Ask HN: Has anyone started an IaaS after working only at large tech companies?

[civicsquid]

I work on an infrastructure team at Meta. I love large distributed systems work and like the sort of work I do, but I’m getting a bit ground down by the machine.

I had a thought about how I’d love to try to solve some infrastructure and scaling issues as a general service - I’m not sure what that would look like, but perhaps some sort of IaaS.

My problem is I have no idea how to discover what that would look like. I have very little experience outside of large tech companies, which means I have no idea what sorts of needs exist in the market.

I’d love to try to learn a bit more about what people and companies need, but I don’t know how. If you’ve mainly worked in tech and wound up building services as a product later in your career, how did that journey go for you?