Raw Day Inside a $16.5M Startup Building Enterprise Infrastructure

0:01 AI's kind of been changing so many things and there's so much going on and because the industry is changing so quickly, there's this tension. >> Enterprise adoption of AI is accelerating faster than at any point in history. But the more critical the technology becomes, the more privacy and security stand in the way. >> Big enterprises want to adopt more technology, but they're also more afraid of it than ever. >> Banks, healthcare companies, and governments can't run their most sensitive data through infrastructure they don't control.

0:31 >> I think that the enterprise play is a major way we're different. We're in four different back opportunities. >> When you sell to enterprise, it isn't more about your stars, it's more about trust. >> It's one of the biggest bottlenecks in enterprise tech, and the startup I'm visiting today has built its entire business inside that tension. >> How do you operate something in somebody's environment that you don't have any access to? And like, it can't break. Like, the bar just to get the first customer in production is so high.

0:57 >> Today, I'm going behind the scenes with Neuvon, an open-source platform that lets software companies deploy their product directly inside their customers' own cloud. They've raised 16.5 million from backers like Mantis VC, Uncorked Capital, and Redpoint Ventures. And their platform is already powering dozens of AI and data infrastructure companies. >> I'm learning a lot being here, just literally being a fly on the wall in a room like that. The way he talks in that stand-up, he knows every single aspect of every minor little thing that's going on.

1:30 >> Right now, deployment is the bottleneck standing between the world's largest enterprises and the AI they're so desperate to adopt. So, the real question I want to understand is how a solo founder and a small, tight-knit team solve a problem this big, one that most of the industry has avoided for years. >> Right. >> We're going behind the scenes with John Morhouse and the team from New On in order to understand what their startup does, you first need to understand the concept of BYOC, which is bring your own cloud. We are in like the place where all of the big funds are in Silicon Valley. We're literally in South Park, which like Kleiner Perkins is just over there. I think A16Z is not far. It's like this little park here, as you can see, of just VC.

2:25 >> Good to do it. >> >> What's up, man? >> Yo, what's up? How are you? Good to see you. So, this giant TV actually we have kind of running all day with Zoom. People kind of from the company drop in and we like kind of recreate this, you know. >> I try to spend all my day like I just kind of dial in Zoom from Austin and kind of hang out with the group. >> >> That's Oh.

2:49 There we go. That's so good. What's this? >> so, you can like stand. >> Oh, is this like a bit of fun? It's like >> Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this is part of our culture. We are like super into the keyboards here. >> Woah. Oh, the keyboard guys are going to love this. >> Yeah, so this one actually like modified and it's pretty wild. >> Oh my god. >> >> Honestly, it's kind of a crazy hiring thing, too. Like >> Yeah?

3:16 >> Cuz you just kind of filter for people who care about that stuff. I don't know. It's like some of the best engineers I know, they're spending so much time on their just like tooling and how they work and operate. So, >> Yeah. I can just picture it in the in the interviews right now. The first question is like, "What keyboard do you have? Hold it up right now." >> >> Our office finally got tagged. We've been like waiting for this to happen for like >> No.

3:36 >> But yeah, I moved here from living internationally in 2024 and we kind of like started to build a hybrid kind of hub here. AI has kind of been changing so many things and like there's so much going on and because the industry is changing so quickly, there's just like tension where big enterprises want to adopt more technology, but they're also more afraid of it than ever or they're more like security conscious than ever, which is exactly where we fit in because we help vendors deploy into the customer account. The customer can own the data, own the environment, have that sort of security and peace of mind. I think the classic example is like if you think about Stripe. Stripe has hundreds and thousands of different SaaS products that they probably want to buy.

4:12 >> Yeah. >> But they're highly regulated, they have a ton of security requirements, they're working in so many countries. How do they sort of adopt all those pieces of those technologies like data sets and like AI systems? They really can't. The only thing they can really do is be like, well, we want to run it on prem, we want to deploy it ourselves. We can't trust the SaaS, but that's really hard. And so I see it as almost this like enabler because you're not like spending all this time like going through like reviews and requirements and like all these things to be like, is this random startup SaaS going to work for us? Like, no, just like run it in my environment, you're hands-off, give me the software, and then go iterate on features. That's what I want. Also, just to pause real quick.

4:50 >> Yeah. We're in VC heaven right now, right? Are these all VCs through here? >> A lot of VCs. There's also a ton of amazing startups, too. Actually, this Blue Bottle is pretty famous. So, if you walk by there, you'll see founders of like seen founders like with their like revenue numbers taped to the laptops and things. >> saying, you walk into Blue Bottle with no fundraising and then you walk out with like $2 million and that's the whole >> Yeah, something like that. Something like that.

5:13 >> >> I know we have been apprehensive about actually building an AMI for this, but that would really, really trim down the startup time. If we had all of our ducks in a row. >> I mean, I get that, but how are we going to convince like the end customer to run an AMI from us? For standard sure, like I get that. If you're selling into JP Morgan or something, like hell knows JP Morgan going to be fine running even if it's open source image that they didn't build and harden themselves. So, they're going to have to go recreate it themselves.

5:51 >> Yeah, for sure. For sure. I do think the other side of it is like for the runner images, it would be nice if they were synced into the customer account as well, because then that means like >> all the runners can actually pin whatever image tag that they want locally and it would be completely decoupled. So, even if like we did push a bad alias to new on cloud, we'd have two layers of separation, right?

6:09 >> it was a city scroll up the next step, the first one. It's something that we that we spoke of yesterday. About the token you know, duration. >> So, between app branches and the web hook tooling, do we even know if customers are going to need to to have like long-lived tokens outside of the CLI? >> Well, I think there was some automation like people might have some automation that are on the CLI stuff on they would want to have longer tokens on there. So, this >> That's actually the use case.

6:34 >> Well, and also if you're just doing you know, CLI locally, just have to log in every 6 hours or 9 hours, seems to be kind of a pain. >> Yeah, we can definitely extend the token lifetime for the CLI. >> I think we use it with no problem. >> Yeah, let's make it 90 days, I would say. >> And you got to default, but also let people change it. That's kind of what I'm saying. If you want to make one for a week, 2 weeks, you know, 3 months, 6 months.

6:56 >> That's fair. >> All right, they're in their morning standup right now. I've just stepped out for a little bit. Two things. First of all, they're speaking a completely different language to something that I understand. I'm learning a lot being here, just literally being a fly on the wall in a room like that. Second thing is, I'm noticing this trend with solo founders. John is the solo founder of new on and you have to wear so many hats being a solo founder. And you can just tell that this has consumed his whole life. The way he talks in that standup, he knows every single aspect of every minor little thing that's going on. You just can infer that he's spending weekends on this, he's spending nights on this. And you have to have that as a solo founder. You don't have another co-founder to lean on for stuff, especially in the early stage, all the way leading up to like series C plus.

7:42 You know, seeing it first hand is pretty crazy. >> yes, I'm Mark Milligan. been here for almost a year and I run sales and marketing. I'm like the pretty much the only non-technical person even though I am very technical. I think that the enterprise play is a major way we're different. If you're an enterprise, we install Nuance with our product. So, we have Nuance installing Nuance into their cloud and then they chop off access from us. I think we are the only vendor who really does that where you can self-host Nuance. And then we open-sourced also as a big driver that I pushed cuz I came from Coda and that's kind of our whole thing is we raised our series B cuz we had a a project on GitHub that went from zero to like 20,000 stars in less than 30 days and there's a there's a huge effect when you get open source going. We're in four different bank opportunities. All of them are are banks that I have sold to at Coda. So, I actually know the senior people. So, they trust you enough to take the meeting. That's kind of a given if they thought you were good. But when you sell to enterprise, it isn't more about your stars. It's more about trust that they can physically look at our code base and have their teams and IT go, "Okay, this is actually done properly. This is safe and secure."

8:52 Good to see you. >> Good to see you. How's it going? >> Good, man. How are you? You looking fresh. >> Living the dream, dude. I mean, you're shooting. I I couldn't show up at the slot. >> Say hi to YouTube, Gaurav. What's up? >> Hey YouTube, how's it going? >> Do you want to introduce yourself real quick to >> Hey, I'm I'm Gaurav. I'm a lucky investor in Nuance. I'm on a fund called Mantis VC started by the Chain Smokers.

9:11 We're an early stage AI and enterprise software focused fund based in LA and San Francisco. >> Nice. >> Nice to meet y'all. >> And you're heading out to LA in like an hour. >> I am leaving in about an hour. >> Will you be there? >> It's wild. No. >> >> For everybody who's not here or doesn't know Gaurav, Gaurav works with Mantis and literally the most clutch investor for us. Like I'll like message you at any time and you're like so high energy, always helping us with the anything.

9:37 >> I have I have got to say known you for just a little while now and every single person I talk about Gorav is is the whole saying is Gorav knows all and Gorav Gorav knows everyone. That's what I've heard anyway. >> You didn't go out there and do things. That's >> >> So we have a bug on our doc site. >> Go to our doc site. >> It's broken. >> I'll tell you about that. >> Yes.

10:07 >> Docs is down? >> Like if I click on a link it just doesn't load. >> Oh, no. >> If I refresh it >> All right, well we should fix this. >> it'll come back, but if I just click on a link it's just >> So that's for all links? >> Yep. >> Do we have a update? >> Not that I know of. >> Is there an outage? >> Could be an outage. Failures to load data across multiple services on the resell dashboard API and CLI.

10:32 >> So does the actual home page come up? Up >> It does. And if you go if you like load a page directly, it works, but the links don't work. >> Right. I'm just saying it's probably not worth putting something on our doc site that it's down. It'll probably be back in the next hour. >> Yeah. >> Are they having an outage or something or we >> I think it's I think it's Vercel. Vercel has a an outage right now.

10:49 >> Understood. Okay. >> Oh. Oh. Oh. Wait. Okay. It's fine now. It's working again. >> That was transient. >> Yeah. It was transient. >> >> Everything is fine. >> So we stepped outside a bit just for a little quick stroll because I realized there's like three rooms in there and that's that's the that's the the place. >> a big Yeah, it's not a big place. >> All right, but it's straight to the point. It's >> It's very direct.

11:14 >> You walk in and there's desks and we sit at them and we do things. >> >> That's the job. >> And that's how it should be. >> I'm Jordan. >> Jordan Acosta head of products. A new one. I joined about three years ago when the company pre-series A when it was much smaller. The first BYOC install, we had to be very involved in the process. But, you know, again, it was the very first one we did. We kind of knew there was going to be issues.

11:39 They knew that they were the first people to try to do this. So, like it was a very >> like slack given like kind of like patience. And they're in return for that, of course, they got a lot of feedback on how the product should work. So, that was that was definitely a tough experience. >> And what did you do What did you do to overcome that at the time? >> The hardest part is when you're you're you're dealing with unknown unknowns, right? You don't really necessarily know what's still potentially broken. You're still learning operationally how something functions. Some But, sometimes you do have to just kind of face tank those. Like you just nose to the grindstone and do it. The other side of the coin would be you know, the first renewal.

12:15 >> You know, I don't want to interrupt it, but >> Oh, legend, dude. >> Big thanks for the YouTube the content for college students as well. I'm here going to be at one of the YC startups. But, thank you for the >> Dude, do you want to show yourself out? What do you What's your name? What are you building? >> My name is Raha. I'm a freshman. I I'm a computer science student. I don't want to interrupt it more.

12:35 >> Dude, wake him up. Lovely to meet you. >> Thank you, sir. >> Epic, bro. Have a good one. Love that. >> >> Yeah, dude. That's so sick. That's so sick. How cool. Okay, so I don't interrupt here. So, so we're in an important moment here. So, >> Oh, right. >> You know, they they signed, you know, a contract for a year. And after a year, they renewed. And they're like, "Oh, okay." That's Like that was a big thing, right? Like you have them on a contract for a year, that's one thing. They then come back and choose to renew. Now that Now that they've built up the operational experience to the point where like they could hypothetically build their own version of this if they really wanted to. They could hire like a bunch of engineers and do it. But, they still come back and say, "No, that we're going to renew. You have the operational experience. You have the domain experience.

13:19 you've proven that you can keep this thing going. And we feel like we, you know, we can trust you. We can rely on you to do this." Like that's To me, me was kind of the other side of it. It's like okay, that's the positive side, right? Like now that you've like ground through all the hard parts. >> Totally. Most defining moment was probably when we landed our first big design partner. The thing about that design partner, when I first was starting this company, they were the company I looked up to and I I literally had a fake video that was like hey, here's what would happen if they used us. And 3 years later they signed as a design partner for us and changed the trajectory of the company.

14:00 The hard times were the best times actually in a lot of ways. Like you might not think that like you're losing a customer or the product is not working, maybe fundraising is hard. That's when you sort of like build this muscle and this all the decisions that make you successful I think happen. We have the Celsius fridge here. So Steven and I will text each other about how many Celsius we had in that day. We don't recommend over three in a 24 period.

14:23 >> that might be too much. Two is actually the worst. >> Three is like you're going to have problems. >> If it's hard embrace it and find find love in that. That's the real magic of the startups and like you're going to just be in these hard times with a lot of people who you you know it becomes more than just building a product and working. I mean you know it's you become close and I think it's important don't just thrive on the good times.

14:43 >> Eat wicked. Yeah.