Re:RethinkDB: why we failed
by runT1ME on Thursday January 19, 2017 @03:54PM
(#13439386)
I really wonder how much of it was timing. Startups with very little to lose aren't going to pay for support contracts on open source software. That takes established companies with SLAs, or quantified dollars lost per minute of downtime, or companies that just can't hire fast enough and too much work to do to bother with investigating DB issues.
But these companies that would pay aren't going to roll out new products on a database only a few folks have heard of.
Let's suppose in an alternate universe Slava had made Rethink his hobby project and it had taken ten years to get to where it is today. Even then, companies that had taken a gamble on it may still be a few years out from where the survivors can (and it would make economic sense to) buy a support contract, but their runway would have potentially carried them into the sweet spot of having early adopters become paying customers.
Re:RethinkDB: why we failed
by webmaven on Thursday January 19, 2017 @08:34PM
(#13441097)
> Many people have very strong feelings about the developer tools market. Engineers love building developer tools, so they badly want developer tools companies to thrive.
> I am hesitant to dismiss the market entirely – partly because I don’t want to generalize from a single experience, partly because I don’t like saying “it cannot be done”, and partly because there are quite a few exceptions. GitHub, MongoDB, and Docker have built formidable companies. GitLab and Unity seem to be doing well.
I think the mentioned examples are less developer tools companies than developer services companies.
Re:RethinkDB: why we failed
by rebelidealist on Thursday January 19, 2017 @01:15PM
(#13437964)
I get that they are saying the cloud offering is hard, but if they didn't have that, what was their business model? Were they relying on support and consulting fees? Consulting is hard to scale.
Cloud offering with build-in redundancy (herokudb, RDS, Redis Cloud) is what most app stakeholders are looking for. We want to try RethinkDb but we don't want to deal with servers.
If rethinkdb is good, i hope someone can resurrect this as a cloud service.
Re:RethinkDB: why we failed
by strongai on Friday January 20, 2017 @05:00AM
(#13442689)
Back in 1996, having just joined a developer tools company, I recall my new CEO at our first meeting saying "The developer tools market is such a shitty, shitty market"
But these companies that would pay aren't going to roll out new products on a database only a few folks have heard of.
Let's suppose in an alternate universe Slava had made Rethink his hobby project and it had taken ten years to get to where it is today. Even then, companies that had taken a gamble on it may still be a few years out from where the survivors can (and it would make economic sense to) buy a support contract, but their runway would have potentially carried them into the sweet spot of having early adopters become paying customers.
> I am hesitant to dismiss the market entirely – partly because I don’t want to generalize from a single experience, partly because I don’t like saying “it cannot be done”, and partly because there are quite a few exceptions. GitHub, MongoDB, and Docker have built formidable companies. GitLab and Unity seem to be doing well.
I think the mentioned examples are less developer tools companies than developer services companies.
Cloud offering with build-in redundancy (herokudb, RDS, Redis Cloud) is what most app stakeholders are looking for. We want to try RethinkDb but we don't want to deal with servers.
If rethinkdb is good, i hope someone can resurrect this as a cloud service.