A majority of software companies can operate on RDS (and DynamoDB for that matter) and utilize their built-in scaling functions. CockroachDB adds no value to th

A majority of software companies can operate on RDS (and DynamoDB for that matter) and utilize their built-in scaling functions. CockroachDB adds no value to those customers, which will presumably make up the bulk of them hypothetically becoming a profitable company. Contrast CockroachDB with some of the other nascent open-source-to-successful-businesses: Influx - Solves timeseries applications challenges. (biz problem) Citus - Solves a scale out technology problem with an already established DB platform. (tech problem) Confluent - Solves scaling issues with an already established data streaming database. (tech problem) Cloudera - Solves scaling issues with an already established big data platform. (tech problem) Elastic - Solves search application challenges. (biz problem) Cockroach - Solves scaling issues with SQL databases by offering an alternative DB. (??) Unless Cockroach can position itself as either solving a technology challenge with an already adopted DB solution, or solves a business problem, it's going to be very difficult to achieve profitability.