Since I work on Infra devtools, I made notes on this week's @a16zLIVE infra discussion with @martin_casado, @davidu and @bhorowitz: https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/devtools/a16z-on-infra-companies

Most take in the hour was Martin noting that Open Source is becoming irrelevant - it's mostly marketing:

Request for Startup:

A @Zuora for Usage-based, not Subscription-based, billing.

When business models shift, infra tools must shift accordingly. We had to deal with this exact problem at @netlify. If you're building this, DM me, I have more thoughts for you.

One of my big takeaways from @BessemerVP's #StateOfTheCloud was similar - pricing around a clear usage-based value metric get amazing net dollar retention.

https://www.bvp.com/atlas/state-of-the-cloud-2021#Usage-based-pricing

A relatable app example is Slack - they only charge for active users and call it "Fair Billing"

this response from @grahamneray puts the quandary in historical context - are we just cosplaying open source when really we should just be going for the full cloud offering with a nice free tier?

@asynchio still looking forward for you having that chat with Martin. Friday? https://twitter.com/grahamneray/status/1378414401896779789

Martin and Peter held a followup discussion here with @schrockn, @littleidea and Christian Kleinerman covering much of the points already made in the replies to this thread. SaaS is more than code, most headcount is on proprietary software. https://a16z-live.simplecast.com/episodes/the-future-of-open-source-in-the-era-of-saas-on-a16z-infra-hPouSmLQ