I know the founders of RethinkDB and have had drinks/meals with them in the past. They're smart people that mean well and I absolutely believe they did everythi

I know the founders of RethinkDB and have had drinks/meals with them in the past. They're smart people that mean well and I absolutely believe they did everything they thought possible to make it a viable business, so the last paragraph comes across as a bit snippy to me. I do think the author means well though, and is trying to construct a rationale. As a product guy who worked for several database startups, the delay on delivering a Java driver does seem a bit puzzling but some/most of the other points can easily be explained by those two startups devils, prioritization and product design. Does a MongoDB user look for automatic failover before converting to Rethink? Probably! Would an advanced user, perhaps leery of the pitfalls of automatic failovers prefer a more manual approach? Likely! Should Rethink have focused on the former or the latter group of users? Who's to say? I feel similarly conflicted about points #2–5. The article does make a good point overarching though. In times of failure it's easy for engineers to blame external factors like market or marketing rather than look inward, and it could be that the product or engineering was wrong. Failures at that stage are essentially Product-Market fit failures, and they usually involve a bit of both Product and Market(ing). I'm just not sure the points listed bear that out but would love to hear more, possibly from the author or Slava & Mike @ Rethink?