I am building a cloud

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TLDR

  • A Tailscale cofounder (per HN commenters) is publicly building exe.dev, a cloud targeting better hardware defaults and simpler async agent workflows.

Key Takeaways

  • The first-person title signals a work-in-progress founder narrative, not a polished product launch; technical audiences are taking early notice.
  • HN commenters identify the author as a Tailscale cofounder, grounding the project’s credibility in real infrastructure and networking experience.
  • Commenters report exe.dev is the product; the pitch centers on closing the IOPS gap between cloud defaults (3,000) and local hardware (500,000), per HN.
  • A significant funding round (described as “insane” by one commenter) gives exe.dev runway to compete against established VPS providers like Hetzner.

Hacker News Comment Review

  • Commenters split sharply on differentiation: self-hosters already replicate the stack with containers, Tailscale auth, and named team sharing; non-self-hosters see genuine abstraction value.
  • The SSH-first imperative interface drew direct skepticism: commenters question whether declarative tools like OpenTofu are a better primitive for both humans and AI agents managing cloud resources, and whether exe.dev adds value over cost-effective VPS providers like Hetzner at that point.
  • A recurring concern frames the trajectory risk: cloud companies with strong founding ideals historically drift toward profit-driven defaults at scale, a tension explicitly raised about exe.dev.

Notable Comments

  • @zackify: Self-described “Dropbox commentator” who already self-hosts the equivalent; congratulates on “insane funding” and implicitly validates the product’s mass appeal beyond technical self-hosters.

Original | Discuss on HN