5 ms·

Chef Software Raises $40M in Series E Funding

73 points by GrinningFool 11y ago

jMyles 11y ago
I didn't even realize they weren't called opscode anymore. What an interesting space - the dynamic between Chef, Puppet, Salt, and Ansible seems to be a textbook example of healthy and productive competition.
- PlaneSploit 11y ago
  I met their CEO a couple years ago - seemed like a good guy. It always seemed to me like their new name is an SEO nightmare, though.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    A Google search for "chef" has them as the #2 hit (both logged in and in Incognito so it's not just because I'm a programmer). Seems like they have the SEO under control.
    - dougk16 11y ago
      Sure, but the question is how much capital they had to put towards getting that #2 spot. I'm an SEO newb so have no idea, but my guess is a fair amount.
      - proksoup 11y ago
        I'm sure the effort they put into SEO matters also ... but ... I would bet more important though is their search and mind share. More people searching for chef that are actually searching for them. I think the only way they got as far as they have is because of that search volume, not necessarily their content or the links to their content. I am basing this on absolutely nothing, just theory ... curious what others think or know?
    - proksoup 11y ago
      That's interesting that you saw them as #2 in incognito. I just searched chef in an incognito window and got them as #1. I wonder if my assumption about incognito search results being non-personalized is false.
      - acveilleux 11y ago
        They might still take language preference and geography (from IP) into account... Here in PEI, Canada, if I search Chef in incognito, they're #4 and the first 3 hits are for the movie Chef from 2014.
      - jonknee 11y ago
        I think it's probably geography. I'm in Seattle FWIW. The number one hit is a movie from IMDB: "Chef (2014) - IMDb". The SEO shouldn't actually be too tough because people are quite a bit more likely to link to Chef the company using the word "chef" than anything about cooking. And hey, Google went with "Go" which is nearly impossible to SEO and it worked out.
        vezzy-fnord 11y ago
        And hey, Google went with "Go" which is nearly impossible to SEO and it worked out. Though they do have the benefit of being Google. A significantly smaller team might have had better success than the original Go!, but that's not saying much.
    - anon987 11y ago
      Sure, but expand out and try stuff like "chef cookbook" and "chef knife" or try to find Chef jobs on Indeed.
      - ErikRogneby 11y ago
        add devops to your search.
  - SonicSoul 11y ago
    for me it comes up as #1 and #2 by searching for "chef" in incognito. only #2 on duckduckgo but it's almost off the page on yahoo. have to scroll down one page to see it on bing. I guess they targeted Google the most!
  - myhandle 11y ago
    They seem to have backed off, but last I looked at them they were just trying to coin every single food phrase as some new facet of their infastructure. "Sprinkle a dash of seasoning to your soup to make a recipe and build a cookbook, or order delivery instead!". I felt like a housewife getting sold to by a door to door salesman.
    - kristopolous 11y ago
      I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the documentation on a sliding scale between "uselessly academic" and "meaningless marketing". It looks like they've gotten a bit better. Now if they could only increase the contrast of their copy beyond 2.15, it might actually be readable.
  - lamontcg 11y ago
    The new name was entirely due to Chef the product having vastly more name recognition than Opscode the company. "So, where do you work?" "Opscode" "Oh, never heard of them what do they do?" "Server configuration management" "Oh, kinda like Chef or Puppet then?" "Uhm, somewhat like that first one, yes..." (Or just confusing Opscode and Opsworks, which was equally bad from a name recognition standpoint)
- atsaloli 11y ago
  Yep. CFEngine is still around too with quite a few companies using it in very large deployments (many tens of thousands of servers).
  - willejs 11y ago
    But its still losing it's market share day by day.
    - atsaloli 11y ago
      I'm closely involved with CFEngine (I work on CFEngine full-time); from what I see, CFEngine 2 market share is shrinking (though still quite large even though CFEngine 2 isn't "cool" and much talked about) and CFEngine 3 market share is growing (I help new users get started and there's been an uptick in demand for training). Overall, CFEngine's share of the configuration management pie has shrunk compared to ten years ago but it's still a contender, especially in environments where low infrastructure footprint (CFEngine uses very little resources when it runs, and it is viable to use it on embedded devices - Internet of Things anybody?), scalability (5K hosts on one hub without breaking a sweat) and security (NVD shows a strong security track record for CFEngine: https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search) matter.
      - kev009 11y ago
        5k hosts is not that impressive, SaltStack can do that in dog slow CPython.
wspeirs 11y ago
> "Chef’s business is growing exponentially with annual recurring revenue growth accelerating as the company scales" Makes me wonder why they needed the money. > "This new round will allow Chef to extend its leadership in the DevOps market by expanding Chef’s operations globally and accelerating product development amidst surging customer demand" Maybe I'm just cynical, but doesn't really tell me too much.
- Maro 11y ago
  It says: - they want to hire more senior managers - they want to open offices outside the US (and maybe sales ppl) - they want to hire more engineers to work on the product I don't specifically know why they raised, but often it's because, although revenue is growing, so is spending. So if you make (say) $30M per year, that's great, but you're probably spending $30-35M per year. So money in the bank (from all previous rounds) is usually less than a year's worth of revenue/spending. That's not so safe, come an economic downturn (or your growth flatlines), you're caught with your pants down. (Note that this actually assumes a fairly successful startup with revenue in the same ballpark as spending.) So companies raise more money for protection. It makes sense for them if they're growing, because they can get it for "cheap". Cheap means they can sell the VCs on future growth (high valuation), so they have to give up a relatively low % of the company in return for the safety net of having money in the bank.
- tptacek 11y ago
  This question, every late-series VC round. I think the answer is: They ostensibly don't need the money, but they've built a machine that takes a nickel and spits out a dime, and so the more nickels they can get their hands on, the more money they'll make.
  - dave_sullivan 11y ago
    But what are they going to do with all those dimes when they run out of nickels? Seriously though, it does seem to be possible to buy revenue, buying profit is another matter. I suspect these companies are all hemorrhaging cash--while they can show strong revenue growth (btw is that growth linear or better with the amount of money invested? i doubt it), they still need the money to stay in business and support all the contracts they're closing. Also, interesting relationship between money and terms. The more money you get, the worse the terms. The argument of "raise money while it's cheap" (IE, because you get better terms) works for what facebook in '07 when they got $240M for 1.6% from MSFT. For most of these big fundraising rounds though, that money is not cheap.
BogusIKnow 11y ago
I know people use Chef for configuring Docker, but my feeling is that Docker killed Chef and Puppet mainly. Many people I speak to today think Chef and Puppet were in the end a unmanageable idea. Just what I hear.
- yo-code-sucks 11y ago
  Yes, yes they are.
- jamesblonde 11y ago
  Chef and puppet have great support for parameterization of software installations. Docker does not. Until such time as Docker properly supports parameterization, they still have a role to play, Imo.
  - yo-code-sucks 11y ago
    Chef suck terribly at it. It tries to be your all in one. We ended up using Consul!
  - BogusIKnow 11y ago
    I think either people use something like ectd for config inside Docker or configure Dockerfiles, sometimes with Puppet as a templating engine.

73 points by GrinningFool 11y ago

I didn't even realize they weren't called opscode anymore. What an interesting space - the dynamic between Chef, Puppet, Salt, and Ansible seems to be a textbook example of healthy and productive competition.

PlaneSploit 11y ago
I met their CEO a couple years ago - seemed like a good guy. It always seemed to me like their new name is an SEO nightmare, though.
- jonknee 11y ago
  A Google search for "chef" has them as the #2 hit (both logged in and in Incognito so it's not just because I'm a programmer). Seems like they have the SEO under control.
  - dougk16 11y ago
    Sure, but the question is how much capital they had to put towards getting that #2 spot. I'm an SEO newb so have no idea, but my guess is a fair amount.
    - proksoup 11y ago
      I'm sure the effort they put into SEO matters also ... but ... I would bet more important though is their search and mind share. More people searching for chef that are actually searching for them. I think the only way they got as far as they have is because of that search volume, not necessarily their content or the links to their content. I am basing this on absolutely nothing, just theory ... curious what others think or know?
  - proksoup 11y ago
    That's interesting that you saw them as #2 in incognito. I just searched chef in an incognito window and got them as #1. I wonder if my assumption about incognito search results being non-personalized is false.
    - acveilleux 11y ago
      They might still take language preference and geography (from IP) into account... Here in PEI, Canada, if I search Chef in incognito, they're #4 and the first 3 hits are for the movie Chef from 2014.
    - jonknee 11y ago
      I think it's probably geography. I'm in Seattle FWIW. The number one hit is a movie from IMDB: "Chef (2014) - IMDb". The SEO shouldn't actually be too tough because people are quite a bit more likely to link to Chef the company using the word "chef" than anything about cooking. And hey, Google went with "Go" which is nearly impossible to SEO and it worked out.
      - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
        And hey, Google went with "Go" which is nearly impossible to SEO and it worked out. Though they do have the benefit of being Google. A significantly smaller team might have had better success than the original Go!, but that's not saying much.
  - anon987 11y ago
    Sure, but expand out and try stuff like "chef cookbook" and "chef knife" or try to find Chef jobs on Indeed.
    - ErikRogneby 11y ago
      add devops to your search.
- SonicSoul 11y ago
  for me it comes up as #1 and #2 by searching for "chef" in incognito. only #2 on duckduckgo but it's almost off the page on yahoo. have to scroll down one page to see it on bing. I guess they targeted Google the most!
- myhandle 11y ago
  They seem to have backed off, but last I looked at them they were just trying to coin every single food phrase as some new facet of their infastructure. "Sprinkle a dash of seasoning to your soup to make a recipe and build a cookbook, or order delivery instead!". I felt like a housewife getting sold to by a door to door salesman.
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the documentation on a sliding scale between "uselessly academic" and "meaningless marketing". It looks like they've gotten a bit better. Now if they could only increase the contrast of their copy beyond 2.15, it might actually be readable.
- lamontcg 11y ago
  The new name was entirely due to Chef the product having vastly more name recognition than Opscode the company. "So, where do you work?" "Opscode" "Oh, never heard of them what do they do?" "Server configuration management" "Oh, kinda like Chef or Puppet then?" "Uhm, somewhat like that first one, yes..." (Or just confusing Opscode and Opsworks, which was equally bad from a name recognition standpoint)
atsaloli 11y ago
Yep. CFEngine is still around too with quite a few companies using it in very large deployments (many tens of thousands of servers).
- willejs 11y ago
  But its still losing it's market share day by day.
  - atsaloli 11y ago
    I'm closely involved with CFEngine (I work on CFEngine full-time); from what I see, CFEngine 2 market share is shrinking (though still quite large even though CFEngine 2 isn't "cool" and much talked about) and CFEngine 3 market share is growing (I help new users get started and there's been an uptick in demand for training). Overall, CFEngine's share of the configuration management pie has shrunk compared to ten years ago but it's still a contender, especially in environments where low infrastructure footprint (CFEngine uses very little resources when it runs, and it is viable to use it on embedded devices - Internet of Things anybody?), scalability (5K hosts on one hub without breaking a sweat) and security (NVD shows a strong security track record for CFEngine: https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search) matter.
    - kev009 11y ago
      5k hosts is not that impressive, SaltStack can do that in dog slow CPython.

wspeirs 11y ago

> "Chef’s business is growing exponentially with annual recurring revenue growth accelerating as the company scales" Makes me wonder why they needed the money. > "This new round will allow Chef to extend its leadership in the DevOps market by expanding Chef’s operations globally and accelerating product development amidst surging customer demand" Maybe I'm just cynical, but doesn't really tell me too much.

Maro 11y ago
It says: - they want to hire more senior managers - they want to open offices outside the US (and maybe sales ppl) - they want to hire more engineers to work on the product I don't specifically know why they raised, but often it's because, although revenue is growing, so is spending. So if you make (say) $30M per year, that's great, but you're probably spending $30-35M per year. So money in the bank (from all previous rounds) is usually less than a year's worth of revenue/spending. That's not so safe, come an economic downturn (or your growth flatlines), you're caught with your pants down. (Note that this actually assumes a fairly successful startup with revenue in the same ballpark as spending.) So companies raise more money for protection. It makes sense for them if they're growing, because they can get it for "cheap". Cheap means they can sell the VCs on future growth (high valuation), so they have to give up a relatively low % of the company in return for the safety net of having money in the bank.
tptacek 11y ago
This question, every late-series VC round. I think the answer is: They ostensibly don't need the money, but they've built a machine that takes a nickel and spits out a dime, and so the more nickels they can get their hands on, the more money they'll make.
- dave_sullivan 11y ago
  But what are they going to do with all those dimes when they run out of nickels? Seriously though, it does seem to be possible to buy revenue, buying profit is another matter. I suspect these companies are all hemorrhaging cash--while they can show strong revenue growth (btw is that growth linear or better with the amount of money invested? i doubt it), they still need the money to stay in business and support all the contracts they're closing. Also, interesting relationship between money and terms. The more money you get, the worse the terms. The argument of "raise money while it's cheap" (IE, because you get better terms) works for what facebook in '07 when they got $240M for 1.6% from MSFT. For most of these big fundraising rounds though, that money is not cheap.

BogusIKnow 11y ago

I know people use Chef for configuring Docker, but my feeling is that Docker killed Chef and Puppet mainly. Many people I speak to today think Chef and Puppet were in the end a unmanageable idea. Just what I hear.

yo-code-sucks 11y ago
Yes, yes they are.
jamesblonde 11y ago
Chef and puppet have great support for parameterization of software installations. Docker does not. Until such time as Docker properly supports parameterization, they still have a role to play, Imo.
- yo-code-sucks 11y ago
  Chef suck terribly at it. It tries to be your all in one. We ended up using Consul!
- BogusIKnow 11y ago
  I think either people use something like ectd for config inside Docker or configure Dockerfiles, sometimes with Puppet as a templating engine.