opsZero is reaching a decade in age. While I have grown it I have made a lot of
mistakes which I want to address systematically. Second, opsZero is going to be
standardized allowing us to grow in a consistent manner and as a single brand.
Lastly, with the geopolitical situation access to compute is going to become
more important and we will be returning to a world moving away from the Cloud
and focused on cost and efficiency.
While we will have to address the situation of opsZero, the Iran War has created
a new World Order in which the East dominates and power will wholesale move out
of the West. One of the pillars of this new world will be India. As the value of
the dollar shrinks the only outcome for a lot of Western companies is to move
their bases to India.
Failures
opsZero's focus has been scattered in terms of technology and business. We have
moved the business into areas that are just not our core competency. Here are a
list of our failures:
- Partnerships. We have focused too much on partnerships and they haven’t
yielded much. Most of the partners we have worked with have gone bankrupt or
have been dismantled. I met some interesting people but overall not useful in
terms of revenue generation. I would even state that the AWS Partnership is a
failure. These companies have gone full blown into AI putting an immense amount
of CapEx with the expectation that it will replace humans. Ironically, this is
destroying the human relationships that power these businesses in the first
place.
- Ventures. Multiple brands, multiple APIs, different services, etc. while
fun are a waste of time. It is diffusing the energy of the company on too many
things and makes it difficult to communicate to the team what we are working on.
It makes more sense to have a single brand of opsZero and add additional levers
to that brand.
- Sales. Because of the different brands it has become hard to sell as each
brand requires a different set of expertise. The gist of it is that we are a
DevOps Agency with a focus on Cloud + AI. That is the core of the company and it
is on top of that we add additional capabilities. However, my sales has been
honestly not this. It has been going all over the place. There is no core focus
that everything else is built around.
- Resale. We decided to do reselling which is a painful business that is not
worth the time. It is low margin, the APIs are annoying, the taxes confusing and
so on. The time and energy I focused on it the last two years were largely
pointless. I should have focused on other things like growing revenue without
the need of an AWS. Reselling isn’t glamorous and is monotonous.
Standardization
Because of the failures listed above we will be changing the business. For the
next stage of our growth we are going to focus on a few things and deemphasize
many others.
- One Brand. Everything will be under the opsZero brand. No ifs and buts. I
will no longer be dealing with multiple brands. It is just a pain to deal with
and we already have the opsZero brand being strong anyways so it doesn't make
sense to manage multiple brands.
- Product First. We will incrementally release new product under opsZero.
Since we are limiting the focus to just opsZero.com it will make it easier to
develop.
- Aggressive Direct Sales. We will build our own sales team that will be
aggressive in nature looking to grow the company.
- Limited Resell. We will only do resell if it makes sense, it is not the
core part of our business. We will only do resale for companies we provide DevOps
services.
- Limited Partnerships. We are going to do direct sales and focus our
energies on that. We will only do partnerships if there is value. Going direct
to customer is better than having an in between. What this means is growing the
company internally. To focus on increasing the size of the company.
Verticals
opsZero has been chasing every niche and this hasn't been fruitful. This has us
chasing enterprises, SMBs, startups, etc., etc. This has proven to be
ineffective. Each industry has a different tempo, requirements and style. Each
is different from the other and we haven't created a tempo of outreach. Chasing
after healthcare companies is difficult versus chasing after enterprise, etc.
So we will focus on just three verticals that are under served and where we can
drive a lot of value:
- Startups. I do believe that the startup ecosystem will move to India and
the USA market will dry up as capital costs increase due to the Iran War. So new
startups will largely die off, but for the time being this is still a primary
area we need to go after.
- SMB. There are a lot of SMBs in second tier cities that don't have
expertise that need DevOps. We can gain significant leverage in these areas.
- Healthcare. Focus on healthcare and the needs of healthcare customers.
- SLED. City and local governments will need support as their taxes crash when
the US economy tanks. They will need to be more efficient. SLED is complex
but it will allow us to become sticky overtime.
Solutions
We are diversifying from the Cloud to be more Hybrid Cloud. Especially, with the
Iranian attacks on the AWS UAE data centers the age of centralization is over.
As the American Empire crumbles the centralization of power into American
companies like AWS also starts to reduce. So decentralization becomes the norm
again.
- DevOps. The basis of our go to market. We do all DevOps with
OpenTofu/Terraform as the basis.
- Kubernetes. Kubernetes is our bread and butter. We will focus on making this
the core of our value. Moving Windows, Linux, etc. workloads to Kubernetes is a
primary goal.
- Identity. Setup and manage identity solutions.
- Compliance. Focusing on HIPAA, SOC2, PCI-DSS, etc.
- Datasets. Build and host core datasets for companies that want to use these
for their own specific use cases.
- DBA. Database and performance tuning to lower the cost of compute for
companies.
- AI. Low cost AI compute solutions such as running workloads on Macs, etc.
- FinOps. Resale business, but we will likely limit to just the Cloud.
One of the goals with the products side is to focus on build out using open
source.
New World Order
With the Iran War we will see a rather fast destruction of the American Empire.
Wealth and power will move to the East specifically India and China.
Incidentally, I also think this means multinationals will move East as well.
With a drop in the dollar and a lack of growth opportunities in the US a period
of stagflation will take over the country and a debt crisis will essentially cut
the dollar's value by 50%. Low growth and high inflation means hiring people in
the US becomes an economic burden resulting in wholesale migration of jobs East.
Multinationals are not inherently tied to a location. They move as needed to
different jurisdictions based on their focus on profitability. This is nothing
new and has been a constant throughout history. This disadvantages SMBs and
startups that don’t have these relationships or ability to build businesses in
India. Migration of these roles to India is the area that we will target.
However, as multinationals and other companies didn’t die when the British
Empire collapsed there is a way to get through to the other side of the
American Collapse. We need to understand that we are moving to a:
- Low Energy. As Middle East War rages the amount of energy drops by 25% for
the foreseeable future. Low energy will also affect other things such as chips
and food. Overall, energy becomes exceedingly expensive.
- Resource Poor. With energy going up the amount of resources such as
capital that is available to people and businesses will reduce. This means there
will likely be less capital intensive businesses that will become the norm.
To address this situation we must force ourselves towards two specific goals.
- Low cost. We will focus on being the low cost provider. Our goal is to
drive costs further down.
- Standardization. Standardize all parts of the business and continuously
reduce costs for ourselves and our customers.
Hindurastra
Lastly, the goal of our business is to strengthen and turn India into a
Hindurastra. As the American Empire dies, Sanatana Dharma will be a dominant
force in the world. India will have a difficult time for the next few years, but
once the 30s come along there will be a rapid acceleration of energy and focus
with India becoming one of the major forces alongside China.
When this happens Indians will notice that Hindu Dharma is the driving force of
the world. With Buddhism in China or Yoga in America. This will lead to a
recognition of India's spiritual contribution to the world and a return to our
roots. The timeframe around the 2040s is when India will become a spiritual
power again.
So our goal until then is to grow internally using Sanatana Dharma as our core.