From Victorian Ovens to SaaS Mastery: Why Knowing the Basics Matters

Living on the Edge: My San Francisco Story

For 4.+ years I lived in a vintage building on the edge of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

I was blessed with Ron as my building manager - and he was 100% the man for the job.

A swashbuckling Vietnam vet with an air of Jack Sparrow’s GI cousin, camo-clad Ron originally wound up in SF with dreams of becoming a thespian.

He had no time for anyone’s sh*t –- including mine.

The "Alice & the Valve" Saga

One night my ancient Victorian oven wouldn’t light up. I rang Ron.

“Alice!” he growled. “You’ve just got to switch the valve!”

I bit my lip.

“See, the thing is Ron … conceptually, I know what a valve is,” I said, peering around my oven. “But when push comes to shove, I actually have no idea what a valve is and no idea what I’m looking for.”

“Goddammit, Alice!”

Minutes later, Ron rapped at my door, stormed in, and promptly flicked an oblong-shaped knob behind the oven.

“That’s a valve, missy! Take a picture of it with your little phone thing.”

Life Lessons from Ron

(While Ron may have feigned constant exasperation with me, in the end he did invite me to his wedding. Later he retired to New Jersey to play an old 49er at the Wild West City theme park. Love this journey for him.)

I think of this particular exchange with the enigmatic Ron often.

How much of life do we go through conceptually knowing what things are, but when the moment arrives…we have no clue!

Why This Matters in SaaS

For the most part, it’s fine. There are simply too many things to know, and we can skate by on vagaries.

This is why we’re all made to take high school biology, chemistry, and physics: so we can enter adulthood at least familiar with the idea of a “mitochondrion."

But when it comes to software, internet, and cloud? We don’t even get a 101!

For a force that is reshaping humanity on the reg, we still treat computer science as technical "science" and not as core liberal arts curriculum.

At this point - IMHO - a handle on tech fundamentals like servers and data has certainly reached a mitochondrion-level of significance!

Especially when you work in B2B SaaS.

Real-Life SaaS Questions You Might Face

When a million-dollar prospect asks questions like:

• What kind of API do you have?

• Do you offer an on-prem version or are you cloud only?

• Does your distributed cache support our blockchain-validated COBOL cluster at scale?

You don’t want to have a vague “Alice & the valve” level of comprehension, do you?

The Value of Knowing Tech Basics

Sure, you can be “chronically online” without knowing how any of that is even possible.

But what if you had the potential to make millions of dollars by knowing?

Whether that’s through winning the lottery with an early in at a unicorn or over the long-term as a professional in tech, if knowing the basics teed you up for success … wouldn’t you want to know?

 P.S. Want to get started with some internet fundamentals that aren’t just pure tech?

Listen to this a16z podcast episode featuring the author of How the Internet Happened.

This book is my holy grail.

See what it unveils for you about tech in language you’ll actually want to read.