For startups, how many clouds to use might be the wrong question to ask

Should start-up startups pursue a single cloud, multi-cloud or on-premises strategy when you’re starting out?

Well, the simple answer to this question is a single cloudbut in the wake of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, redundancy has become sexy again: who wants to rely on a single vendor for all mission-critical activity?

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But it seems the main consideration isn’t redundancy — it’s actually the kind of compute load a startup has to deal with, according to a TechCrunch+ survey of several startup founders and CTOs. Notably, the founders we heard from were generally optimistic about using a single cloud for young startups, with some important caveats: if a young tech company is just hosting software, then, to start with, a a single cloud will suffice, but if the business is running on AI-related tasks like training models, it may require more.

Satyen Sangani, co-founder and CEO of Alation, described when it might make sense to use something other than the cloud:

If your business needs a huge amount of infrastructure early on (say, you’re training the next big language model), it might make sense to purchase hardware instead. In general, the beginnings of companies are filled with experimentation, and the flexibility that clouds offer is a huge advantage in this era.

A good question at this point is what fraction of “AI-first” startups train their own models instead of remixing or retooling the UI layer of existing LLMs, for example. We believe this is not too high.

Anyway, after analyzing the answers to our first question, the next time we ask a related question, we’ll change our prompt to: When should a startup move to a multicloud setup?

For now, read on for answers to our question: Should young start-ups focus on multicloud or on-premises when starting out?

We spoke with:

• Tobi Knaup, Founding CEO, D2iQ
• Mang-Git Ng, Founder and CEO, Anvil
• Joe Mainwaring, Director of Infrastructure, WorkTango
• Vikas Bhatia, Co-Founder, CEO and Chief Risk Officer, JustProtect
• Satyen Sangani, Co-Founder and CEO, Alation
• Steve Mullaney, President and CEO, Aviatrix
• Ed Thompson, Technical Director, Matillion
• Adrian Estala, Vice President, Field CDO, Starburst
• Shane Buckley, President and CEO, Gigamon

Tobi Knaup, Founder and CEO, D2iQ: As always, it depends. But most software startups should start on a single cloud and be careful not to create too much lock-in using proprietary services so you can optimize and migrate more easily later.

If your business needs a huge amount of infrastructure early on (say, you’re training the next big language model), it might make sense to purchase hardware instead. In general, the beginnings of companies are filled with experimentation, and the flexibility that clouds offer is a huge advantage in this era.