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Valuable Entrepreneurial Tips

Each issue of our newsletter is packed with tips and advice specifically tailored for entrepreneurs. These insights come from industry experts, successful startup founders, and our own team. Whether it’s advice on scaling your business, improving your cloud infrastructure, or navigating the complexities of funding, our newsletter provides you with the knowledge you need to make informed decisions.

Exclusive Content and Resources

Subscribers to our newsletter gain access to exclusive content and resources not available elsewhere. This includes e-books, whitepapers, guides, and case studies that provide deeper insights into various aspects of running a startup. These resources are designed to equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary to overcome challenges and achieve success.

Updates on OVHcloud’s Latest News

Keeping up with the latest developments at OVHcloud is essential for our Startup Program members. Our newsletter provides you with timely updates on new products, services, and features that can benefit your startup. You’ll also receive information on special offers and exclusive deals available only to our community.

Exploration of Relevant Tech Events

Staying connected with the tech community is crucial for any startup. Our newsletter includes a comprehensive list of upcoming tech events, conferences, and webinars that you won’t want to miss. These events are excellent opportunities for networking, learning, and showcasing your startup. By subscribing, you’ll always be in the loop about where and when these important events are happening.

The OVHcloud Startup Program Newsletter is more than just an email; it’s a valuable resource that can help propel your startup to new heights. By subscribing, you ensure that you receive expert advice, stay informed about key events, and get the latest updates on OVHcloud’s innovations.

Join us today and take the next step in supercharging your startup in the cloud. Don’t forget to also explore our Startup Program, which offers additional support and resources tailored to help you succeed.

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If you’re not an OVHcloud Startup Program member and would like to get help building your responsible AI solution, you can apply to join the program here to benefit from an accompanied journey onto our cloud with up to €100k in free cloud credits and free tech consultation.

Unsurprisingly, 50% of B2B tech/services startups die within their first 4 years in business. However, according to research at University of Edinburgh Business School, startups mentioned in leading industry analyst publications achieve an impressive 84% survive-and-thrive rate.

At OVHcloud, we’re all about helping you succeed, so we’re excited to present our new partner holscher.one to address the rarely seen, yet critical part of the B2B tech playing field: industry analyst relations for startups and scaleups.

The founder of holscher.one – Chris Holscher – led global analyst relations (AR) programs at tech mega-players for many years before he focused entirely on serving startups. Chris also initiated and runs the State of Startups with Industry Analysts (SSIA) research program at the University of Edinburgh. His thought-leadership and client results have earned holscher.one a global top 10 AR advisory nomination by hundreds of analysts and experts. Read Chris’s AR advice for startups below and listen to the 4th episode of our “Supercharge Your Startup” podcast, featuring Chris as our first guest for 2024 here.

Cross the chasm earlier

The “Early Majority” – those elusive buyers on the other side of the famous chasm – are less enthusiastic than the innovators and early adopters, but far greater in numbers. If a startup manages to reach them, it stands a good chance of succeeding overall.

These days, the Early Majority buyer is facing a challenge. Innovations such as AI, Robotic Process Automation and “as-a-service” solutions all have the potential to disrupt markets and have made it critical for companies to act sooner on key trends. But it’s not in the Early Majority’s DNA.

Hence, these firms seek guidance from industry analysts more than ever. Trend reports such as Gartner’s Emerging Tech Trends Radars, Forrester’s Tech Tides, IDC’s FutureScape trend reports, and direct enquiries with the authoring analysts, are all in high demand. 

Industry AR is a rarely discussed part of the B2B tech playing field, although it could not be more success-critical for innovative startups. Getting mentioned as a viable example vendor can catapult a startup across the chasm. It’s a serious hurdle that startups need to take 1) before their financial runway ends and 2) quicker than emerging rivals around the world.

Insights and impact

Over 75% of Fortune 1000 tech decision-makers rank industry analyst publications and direct analyst recommendations to their C-suite and SMEs as having the most important impact on tech strategy and buying decisions.

Smart emerging vendors use industry analyst buyer insights for quicker roadmap decisions and sharper messaging. They also use analyst briefings to inform analysts about their market offering as early as possible to leverage analysts’ expert reputation and reach.

A single analyst has some 700-2000 interactions with decision-makers every year. That’s with your rival vendors as well as with potential partners, buyers, and investors inquiring about trends and candidates.

Make it count

In 2022, the State of Startups with Industry Analysts program conducted research with more than 200 analysts worldwide and found that 79% of analysts work specifically with startups to identify and recommend innovative new vendors.

However, part of the challenge is that analysts must prioritize their time to vendors who are able to make a briefing worthwhile. An “influencer” approach or repurposing your sales slides is a mistake – an analyst’s calendar is too busy and the competition too fierce for you to get a second chance.

The last word

Getting AR right requires subject-matter expertise of analyst firms’ characteristics, publications, processes and policies. The individual analyst’s background, research agenda and mindset are also important.

However, not all analyst publications and tools are advisable for startups. You can even realize key benefits without any investment at all. Some publications and tools have tailored startup-specific offerings, some offer incredibly supportive financial models, and others have steep price points but will amaze you with their breadth and depth of value.

Navigating AR for startups successfully requires another key ingredient: self-earned, hands-on experience with emerging vendors’ unique dynamics, everyday challenges and priorities. 

Here’s some key takeaways to keep in mind:

• We understand that needs and possibilities change along the maturity cycle from early stages to series A/B. A phased approach that starts early and with the end in mind works best.
• We appreciate that startup/scaleup capacities are tight, both in terms of time and finances. Our no-nonsense tactic focuses on what actually works and matters now and next.
• AR is neither a straight line, nor is it the same for every business. It requires clarity in objectives and agility in getting there. OKR-led management plays to startups’ natural advantages over established firms.

I am thrilled with our partnership to support the OVHcloud Startup Program and specifically the Fast Forward Accelerator. European emerging vendors have a real gap to close in AR and thus an amazing opportunity to get ahead.

To find out more about AR, connect with your local Startup Program manager here or connect directly with holscher.one

And it’s easy to see these kinds of regulations things to be complied with. After all, it’s hard enough for startups and scale-ups to market themselves, develop compelling products and seek funding without having to add further due diligence to their workload – let alone understand the data ‘supply chain’ of their suppliers and partners.

But embracing respect for data – data sovereignty – as a design principle, can greatly enhance relationships with customers, investors and the broader ecosystem. To understand why, we have to delve further into what data sovereignty is and isn’t.

What is Data Sovereignty?

Data sovereignty is about control and freedom. It’s also about rights: GDPR laid the foundations for individuals to have control over their personal data, including how it’s handled, stored, whether it’s transferred and who has access to it. These themes are all at the heart of data sovereignty. However, there are many more types of data than personal data, and the future acts from the EU aim to address this.

Data sovereignty is important for many reasons. First and foremost, data is subject to the rules of the country in which it’s stored. So, if your country allows processing of data by the government for intelligence purposes, or your data is transferred to a country like this, then it’s important for customers to understand this.

“Data sovereignty for us means giving customers certainty that the data they transmit to us will remain beyond the remit of foreign government interference.” Ludwig Bull, CEO, CourtCorrect.

But again, sovereignty isn’t just about privacy and control. Having a good sovereignty approach also means that your organization has thought about whether you’ll want to move your data and how technically feasible this is. For example, some cloud providers can charge fees for moving data in and out of their clouds (ingress or egress fees) and others use different standards, making ‘free data movement’ difficult and expensive.

This situation can be a bit like a having bank account, but then when you want to transfer to another bank, you have to pay a large part of your savings to do so – and then also have to pay the new bank to open the account and move your money in! Similarly, many cloud providers have long minimum contract periods, which means that if anything changes at that provider, you won’t be able to pivot your data strategy very quickly to react.

A robust sovereignty strategy also includes making sure that you can pick the right hardware and data handling for your applications and customer requirements, including any specific sectoral needs. This ensures that workloads run in the best possible way, and that data which needs to be handled in certain ways – for example, in the healthcare industry or the public sector – is well managed.

All of these things are not only prerequisites in some cases, but also send a number of messages to customers about the kind of organization you are.

Making Data Sovereignty pay off

So that’s what data sovereignty is. But how does it actually benefit you, beyond simply complying with regulations?

First and foremost, data sovereignty ensures trust. A sovereignty strategy says to other organisations that you’re treating their data with respect, and that you have the flexibility to adapt if needs be. It’s like seeing your doctor wash your hands or put medical gloves on before starting a treatment – it’s respectful and is good practice. This kind of visibility and transparency also tends to sit very well with procurement departments.

“Any organization that sells on the basis of building a trusted relationship with its customers will benefit greatly from Data Sovereignty,” Shân Millie, Bright Blue Hare.

However, there are a number of other benefits:

• Data Security: Consider a startup in the fintech sector. This company processes vast volumes of sensitive financial data daily. A sound approach to sovereignty ensures that data remains under the protective umbrella of the company’s home country, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches.
  
• Data Compliance and Regulations: Startups and scaleups often operate in a global context, serving customers worldwide. However, different regions have distinct data protection laws and regulations. Showing that your organization is already compliant with such regulations from the get-go can also accelerate your journey through procurement processes.
  
• Data Ethics: In today’s era of heightened data ethics awareness, consumers expect companies to handle their data responsibly and transparently. Data sovereignty empowers startups to adhere to ethical standards in data handling, building trust with their customers and partners. It allows organisations to answer fundamental questions like whose data is this, who controls it, who processes it, and who gets to choose these things?

All of these things are tremendous assets to startups. And in fact, startups often have the edge in developing sovereignty strategies. Large, well-established organisations have many challenges in re-architecting old principles and approaches to meet the needs and requirements of modern society, including sovereignty. Startups are nimble, agile organisations and can include considerations of data sovereignty by default and by design, building them into their company DNA. By adopting these principles, they can show that they are secure by design, compliant by design, ethical and considerate by design – and that’s a very compelling USP for any organisation.

Riding the prevailing winds

It’s also important to note that if you’re in the EU, or doing business with the EU, data sovereignty isn’t just a ‘nice to have’ – it’s the direction that the industry is going in. US organisations are already having to adapt to this, and the data adequacy between the UK and the US, for example, shows just how seriously countries are taking this, let alone large organisations.

EU bodies have started something unstoppable. They are building a landscape of trust and showing that cutting-edge innovation is compatible with respect for consumer data. The sun is setting on the old ways of doing business, and increasingly putting people in charge of their own data. This is inherently a better, more respectful online world – and for those who get on board early enough, a huge market opportunity.

X

What is a cloud engineer?

Cloud engineers are IT professionals responsible for cloud computing tasks. This could be on the strategic side e.g. design and planning, or more technical e.g. maintenance and support. Organisations hire cloud engineers when they need to deploy or scale their cloud resources or gain a better understanding of the cloud. As a highly technical role, cloud engineers will usually have database, networking and programming skills, alongside knowledge of different operating systems, security, containerisation and virtualisation. The title cloud engineer can also encompass other roles, including cloud architect, cloud administrator, cloud security engineer and cloud network engineer.

For a comprehensive overview of the skills a cloud engineer needs, read the below job spec created by the training team at OVHcloud. Feel free to copy and paste as needed:

Title: Cloud Engineer/CTO

Main Responsibilities: Seamlessly mesh tech know-how with business acumen to help us navigate all our cloud computing needs, including infrastructure design, maintenance, support and planning, and everything in between. Implement and maintain cloud and infrastructure components (server, storage, network, data, and applications) to deliver these end-to-end cloud infrastructure architectures.

Specific Duties:

1. Research the best cloud strategy that aligns with the needs of the company and customers, with input from the team and customers, and communicate it to the team.
2. Planning, designing, developing and deploying cloud-based applications.
3. Managing cloud environments in accordance with company security guidelines.
4. Setting up virtual servers and storage instances on the cloud platform of choice, with the necessary quality of service, backup and redundancy and distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection.
5. Building and designing web services in the cloud, along with implementing geographically redundant services.
6. Manage infrastructure automation through DevOps scripting (e.g. Shell, Powershell, Ansible, Terraform etc.).
7. Configuration management, using Chef or Puppet (for example).
8. Educating teams on the implementation of new cloud-based initiatives, providing relevant training as required.
9. Lead and develop best practices for the larger engineering team.

Skills Required:

1. Cloud Service Provider/VMware/OpenStack Solutions Architect Certified
2. Five years’ experience in developing software, using languages such as Java, Python, C++ or Ruby
3. Hands-on experience in migration of business software at scale to datacentres or the cloud
4. Experience in performance optimisation techniques.
5. Experience with Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications and cloud-based services.
6. Sysadmin skills including Linux, Windows administration.
7. DevOps skills including usage of OpenStack, Docker/Kubernetes and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) APIs.
8. Database experience, including knowledge of SQL and NoSQL, and related data stores, such as Postgres.
9. Storage solutions experience, including block and object storage.
10. Extensive experience with open-source technology, software development and system engineering.

Role Requirements:

1. Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science or Engineering.
2. Good understanding of enterprise networks, security and identity access management.
3. Three to five years’ experience in a Cloud Engineer role, or related position.
4. Excellent communication and organisational skills, and the ability to engage with customers to gain insights to align product development with customer needs.
5. Previous experience managing a team.
6. Previous experience setting up infrastructure.
7. Open-mindedness.

How to find and hire a cloud engineer (or other employees)?

You know your startup needs to hire someone with cloud skills and you’ve prepared a job spec for the right person. Now you want to ensure everyone knows you’re looking for this person and that your startup is the best place to work on earth. And preferably, you don’t want to spend lots of time and money finding that person, because your startup is lean. So how do you do this?

1. Ask your team for referrals

Firstly, ask your team for their support and incentivise them. Yes, that is a cost, but it will mean a happier and more engaged employee – and you can’t put a price on that. Your current employees, if you’ve chosen correctly, will more than likely attract people that fit your culture, which is a huge advantage. A referral from an employee can also come with insights about the potential candidate(s) they are proposing, which simplifies your job of choosing the right person.

2. Post the vacancy on your website

This shows visitors that you are growing, and you can also link postings of the vacancy on other channels back to your website. The application process can be streamlined at little or no cost by embedding a form from database tools like Airtable, for example. This allows you to capture candidate information (including CVs and even videos) in one place and manage the interview and feedback process with various levels of automation. Video submissions can be a great way of getting insights into the creativity and personality of an employee before the first interview. Additionally, posting your vacancies can come in handy for other administrative procedures, such as visa applications e.g. some countries ask to demonstrate that no local candidate was found after a period of time before you can hire internationally.

3. Post it on social media

Depending on your location, creating a job posting on LinkedIn is also a must. Other social media channels like X (Twitter) and Facebook can also be used very effectively to share your job vacancy. However, certain channels may produce large numbers of low-quality applications, so think about which channels are most appropriate and how many applications you’re looking for. These channels are also great for sharing photos of your team and what a great place your startup is to work at.

4. Consider job sites and recruiters

Once you’ve explored all the options above, consider job sites and recruiters too. I have listed a few below but, again, the channel you use often depends on the vacancy you’re trying to fill:

• LinkedIn: You can set up and track paid job ad campaigns
• Others: Glassdoor, Indeed

A recruitment agent that knows you and understands your business can also be a valuable channel for filtered candidates, particularly for those hard-to-fill roles. Invest some time in building these relationships, ready for when you need them most.

Finally, you can also consider government help. There are multiple grants and subsidies available to businesses who help attract specific talent. This can make your hiring offer more attractive, as well as provide connections to organisations that can advertise the role through other channels.

5. Talk about it!

Share the job vacancy with trusted people in your network who are good at making connections or have a history of referring people to you. Again, the warm referral will come with additional information that will help inform your final decision. You can also mention the vacancy when networking and meeting new people at professional events and job/recruitment fairs. You never know – you might be one meeting away from finding a fantastic candidate!

Your local Startup Program Manager would also be willing to help, if possible, within the Startup Program ecosystem, so click on the Startup Program logo below to connect with your local manager!