces wholesale.  You’ll only be able to nail part of it effectively.  You’d need a LARGE army of engineers to make your service robust enough to handle all the crazy things people want to do. But if you don’t handle everything, people will have to workaround you once they scale.  And once they do that, it’s hard to stay relevant.

In short: I’m bearish.

From Forbes – in the future our concern isn’t Big Brother, but rather Little Brother enabled by powerful always connected computers in our hands:

As we enter an age in which facial recognition technology is improving, interest in hyperlocal/micro-celebrity news is exploding, and everyone is a celebrity thanks to their online personas and broadcasting platforms, is it possible that one day a cheater won’t have to be an international star to be publicly (or privately) outed by a complete stranger?

Indulge me. Look at these trends:

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I spent the afternoon playing with some of the Apps on top of the Spotify platform.

Some were pretty neat (like Moodagent, which lets you create Playlists via emotion) but I didn’t find myself discovering as much music as I thought I would.

The problem is that as a Spotify App, you live in Spotify’s sandbox – bound by the music licensed to the Spotify platform – which means up and coming artists, new remixes, and other strange outlier tracks are out of bounds.

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Via Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries:

When beginning to work on a new show, Rock picks venues where he can experiment with new material in very rough fashion. In gearing up for his latest global tour, he made between forty and fifty appearances at a small comedy club, called Stress Factory, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, not far from where he lives. In front of audiences of, say, fifty people, he will show up unannounced, carrying a yellow legal note pad with ideas scribbled on it…

In sets that run around forty-five minutes, most of the jokes fall flat. His early performances can be painful to watch. Jokes will ramble, he’ll lose his train of thought and need to refer to his notes, and some audience members sit with their arms folded, noticeably unimpressed. The audience will laugh about his flops— laughing at him, not with him. Often Rock will pause and say, “This needs to be fleshed out more if it’s gonna make it,” before scribbling some notes. He may think he has come up with the best joke ever, but if it keeps missing with audiences, that becomes his reality. Other times, a joke he thought would be a dud will bring the house down…

For a full routine, Rock tries hundreds (if not thousands) of preliminary ideas, out of which only a handful will make the final cut… By the time Rock reaches a big show— say an HBO special or an appearance on David Letterman— his jokes, opening, transitions, and closing have all been tested and retested rigorously. Developing an hour-long act takes even top comedians from six months to a year. If comedians are serious about success, they get on stage every night they can, especially when developing new material. They typically do so at least five nights per week, sometimes up to seven, and sweat over every element and word. And the cycle repeats, day in, day out.

Last week, True Ventures and One hosted a group of 225+ interns from across the Valley for an evening of food, drinks, and discussion in our Mission Street San Francisco office.

This was the first year we’ve held the event and we had an amazing time.  It was a great opportunity to meet the next generation of Valley Founders and Engineers as well as learn more about what’s going on in education in the rest of the country.

In addition to great conversation, the group had the opportunity to listen to Naval Ravikant and Mike Abbott discuss lessons from their careers and answer questions about startups and the Valley.  Naval and Mike killed it and offered some amazing insight into the Valley, startups, and how to find happiness in life.

On a personal level, this event was a great reminder of how magical the Valley really is.  My first experience in the Bay Area was an internship with a small 3 person startup in Menlo Park and I still remember how special everyday was and how different this place was.  Spending time with a group of interns who just moved here was a great reminder of those memories.