2008 AWS Start-Up Tour

Update! San Francisco and Silicon Valley had the dates reversed. Corrected calendar listed below.

We’re really excited to announce our AWS Start-Up Tour again in 2008, and this year we’re adding cities to include more hotbeds of innovation. The event is focused on the interests and needs of the startup community, so if you are an entrepreneur or startup leader this is an opportunity to hear about Amazon Web Services—and hear about the real-world experiences of others who already innovate on the AWS platform.

The tour schedule is as follows, with more details at www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=332775011. Click Here to RSVP, and we suggest an early RSVP to avoid disappointment caused by limited seating. By the way, there is no admission cost for the event.

• San Francisco, CA, September 3
• Silicon Valley, September 4
• Los Angeles, CA, September 9
• Salt Lake City, UT, September 10
• Austin, TX, September 11
• Toronto, Ontario, September 16
• New York, NY, September 18
• Boston/Cambridge, MA,  September 22
• London, UK, November 4
• Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 6
• Seattle, November 20

Last year’s tour featured a number of startups, such as AideRSS, Geezeo, Renkoo, SmugMug, Slideshare, Animoto, and Ooyala—just to mention a few. You can see their presentations here. Note that “here” is Slideshare’s site, which goes to prove that not only do startups innovate on AWS; they deliver compelling utility to others. These companies are the centerpiece of each event—as you can see in their presentations, each company has a unique and creative idea. And every one of them taught me something about implementing Amazon Web Services in the real world.

One of the major value propositions of Amazon Web Services is the utility pricing plan. That is, you only pay for what you use, and the cost is very low. Sometimes it feels like I am just saying that: not because there is any doubt that it’s true; rather because it’s difficult to produce metrics to back up assertions that “low cost utility pricing” is truly a game changer.

Then it hit me… Looking at the list of Start-Up Project presentations on Slideshare’s site, I realized that not a single one of these companies is “off the air”; that is, they all are still in business. In the Startup world that is nothing short of amazing—especially in this economy. (Some of the decks on Slideshare's site are not from last year’s startup events; however even those other companies appear to be alive and well.) Amazon can’t take all the credit for this track record; however it does seem to be a solid data point that validates the value proposition.

Hope to see you at one of these events!

Mike

Comments

[Colin Percival]

What happened to the idea of doing one of these in Second Life for the benefit of those of us who don't live in one of the lucky cities? (For that matter, what happened to the once-weekly AWS discussions in Second Life?) I guess I'll have to drive from Vancouver down to Seattle in November...

[James Urquhart]

Jeff,

I love the last two paragraphs of this post. They fit beautifully into my own observations about the difference between the cost of sales for "pure infrastructure" services, such as Amazon, versus more traditional enterprise sales plays, such as SaaS ERP. Amazon can do what they do because the cost of sales is intensely low. (Well, your travel budget not withstanding... :-) )

http://blog.jamesurquhart.com/2008/08/are-we-overselling-cloud-to-ourselves.html

James Urquhart
The Wisdom of Clouds

[John Nousis]

I wish you could come to Athens, Greece but anyway I will try to be in London on Nov 4:)

[Sylvain Carle]

Any way to get you guys to squeeze a date in Montreal before or after Toronto? We have strong interest in the local community for AWS and we have regular events we could combine with your presence in town, I'm thinking specifically about Montreal on Rails as a great potential candidate event to combine with in September. We (Praized) are using AWS a lot (esp. EC2) and would love to present the stack we are using for our distributed platform (API and Facebook backend). I know Defensio.com another local company uses AWS a lot, I could gather a list of local startups using AWS in the next few weeks if you are interested, please contact my by email if it's something you can do. Thanks!

[Alex]

What about stopping in Raleigh, NC or somewhere else in the SouthEast? There are a lot of folks in the area that would be interested in a AWS presentation (including myself).

[Prashant]

Any idea on how the startups are selected here for year 2008?

If we want to enter our startup (which uses EC2 and S3) to be featured then what would be the process for us to follow?