In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob sits down with Saaya Pal, Partner at Jump Capital, exploring the evolving landscape of AI investments and enterprise adoption. As an early-stage investor focusing on FinTech and enterprise software, Saaya shares how enterprises are navigating AI implementation, with many organizations moving from initial hesitation to strategic adoption, particularly for internal use cases. The conversation delves into crucial infrastructure challenges, including data center constraints, multi-cloud environments, and the increasing importance of cost optimization.

You can find Rob Pankow (CEO & Co-founder of simplyblock and host of Cloud Frontier) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpankow

Cloud Frontier is brought to you by simplyblock. Simplyblock is an NVMe-first Kubernetes storage platform for IO-intensive workloads, including databases. Low latency, high IOPS, high throughput storage for the most demanding applications. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing cloud or data center infrastructure.

📋 Show notes:

Saaya's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saaya-pal-12ba82a3/

Saaya's Twitter/X: https://x.com/saayanath

JumpCapital's website: https://jumpcap.com/

Follow us on:

🐦 simplyblock Twitter/X: https://x.com/simplyblock_io

👨‍💻 simplyblock LinkedIn: / https://www.linkedin.com/company/simplyblock-io/

📹 simplyblock Youtube: / https://www.youtube.com/@simplyblock

Know more about us:

Key features of simplyblock:

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob Pankow sits down with Ruslan Halilov, co-founder of BlueDot, to discuss the company's evolution from a recruitment agency to an innovative AI meeting assistant. The conversation explores BlueDot's journey in finding product-market fit, their approach to fundraising, and insights into effective go-to-market strategies. This episode offers valuable lessons for founders navigating the B2B SaaS landscape.

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, we chat with Burak Karakan, co-founder of Bruin. Burak shares his journey from working at HelloFresh to launching Bruin, a platform that unifies data ingestion, transformation, quality, and governance. He explains how they identified an opportunity in the chaos of data infrastructure, leading to Bruin's creation. Burak also discusses his experience transitioning from corporate comfort to startup challenges, fundraising lessons, and the importance of selecting the right investors. We also touch on the exciting developments in open-source data storage formats, which are enabling greater data freedom.

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob and Burak discuss:

Interested to learn more about the cloud economy? Head to Spotify for more episodes, read our newsletter on our Website, and follow us on LinkedIn. You can also check out the detailed show notes on our YouTube channel.

You can find our host Rob Pankow on LinkedIn at /robertpankow and Burak Karakan on LinkedIn at /burakkarakan. Visit Bruin's website to know more: https://getbruin.com/.

About Simplyblock:

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3, making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with Simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now
🏪 Simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

In this episode of Cloud Frontier podcast, our host Rob Pankow sits down with Elias Schneider, the founder of Codesphere. Elias shares his journey from working at Google and SAP to launching Codesphere, a platform designed to streamline the entire development lifecycle in the cloud. Elias explains how the company initially struggled to find product-market fit, eventually realizing that their solution was most valuable to large enterprises, particularly those managing complex development processes and diverse infrastructure environments. We also discuss the evolving landscape of cloud infrastructure, the growing interest in hybrid and on-prem solutions, and Elias’s thoughts on the future of cloud, including new chip architectures like RISC-V.

Interested to learn more about the cloud economy? Head to Spotify for more episodes, read our newsletter on our Website, and follow us on LinkedIn. You can also check out the detailed show notes on our YouTube channel.

You can our host Robert Pankow on LinkedIn at /robertpankow and Elias Schneider on LinkedIn at /elias-dev. Visit Codesphere's website to know more: https://codesphere.com/

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3 making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with Simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now

🏪 Simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, our host Rob Pankow is joined by Adam Szymański, CTO and co-founder of Oxla, a fast and efficient distributed database. Adam shares his journey from Google to founding Oxla and how it's helping IoT and cybersecurity companies handle massive data more quickly and cost-effectively. He also touches on the challenges of competing with giants like Snowflake and Databricks, and how Oxla is addressing enterprise needs

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob and Adam discuss:

Interested to learn more about the cloud economy? Head to Spotify for more episodes, read our newsletter on our ⁠Website⁠, and follow us on ⁠Linkedin⁠. You can also check out the detailed show notes on our Youtube channel.

You can our host Rob Pankow on Linkedin at /robertpankow and Adam Szymański on LinkedIn at /adam-szymański. Vist Oxla's website to know more: https://www.oxla.com/

About simplyblock:

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3 making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now
🏪 simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

Marc Austin is the CEO and co-founder of Hedgehog. Hedgehog is an open-source software company dedicated to giving Cloud Native application owners the ability to deploy workloads on edge-compute and distributed cloud infrastructure.

Check out Hedgehog at: http://hedgehog.cloud and hit "download" button to try the product.

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob and Marc discuss:

Interested to learn more about the cloud economy? Head to Spotify for more episodes, read our newsletter on our ⁠Website⁠, and follow us on ⁠Linkedin⁠. You can also check out the detailed show notes on Youtube (needs to be linked once you upload)

You can find Robert Pankow on Linkedin at /robertpankow and Marc Austin on X at @marcraustin and Linkedin: /austinmarc.

About simplyblock:

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3 making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now
🏪 simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

Mahmoud Mabrouk is the cofounder and CEO of Agenta.ai, a company building an open-source LLM Development Platform to make LLMs more reliable.

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob and Mahmoud discuss:

Interested to learn more about the cloud economy? Head to Spotify for more episodes, read our newsletter on our Website, and follow us on LinkedIn. You can also check out the detailed show notes on YouTube.

You can find Robert Pankow on LinkedIn at /in/robertpankow and Mahmoud Mabrouk on X at @mmabrouk and LinkedIn at /mmabrouk2.

About Simplyblock:

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3, making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with Simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now

🏪 Simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/se...

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, host Rob Pankow, CEO of Simplyblock, is joined by Mihai Mărcuță from NodeShift, a company building decentralized cloud platforms that helps connect enterprises with spare data center capacity, offering GPUs, storage, and compute.

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob and Mihai discuss:

Interested to learn more about the cloud economy? Head to Spotify for more episodes, read our newsletter on our Website, and follow us on LinkedIn. You can also check out the detailed show notes on YouTube.

You can find Robert Pankow on LinkedIn at /robertpankow and Mihai Mărcuță on X at @mihaimarcuta and on LinkedIn at /mihaimarcuta.

About Simplyblock:

👉 Get started with Simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now

🏪 Simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm

In this first episode of Cloud Frontier, host Rob Pankow, CEO of simplyblock, is joined by Steven Renwick from Tilores, a company developing a tool to unify scattered customer data in real-time.

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob and Mahmoud discuss: 

Interested to learn more about the cloud economy? Head to ⁠Spotify⁠ for more episodes, read our newsletter on our ⁠Website⁠, and follow us on ⁠Linkedin⁠. You can also check out the detailed show notes on ⁠Youtube⁠.

You can find Robert Pankow on Linkedin at /robertpankow and Mahmoud Mabrouk on X at @Major_Grooves and Linkedin: /stevenrenwick.

About simplyblock:

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3 making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now

🏪 simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm