HP launched its Flexible Computing Service in Nov 2005
Sun Grid went into beta in 2004
IBM launched "Linux Virtual Services" in 2002!
But AWS is the only one anybody remembers
1/ Thoughts on the Myth of the "First Mover"
This thread by @danrose stirred something I've been thinking about for a while - the myth of first mover advantage
To this day, most people assume Amazon Web Services was the first cloud computing service. This isn't quite true
I was at Amzn in 2000 when the internet bubble popped. Capital markets dried up & we were burning $1B/yr. Our biggest expense was datacenter -> expensive Sun servers. We spent a year ripping out Sun & replacing with HP/Linux, which formed the foundation for AWS. The backstory:
— Dan Rose (@DanRose999) January 8, 2021
HP launched its Flexible Computing Service in Nov 2005
Sun Grid went into beta in 2004
IBM launched "Linux Virtual Services" in 2002!
But AWS is the only one anybody remembers
From the WSJ in *2002*: "Linux Virtual Services allows customers to run their own software on mainframes in IBM data centers and pay rates based largely on the amount of computing power they use"
https://t.co/mnKH8dF6IL
Sounds like the cloud to me!
But Bezos didn't invent this analogy - it was widespread by the early 2000s. Here's Lou Gerstner saying the same thing in 2003
IMO there are no good explanations online. IBM LVS was quietly shut down in 2005-06. The exact date is unclear
Answering this became a personal project for me at Bernstein. I ended up cold-calling multiple former IBM product managers
IBM LVS never achieved product market fit. IBM tried selling it to existing corporate customers. They didn't want it
And IBM's own incentives were misaligned - salespeople didn't want to cannibalize existing accounts
That's how to found their first best customers: independent software devs and startups, paying by credit card
The result is 14 years later, AWS is a $50B business growing 30% a year, while IBM is a $70B business shrinking 3% a year
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I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.
I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.
In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.
So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.
Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
Ironies of Luck https://t.co/5BPWGbAxFi
— Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) March 14, 2018
"Luck is the flip side of risk. They are mirrored cousins, driven by the same thing: You are one person in a 7 billion player game, and the accidental impact of other people\u2019s actions can be more consequential than your own."
I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.
In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.
So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.
Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
