In addition to this, we have another ~six database servers showing up between now and this summer, and then we'll be set. That means we're adding almost 4,000 vCPUs to our on-premise fleet! And a ridiculous 7,680 GB of RAM! And 384TB of Gen 4 NVMe storage! Serious horsepower and headroom for years to come. It's a staggering amount of computing power in a shockingly small footprint.Įach of these R7625s contain two AMD EPYC 9454 CPUs running at 2.75GHz with 48 cores / 96 threads. In total, we received twenty R7625 Dell servers that'll power the bulk of our cloud exit. The same day that an identical set arrived in Ashburn, Virginia for our second data center. These are the two pallets that showed up in our Chicago data center recently. Now the interest is back, because hardware is fun again, so let me share my excitement with you! I vaguely remember doing a tour of our Chicago data center over a decade ago, but somewhere along the line, I just lost interest in the iron itself. The hardware we need for our cloud exit has arrived It's been a long time since I last saw a physical piece of hardware used to run our services at 37signals. If you are unwilling to disrupt your business, there will always be someone willing to do it for you. There’s certainly an inspiring one: It’s possible for a handful of people, with no prior experience in the video business, to take down a 6 billion dollar category-leading company.īut I think the more important lesson-one that Blockbuster learned too late-is simply this: And that company with 9000 stores? Now it’s got just one. We passed Blockbuster in revenue.Īnd today, the company that Blockbuster could have purchased in 2000 for $50 million, has a market cap exceeding $150 billion. Or, as my father used to tell me, “sometimes, the only way out is through.” We knew there was no easy way out. Well, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. After that, the meeting went downhill fast. Their words were “we’ll consider it,” but we could tell they were fighting to suppress laughter. so let’s go with that! Reed leaned forward confidently and told them: “Fifty Million Dollars.” We figured we were $50 million in the hole. Until they asked the most important question of all: “How much?” And everyone would live happily ever after.Īnd it was going great. We would jointly develop a blended model. Which is why, just a few weeks later, you’d have found me, Reed, and our CFO Barry McCarthy sitting at a giant conference table on the 37th floor of the Blockbuster headquarters in Dallas, getting ready to pitch Blockbuster. The obvious strategic alternative for us was Blockbuster. It’s called “pursue strategic alternatives”-code for “sell, and sell fast.” Luckily, there is a Silicon Valley play book for this. We’d spent more than $50 million getting to this point, and now it looked like our success was going to bankrupt us. And with customers flooding in, cash was flying out. com at the end of our name had been a badge of honor now it was three scarlet letters. Over a few short months, the internet bubble finally popped. But it was the height of the internet boom. Running a subscription business takes a lot of cash, since you pay acquisition costs up front while the revenue comes in over time. Customers were pouring in and the company was growing like crazy. Our no-due-dates, no-late-fees subscription model was a hit. We’d been struggling since 1998 to find a way to make it work, and by the summer of 2000, we were finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Reed Hastings and I, on the other hand, were just two Silicon Valley geeks with a DVD-rental-by-mail idea. In 2000, Blockbuster was the movie rental king with 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees.
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