Build the scary stuff | Bryan Cantrill (Oxide)

Jun 11, 2024

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From being a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems to co-founding Oxide Computer Company to build a new kind of server, Bryan joins the show to chat about being told that he’s on a suicide mission when starting Oxide, the moment he felt “I’m actually living HBO Silicon Valley”, and lessons from Sun. And much more.

Chapters:

(00:02:24) The Origin of Bryan's Nom-de-Guerre: "Colonel of Data Corruption" (00:04:02) What Debugging Performance Issues at Twitter in the Early Days Revealed About Silicon Valley (00:13:37) Value of Formal Education and the Experience That Everyone Should Have (00:16:02) Balancing Following One's Passion vs. Having Stability (00:21:14) What Shaped Bryan's Sense of Integrity (00:25:39) The Moments When Values Are Instilled (00:30:25) The Dark Side of Tech (00:35:12) "Economic Opportunities Attract Economic Opportunists" (00:40:35) The Origins of Oxide Computers (00:50:20) Building the A-Team (00:52:18) "Compaq Was the Most Successful Startup" (00:55:51) The Venture Capitalist's Dilemma (01:03:04) Being Told "You're on a Suicide Mission" (01:07:12) The Lifestyle of the "Lifestyle Business" (01:09:30) The Harsh Reality of Raising Venture Capital (01:13:12) The Challenges of Building Hardware (01:16:36) Why You Should Think About Not Only Gross Margin but Net Margin (01:19:14) Hardware and Software Co-Design (01:22:06) The Frustrations of Infrastructure Deployment (01:26:46) Finding the Right VCs (01:28:16) "Oh My God, I'm Actually Living HBO Silicon Valley" (01:33:12) Oxide's Principles and Lessons from Sun Microsystems (01:39:51) Sun's Unspoken Values (01:45:03) Sun's Legacy of Empowering Employees (01:48:53) Sun's Missed Opportunities (01:53:04) The Reason Why Sun Survived the Dot-Com Crash (01:56:21) "God Bless the Early Adopters" (01:57:39) A Tweet from Shopify's CEO (02:01:24) The Hard Thing About Hard Things (02:12:55) The Hardest Moment in Oxide's History

Show Notes:

- Oxide’s principles: https://oxide.computer/principles

- Requests for Discussion (RFDs): https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/

- Toby’s tweet: https://x.com/tobi/status/1793798092212367669

- Bryan on twitter: https://x.com/bcantrill

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Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en