7 ms·

Introducing Red Planet Labs with $5M in funding

39 points by nathanmarz 8y ago

oldgun 8y ago
> ... but multiple orders of magnitude cost reduction for building end-to-end, scalable software applications. So I would guess it's toolchain and/or debugging/tracing tools for building scalable distributed system?
- pisipisipisi 8y ago
  "better serverless?"
  - oldgun 8y ago
    Could very well be.
garry 8y ago
I got to know Nathan 10 years ago when he was working at my YC batchmate's startup Backtype. He created Apache Storm previously, and now with Red Planet Labs, he's made something incredibly elegant - when I saw it, it was clear to me this would be the backend to end all backends. There are some very powerful abstractions here that will make developers a lot more powerful. He's hiring and this is probably the best pure opportunity to write code that will touch a lot of people. Talk to Nathan!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fuddle 8y ago
I noticed this in the job description - "Three weeks of mandatory paid vacation. Overworking not allowed!". Great idea, I have old colleagues who wouldn't take holidays and had up to 3 months in holidays accrued.
- nathanmarz 8y ago
  Thanks, I strongly believe this is the only rational vacation policy for a company to have. Overworking destroys productivity, so preventing it is better for the employee and the company!
  - allworknoplay 8y ago
    Interesting policy! I've actually worked at a couple companies where I've felt that management insisting we take vacations worked as a proxy for better management and support. Vacation doesn't matter if the job is hellish. Hopefully you've got that bit down too :)
avitzurel 8y ago
Back in (I think) 2014/5 I worked on http://docs.the-startup-stack.com/ http://docs.the-startup-stack.com/. My goal was to create a toolchain that is battle-tested production-ready and pluggable to help companies deliver code faster and worry less about operations. I started it in my spare time and worked on it for about 3-4 months. I still believe there is a HUGE need for this and that many companies are solving the same problem over and over again. It's super expensive to build. The challenge is catching companies at the right time. It needs to be as easy to start as it is with Heroku and a Rails application BUT you should be able to grow and scale up with batteries includes (unlike AWS). Another challenge is the fragmentation of development tools/frameworks/configurations and cycles. Very interesting space.
treis 8y ago
I wish them the best of luck, but this seems like a difficult market to enter. Lots of existing players and momentum towards containers and K8s. I'm interested to see what their better mousetrap is.
- nathanmarz 8y ago
  Can't reveal too much about the technology as of yet, but the key thing is our technology is not incremental improvement. It's orders of magnitude improvement to what currently exists. You're right that it's a crowded market, but in our minds the market is currently offering horses while we'll be offering Teslas :)
nategri 8y ago
* doesn't have anything to do with Mars * * stops reading * * Edit: By way of apology I will make an addendum more in line with the HN aesthetic. Calling your software startup Red Planet Labs is a bit like calling your architecture firm Lunar Industries. We are too late in the age of space travel for such 'whimsical' venture names to not be intrinsically confounding.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here.
nathanmarz 8y ago
Founder here. Excited to announce Red Planet Labs today. I'll try my best to answer any questions here. Also want to emphasize that we're a fully distributed company, and we're hiring! If you're a strong Clojure programmer we would love to hear from you (though we're open to non-Clojure folks as well).
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  Thanks very much for your post. I'm intrigued, but to be honest, your post set off a lot of warning bells in my head in that it talked about things very much in generalities, but I still don't really know what you intend to do. Perhaps that's just because you want to keep your cards close to your chest for now, but how should I think of your company. Is it like Firebase but instead of "consumer mobile" focused it is enterprise focused? How should I think of it in comparison to the PAAS offerings from AWS, GCP, Hiroku, etc.
  - nathanmarz 8y ago
    We're revealing very little about the technology at the moment. For now, I can say that it's a single tool upon which you can build nearly your entire backend. It will be kind of like Hadoop or Storm in that it's infrastructure that you deploy and then program your applications using a Java API.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- ryanworl 8y ago
  Why did you choose Clojure?
  - nathanmarz 8y ago
    Clojure's a fantastic language. Writing our code in an immutable style leads to much more robust code, and we heavily make use of the expressive power of Clojure (e.g. macros, protocols, etc.)
driverdan 8y ago
What's the point of this article? It sounds like you've started a company and raised a round but don't have anything to show for it yet. Why should HN readers care? Shouldn't this post be made once you have a product?
- platz 8y ago
  They want to hire clojure folks
qarly 8y ago
Interesting, so is the end product itself going to be a Clojure-based developer tool? Would be huge news for the community.
- nathanmarz 8y ago
  No, it will be a Java API. Unfortunately, making a tool Clojure only limits your potential userbase too much.
dr_win 8y ago
For clojurists here, Nathan is the creator of the Specter[1] library. Which is a brilliant idea and technical masterpiece, IMO. Nathan, kudos and good luck! [1] https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter
cljcljclj 8y ago
By "fully distributed company" do they mean worldwide or US-only ?
- nathanmarz 8y ago
  We're open to candidates from anywhere in the world. The constraint is they'll need to work hours that overlap with the rest of the team – we do daily standups and 1-2 hours of pair programming each day. For candidates in a significantly different timezone, that could mean working in the afternoon and evening instead of a typical 9-5.
StevenLeRoux 8y ago
My guess it would be an infrastructure platform where you serialize your code, and you would provide all primitives as SDK to manage business logic, storage and scheduling. Could we call it a batteries included FaaS platform? :) You mentioned the service being accessible as a Java API. Would it be Java only or other SDK (Python, Rust, Go, ...) could follow? Also, how do you think to distribute the service? Full SaaS or OSS/SaaS? Congrats for the funding and good luck for coming challenges!
- nathanmarz 8y ago
  V1 will probably just be JVM only. We'll certainly look at supporting other languages in the future. The goal is to offer our product both on-prem and as a service.

39 points by nathanmarz 8y ago

> ... but multiple orders of magnitude cost reduction for building end-to-end, scalable software applications. So I would guess it's toolchain and/or debugging/tracing tools for building scalable distributed system?

pisipisipisi 8y ago
"better serverless?"
- oldgun 8y ago
  Could very well be.

garry 8y ago

I got to know Nathan 10 years ago when he was working at my YC batchmate's startup Backtype. He created Apache Storm previously, and now with Red Planet Labs, he's made something incredibly elegant - when I saw it, it was clear to me this would be the backend to end all backends. There are some very powerful abstractions here that will make developers a lot more powerful. He's hiring and this is probably the best pure opportunity to write code that will touch a lot of people. Talk to Nathan!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

fuddle 8y ago

I noticed this in the job description - "Three weeks of mandatory paid vacation. Overworking not allowed!". Great idea, I have old colleagues who wouldn't take holidays and had up to 3 months in holidays accrued.

nathanmarz 8y ago
Thanks, I strongly believe this is the only rational vacation policy for a company to have. Overworking destroys productivity, so preventing it is better for the employee and the company!
- allworknoplay 8y ago
  Interesting policy! I've actually worked at a couple companies where I've felt that management insisting we take vacations worked as a proxy for better management and support. Vacation doesn't matter if the job is hellish. Hopefully you've got that bit down too :)

avitzurel 8y ago

Back in (I think) 2014/5 I worked on http://docs.the-startup-stack.com/ http://docs.the-startup-stack.com/. My goal was to create a toolchain that is battle-tested production-ready and pluggable to help companies deliver code faster and worry less about operations. I started it in my spare time and worked on it for about 3-4 months. I still believe there is a HUGE need for this and that many companies are solving the same problem over and over again. It's super expensive to build. The challenge is catching companies at the right time. It needs to be as easy to start as it is with Heroku and a Rails application BUT you should be able to grow and scale up with batteries includes (unlike AWS). Another challenge is the fragmentation of development tools/frameworks/configurations and cycles. Very interesting space.

treis 8y ago

I wish them the best of luck, but this seems like a difficult market to enter. Lots of existing players and momentum towards containers and K8s. I'm interested to see what their better mousetrap is.

nathanmarz 8y ago
Can't reveal too much about the technology as of yet, but the key thing is our technology is not incremental improvement. It's orders of magnitude improvement to what currently exists. You're right that it's a crowded market, but in our minds the market is currently offering horses while we'll be offering Teslas :)

nategri 8y ago

* doesn't have anything to do with Mars * * stops reading * * Edit: By way of apology I will make an addendum more in line with the HN aesthetic. Calling your software startup Red Planet Labs is a bit like calling your architecture firm Lunar Industries. We are too late in the age of space travel for such 'whimsical' venture names to not be intrinsically confounding.

dang 8y ago
Please don't do this here.

nathanmarz 8y ago

Founder here. Excited to announce Red Planet Labs today. I'll try my best to answer any questions here. Also want to emphasize that we're a fully distributed company, and we're hiring! If you're a strong Clojure programmer we would love to hear from you (though we're open to non-Clojure folks as well).

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
Thanks very much for your post. I'm intrigued, but to be honest, your post set off a lot of warning bells in my head in that it talked about things very much in generalities, but I still don't really know what you intend to do. Perhaps that's just because you want to keep your cards close to your chest for now, but how should I think of your company. Is it like Firebase but instead of "consumer mobile" focused it is enterprise focused? How should I think of it in comparison to the PAAS offerings from AWS, GCP, Hiroku, etc.
- nathanmarz 8y ago
  We're revealing very little about the technology at the moment. For now, I can say that it's a single tool upon which you can build nearly your entire backend. It will be kind of like Hadoop or Storm in that it's infrastructure that you deploy and then program your applications using a Java API.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
ryanworl 8y ago
Why did you choose Clojure?
- nathanmarz 8y ago
  Clojure's a fantastic language. Writing our code in an immutable style leads to much more robust code, and we heavily make use of the expressive power of Clojure (e.g. macros, protocols, etc.)

driverdan 8y ago

What's the point of this article? It sounds like you've started a company and raised a round but don't have anything to show for it yet. Why should HN readers care? Shouldn't this post be made once you have a product?

platz 8y ago
They want to hire clojure folks

qarly 8y ago

Interesting, so is the end product itself going to be a Clojure-based developer tool? Would be huge news for the community.

nathanmarz 8y ago
No, it will be a Java API. Unfortunately, making a tool Clojure only limits your potential userbase too much.

dr_win 8y ago

For clojurists here, Nathan is the creator of the Specter[1] library. Which is a brilliant idea and technical masterpiece, IMO. Nathan, kudos and good luck! [1] https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter

cljcljclj 8y ago

By "fully distributed company" do they mean worldwide or US-only ?

nathanmarz 8y ago
We're open to candidates from anywhere in the world. The constraint is they'll need to work hours that overlap with the rest of the team – we do daily standups and 1-2 hours of pair programming each day. For candidates in a significantly different timezone, that could mean working in the afternoon and evening instead of a typical 9-5.

StevenLeRoux 8y ago

My guess it would be an infrastructure platform where you serialize your code, and you would provide all primitives as SDK to manage business logic, storage and scheduling. Could we call it a batteries included FaaS platform? :) You mentioned the service being accessible as a Java API. Would it be Java only or other SDK (Python, Rust, Go, ...) could follow? Also, how do you think to distribute the service? Full SaaS or OSS/SaaS? Congrats for the funding and good luck for coming challenges!

nathanmarz 8y ago
V1 will probably just be JVM only. We'll certainly look at supporting other languages in the future. The goal is to offer our product both on-prem and as a service.