In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob sits down with Saaya Pal, Partner at Jump Capital, exploring the evolving landscape of AI investments and enterprise adoption. As an early-stage investor focusing on FinTech and enterprise software, Saaya shares how enterprises are navigating AI implementation, with many organizations moving from initial hesitation to strategic adoption, particularly for internal use cases. The conversation delves into crucial infrastructure challenges, including data center constraints, multi-cloud environments, and the increasing importance of cost optimization.

You can find Rob Pankow (CEO & Co-founder of simplyblock and host of Cloud Frontier) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpankow

Cloud Frontier is brought to you by simplyblock. Simplyblock is an NVMe-first Kubernetes storage platform for IO-intensive workloads, including databases. Low latency, high IOPS, high throughput storage for the most demanding applications. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing cloud or data center infrastructure.

📋 Show notes:

Saaya's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saaya-pal-12ba82a3/

Saaya's Twitter/X: https://x.com/saayanath

JumpCapital's website: https://jumpcap.com/

Follow us on:

🐦 simplyblock Twitter/X: https://x.com/simplyblock_io

👨‍💻 simplyblock LinkedIn: / https://www.linkedin.com/company/simplyblock-io/

📹 simplyblock Youtube: / https://www.youtube.com/@simplyblock

Know more about us: 🌍 simplyblock Website: https://simplyblock.io/

Key features of simplyblock: ⭐ Smart local NVMe caching to eliminate read I/O latency and speed up database queries ⭐ Maximum IOPS and lowest latency ⭐ Benefits of thin provisioning, instant copy-on-write clone, compression, deduplication & encryption

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob Pankow sits down with Ruslan Halilov, co-founder of BlueDot, to discuss the company's evolution from a recruitment agency to an innovative AI meeting assistant. The conversation explores BlueDot's journey in finding product-market fit, their approach to fundraising, and insights into effective go-to-market strategies. This episode offers valuable lessons for founders navigating the B2B SaaS landscape. You can find Rob Pankow (CEO & Co-founder of simplyblock and host of Cloud Frontier) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertpankow 📔 Chapters: 01:04 - Guest and Company Introduction 07:55 - Choosing the right game to play 12:23 - How BlueDot grew their customers 18:57 - The next plan for BlueDot 20:49 - What your customers really need 23:11 - Fundraise or Bootstrap? 26:24 - Ruslan's go-to market strategies 31:07 - Getting your first customers 38:21 - How does Ruslan get his knowledge? 41:29 - What's exciting happening in Ruslan's space? 44:27 - Conclusion Cloud Frontier is brought to you by simplyblock. On Cloud Frontier, our Co-founder, Rob Pankow, engages with fellow founders to discuss their entrepreneurial paths, challenges in building software companies, and the innovations shaping cloud infrastructure. For more episodes, visit Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5tqKWgHgbtOQTF0ud7F8Bu ☁️ Cloud Frontier Report: Read our free quarterly newsletter packed with insights on the cloud infrastructure landscape: https://www.simplyblock.io/cloud-frontier-report 📋 Show notes: Guest links & episode links: Russ' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russkhalilov/ Russ' Twitter/X: https://x.com/rusras_ BlueDot website: https://www.bluedothq.com/ Follow us on: 🐦 simplyblock Twitter/X: https://x.com/simplyblock_io 👨‍💻 simplyblock LinkedIn: / simplyblock-io 📹 simplyblock Youtube: / @simplyblock Know more about us: 🌍 simplyblock Website: https://simplyblock.io/ Simplyblock is NVMe-based storage platform for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. Key features of simplyblock: ⭐ Smart local NVMe caching to eliminate read I/O latency and speed up database queries ⭐ Intelligent data tiering between high-speed NVMe and other storage tiers ⭐ Maximum IOPS and lowest latency on read ⭐ Benefits of thin provisioning, instant copy-on-write clone, compression, deduplication & encryption

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, we chat with Carmen Li, founder of Silicon Data. Carmen shares her journey from high-frequency trading to launching a platform that brings financial infrastructure and transparency to compute markets. She discusses Silicon Data's first products—SiliconNavigator for GPU price insights and SiliconCarbon for carbon footprint tracking—and how they address key challenges in the compute ecosystem. Carmen also reflects on transitioning to entrepreneurship, the importance of building agile teams, and encouraging more women to pursue startup ambitions.

In this episode of Cloud Frontier, Rob and Carmen discuss:

• Carmen’s transition from managing Bloomberg’s global data integrations to becoming a first-time startup founder
• Insights on creating tools like SiliconNavigator for GPU price tracking and SiliconCarbon for carbon footprint monitoring
• Challenges in data normalization, benchmarking, and building products for the compute ecosystem
• Emerging trends in compute markets, including GPU commoditization, chip designs, and edge computing opportunities

Interested to learn more about the cloud economy? Head to Spotify for more episodes, read our newsletter on our Website, and follow us on LinkedIn. You can also check out the detailed show notes on our YouTube channel.

You can find our host Rob Pankow on LinkedIn at /robertpankow and Carmen Li on LinkedIn at /carmenrli. Visit Silicon Data's website to know more: https://www.silicondata.com/

About Simplyblock:

Simplyblock is an intelligent database storage orchestrator for IO-intensive workloads in Kubernetes, including databases and analytics solutions. It uses smart NVMe caching to speed up read I/O latency and queries. A single system connects local NVMe disks, GP3 volumes, and S3, making it easier to handle storage capacity and performance. With the benefits of thin provisioning, storage tiering, and volume pooling, your database workloads get better performance at lower cost without changes to existing AWS infrastructure.

👉 Get started with Simplyblock: https://www.simplyblock.io/buy-now
🏪 Simplyblock AWS Marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=seller-fzdtuccq3edzm