Digital Tech Trek Digest [#Issue 2024.10]

Google advances with vector search in MySQL, leapfrogging Oracle in LLM support

As the title states, GCP is the first MySQL-managed service to offer “vector” support. Clearly the buzz-word of 2024 along with RAG, genAI and LLM is so 2023.

IMO, Oracle should just rename MySQL Heatwave to Heatwave. It would distinguish the product as unique, which is is,

4 Signs You Belong In a Startup Accelerator for SaaS Founders

YouTube

Accelerators help early stage startup and enable businesses to grow faster, get mentorship, obtain funding/equitya and are generally industry specific. In this example Tinyseed focusses on B2B.

Some tips for considering an acclerator.

1. You know your numbers and your focussing on the right ones
   – MRR
   – Churn
   -LTV or ACV – Lifetime value, Annual Contract Value
   Vanity metrics/candy metrics. Email Subscribers, Free Trial Users, Unique Visitors. Without context on how they are growing paid users

2. You experimenting, especially in marketing and sales
   – You should always be tweaking and finding the right market.

3. Your coachable
   – You are going to use the resources provided and you are vulnerable (receiving a lot of feedback, lower your defenses)
   – Your accountable to groups, e.g. masterminds
   – Be open to criticism

4. You are fast and furious
   – Your drive and need to be moving forward, never satisfied with status quo
   – you try new things
   – Nothing is perfect at the beginning, experimentation is a key

The Founder’s Guide to Stealth Startups

EverydaySpy

In this postcast “The Diary of a CEO “, Steven Bartlett interviews Andrew Bustamante. Andrew is a former covert CIA intelligence officer and US Air Force combat veteran. He is the founder of EverydaySpy, an online education platform that teaches real-world international espionage techniques that can be used in everyday life.

Messaging builds narrative. Don’t use mass marketing via social media, believe in your brand.
Marketing, present a message, crafted with an emotion, responsing showing motivation.

Competition is for Losers with Peter Thiel (How to Start a Startup 2014: 5)

This is a very old presentation that was recently re-shared with me.

In this presentation, Thiel starts off his presentation with the concept of “Avoid competition”

Creating value is a very simple formula of two things. Create X$ for the world, and you capture Y% of X where X and Y are independent variables.

A big piece of a small pie can drastically affect profit margin. All United State airline carriers combined compare with Google. Much smaller, much higher value.

He goes on to talk about effectively two types of businesses, a competitive business or a monopoly, there is no in between.

Are you talking about data the WRONG WAY?

Scott Taylor, a colleague I discovered lived in a neighboring town and whom I could meet in person after attending a virtual conference event, asks a very valid question about the importance of data management. He re-iterates the “3Vs” of effective storytelling, Vocabulary, Voice, and Vision. You can discover a lot more information in his book Telling Your Data Story: Data Storytelling for Data Management . The art of Effective Data Storytelling is something I practice daily. It is easy for a data specialist to have the data facts and visualize the data, but the art is being able to drive change by combining data, visualizations, and what I consider the most important component, narrative. I highly recommend Brent Dykes book of the same name, and when combined with Be Data Driven by Jordan Morrow you have a cradle of strategy when discussing data management to organizations that want to become a data-driven organization. It is way more difficult to implement than any plan and strategy you may read and prepare for.

About “Digital Tech Trek Digest”

Most days, I take some time early in the morning to scan my inbox newsletters, the news, LinkedIn, or other sources to read something new about professional and personal topics of interest. I turn what I read into actionable notes in a short, committed time window, summarizing what I learned, what I should learn and use, or what is of random interest. And thus my Digital Tech Trek .

Some of my regular sources include TLDR , <a href=“https://seattledataguy.substack.com/subscribe
Seattle Data Guy, Forbes Daily , ThoughWorks Podcasts , Daily Dose of Data Science and BoringCashCow . Also Scientific American Technology , Fareed’s Global Briefing , Software Design: Tidy First? by Kent Beck , Last Week in AWS , Micro Newsletter to name a few.

New Additions to my reading

SaaS Developer Community