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Serverless + Chatbots == Silver bullet for Startups?

Ivan Čuljak
November 12, 2019

Serverless + Chatbots == Silver bullet for Startups?

Ivan Čuljak

November 12, 2019
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  1. Serverless + Chatbots
    == Silver bullet for
    Startups?
    Ivan Čuljak
    @CuljakIvan / [email protected]

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  2. A bit about me
    • Ivan Čuljak
    • Cloud Solutions Architect @ Celeste Maze
    • Shouting at clouds since 2012???
    • Salvaging wrecks/putting out fires for a living
    • Freelancer & Azure MVP

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  3. Evolution of "app hosting" [1/2]
    • a shared server
    • a server
    • a farm of servers
    • VMs on a server
    • VMs on a farm of servers

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  4. Evolution of "app hosting" [2/2]
    • VMs running containers
    • containers orchestrator running on top of VMs
    • let's just forget it's all there and do our dev job...

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  5. What serverless is NOT
    • Execution model
    • Managed service
    • Operational construct
    • Spectrum
    • Technology
    Big tnx to Jeremy Daly for this <3

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  6. Serverless IS a
    methodology
    Big tnx to Jeremy Daly for this <3

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  7. Business shift
    All messed up
    • product strategy
    • design
    • budgeting
    • resource planning
    Big tnx to Jeremy Daly for this <3

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  8. Current state of serverless

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  9. Focus on core values
    "Outsource" everything else

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  10. Less demand for mythical
    creatures

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  11. Less experienced people can
    provide more value, and onboard
    faster

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  12. Enough about the
    backend, where's the
    frontend?

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  13. Are you completely
    sure the frontend has
    to be YOURS?

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  14. UX/CX is crucial [1/2]
    • Spend as much time as you need to polish it
    • UX on a chatbot is more important than UX in mobile apps
    • It's hard for users to use their intuition to guess where
    you've hidden something

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  15. UX/CX is crucial [2/2]
    • Don't bombard the user with information
    • Make everything simple and visual
    • Skip text entry as much as you can

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  16. $$$
    • It's cheaper to develop
    • It's cheaper to maintain
    • It's cheaper to extend
    • It requires less skill to code

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  17. Time
    • Initial time to market is lower
    • Time required for any change is lower
    • Deployments are available right away
    • There's no procedure for users to update

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  18. Support
    • Your app not working on some random Chinese phone/
    tablet isn't your problem
    • If a user can't get it working it means that the messenger
    isn't working on their device
    • You can easily debug what's going on in each conversation
    • You can support multiple messengers

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  19. Development
    • No special hardware required
    • No special subscriptions/licences required
    • You can handle almost everything from something like
    Visual Studio Code

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  20. Testing
    • You can run tests on your dev machine, instead of
    automating them over a farm of mobile phones
    • If it works on one iPhone it will work on all of them
    • If it works on one Android it will work on most of them

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  21. Deployment
    • There is no in-house/ad-hoc/enterprise/hidden builds/
    deployments
    • There's no need to download anything on the client side
    (except the messenger)
    • You basically deploy a web app if you're coding it, or you hit
    the save button if you're using some visual dev tool

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  22. Analytics
    • All the analytics come from your backend, and hence you
    can easily collect them
    • There's no mobile app crash analytics that won't get to you,
    and hence you might miss them

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  23. Use cases

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  24. Fish app
    • Their MVP was based on WhatsApp... manually typing
    WhatsApp
    • Their budget was too small to build anything serious
    • Yet they were convinced they really need a mobile app for
    Android and iOS

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  25. Checking codes app
    • Someone can register on a web site and get a code to
    redeem a package
    • Packages are being handed out by students
    • Students are using their own mobile phones
    • Viber to the rescue

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  26. Getting a loan pre-approval
    • Chat with a bank bot to go through the loan questionaire
    • Get a pre-approval
    • Runs on functions
    • Cold starts and scaling "penalties" don't seem to matter to
    chat users :)

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  27. Various startups
    • If you can think out-of-the-box
    • If you can "shift" the way society made you think
    • You could figure out that chatbots & serverless may solve
    your needs... at least for an MVP

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  28. Thank you <3
    Any questions?
    @CuljakIvan / [email protected]

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