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I have to agree here a bit. However, there was nothing stoping Rethink from building their own service and promoting it as the "official" RethinkDB service. T

by nemo44x 10y ago

I have to agree here a bit. However, there was nothing stoping Rethink from building their own service and promoting it as the "official" RethinkDB service. They have the unique opportunity of making it better than any other service by: -Updating the service the day new versions go GA -Faster turn around on breaking changes -Ability to provide authentic expert support -Ability to provide additional functionality power users would pay for and 3rd parties like compose would not implement They wouldn't capture the entire market but they could be the leader in it. The open source business model is hard enough. It becomes very difficult when every other Cloud simply wants to offer your product and you capture none of that. And then the project dies and no one wins. Open source companies need to be the leaders of their tools, provide the best services around them and differentiate their offering from the open source code base. If you can't do that you won't have a company. Asking for donations is not a business model. RethinkDB was a good database with a bad business.

solipsism 10y ago
Eh.. not sure about that. Picking a less-in-the-mainstream database already seems a little bit risky for a business. To also tie yourself to a service strikes me as even more risky. Consulting we can agree on. I can't imagine RethinkDB didn't have a consulting business.
- nemo44x 10y ago
  If they were anything like the other OS infrastructure software companies I've been around then consulting at this stage was the last thing their investors wanted this business to be. Consulting is not a business model you invest in. Anymore than 15-20% of revenue from the consulting practice is a business model that does not scale or have high margins and is not worthy of much valuation. Consulting makes sense when your software business is driving and you're looking for a bit of fat around the edges. Look at RHT's 10-Q's, for instance.
mrkurt 10y ago
Running a database service is really, really hard. It's an obvious thing for OSS database companies to try, but the skills and experience necessary to do it are not at all the same as what it takes to build databases. MongoDB took _years_ to launch theirs, and then even more time to get it working well.
- nemo44x 10y ago
  I guess the alternative is to not try, put all your resources into making Aphyr cultists happy and then going out of business a few months later. Built on top of existing cloud architecture and with a few experienced developers a cloud service can be made available in months. mLab didn't take years to build it and get it right, for instance. And those folks were a tiny operation years ago when they started. I'm not discounting the effort but I've been around that effort and have seen DB-As-A-Service go live with a couple smart people in a matter of months. AWS API's, containers, Zookeeper and come Python and you're well on your way. Again - it's hard but so is making a DB of Rethink's quality. It can be done, however. You start small and you go from there. You exploit your advantages as you build a fantastic product over time. I'm not saying a SAAS would have saved them as I'm pretty sure their biggest issue is adoption in the first place. But there's something to be said about your business plan when someone hosting your software is doing well why you, the owner, has to find a new job.
dorktastic 10y ago
> However, there was nothing stoping Rethink from building their own service and promoting it as the "official" RethinkDB service. Nothing except the facts that writing a database engine and doing DBaaS are two entirely different things to get right, it would have required at least double the money and headcount, it would have caused even more risk on the consumer side, and ultimately diluted RethinkDB's core competency. Other than that, great idea.
- elchief 10y ago
  sure, but in hindsight would have been a better business move
  - nemo44x 10y ago
    Exactaly. It would have given them a chance. Some runway. The alternative is obviously to go out of business.
  - dorktastic 10y ago
    In hindsight, it would have caused this news to happen in 2014, not 2016.
    - nemo44x 10y ago
      Which should be seen as an advantage, right? I'm guessing their employees and founders who are left with little to nothing would have been better off not squandering the last 2 years of their professional lives. Fail fast, right?
      - mglukhovsky 10y ago
        I can only speak for myself, but as one of the founders, I don't regret a minute of the time I've spent building RethinkDB.
        nemo44x 10y ago

by nemo44x 10y ago

solipsism 10y ago

Eh.. not sure about that. Picking a less-in-the-mainstream database already seems a little bit risky for a business. To also tie yourself to a service strikes me as even more risky. Consulting we can agree on. I can't imagine RethinkDB didn't have a consulting business.

nemo44x 10y ago
If they were anything like the other OS infrastructure software companies I've been around then consulting at this stage was the last thing their investors wanted this business to be. Consulting is not a business model you invest in. Anymore than 15-20% of revenue from the consulting practice is a business model that does not scale or have high margins and is not worthy of much valuation. Consulting makes sense when your software business is driving and you're looking for a bit of fat around the edges. Look at RHT's 10-Q's, for instance.

mrkurt 10y ago

Running a database service is really, really hard. It's an obvious thing for OSS database companies to try, but the skills and experience necessary to do it are not at all the same as what it takes to build databases. MongoDB took _years_ to launch theirs, and then even more time to get it working well.

nemo44x 10y ago
I guess the alternative is to not try, put all your resources into making Aphyr cultists happy and then going out of business a few months later. Built on top of existing cloud architecture and with a few experienced developers a cloud service can be made available in months. mLab didn't take years to build it and get it right, for instance. And those folks were a tiny operation years ago when they started. I'm not discounting the effort but I've been around that effort and have seen DB-As-A-Service go live with a couple smart people in a matter of months. AWS API's, containers, Zookeeper and come Python and you're well on your way. Again - it's hard but so is making a DB of Rethink's quality. It can be done, however. You start small and you go from there. You exploit your advantages as you build a fantastic product over time. I'm not saying a SAAS would have saved them as I'm pretty sure their biggest issue is adoption in the first place. But there's something to be said about your business plan when someone hosting your software is doing well why you, the owner, has to find a new job.

dorktastic 10y ago

> However, there was nothing stoping Rethink from building their own service and promoting it as the "official" RethinkDB service. Nothing except the facts that writing a database engine and doing DBaaS are two entirely different things to get right, it would have required at least double the money and headcount, it would have caused even more risk on the consumer side, and ultimately diluted RethinkDB's core competency. Other than that, great idea.

elchief 10y ago
sure, but in hindsight would have been a better business move
- nemo44x 10y ago
  Exactaly. It would have given them a chance. Some runway. The alternative is obviously to go out of business.
- dorktastic 10y ago
  In hindsight, it would have caused this news to happen in 2014, not 2016.
  - nemo44x 10y ago
    Which should be seen as an advantage, right? I'm guessing their employees and founders who are left with little to nothing would have been better off not squandering the last 2 years of their professional lives. Fail fast, right?
    - mglukhovsky 10y ago
      I can only speak for myself, but as one of the founders, I don't regret a minute of the time I've spent building RethinkDB.
      - nemo44x 10y ago