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Vercel – $102M to Continue Building the Next Web, Together

75 points by migueloller 5y ago

hellotherehn 5y ago
Fantastic platform!
- leerob 5y ago
  Thank you!
mxschmitt 5y ago
Great platform! They are able to improve the DX (developer experience) year after year and update their products to make building and hosting websites tremendously easy.
rst13 5y ago
I wonder how Netlify is doing in comparison
- hellotherehn 5y ago
  Based of non-scientific research, I think Netlify is approx 4x larger than Vercel in terms of headcount and annual revenue.
wumaodang 5y ago
Congrats Guillermo and team! Well deserved.
mahmoudimus 5y ago
The Developer Experience (DX) on Vercel is exceptional. Definitely rivals the best companies. Great job Guillermo! Way to really understand your customer profile.
daypay 5y ago
Easily the best platform I've used over the years. Excellent community, support, and toolings all around. Kudos to the team and all contributors.
jollybean 5y ago
Dear Vercel: Please describe 'what the it is' on the first page of your website. 1st line: "Vercel combines the best developer experience with an obsessive focus on end-user performance. Our platform enables frontend teams to do their best work." 2cnd: "Developers love Next.js, the open source React framework Vercel built together with Google and Facebook. Next.js powers the biggest websites like Twilio, for use cases in e-commerce, travel, news, and marketing." 3rd: "Vercel is the best place to deploy any frontend app. Start by deploying with zero configuration to our global edge network. Scale dynamically to millions of pages without breaking a sweat." 4th: "Accelerate with your team Frontend development is not meant to be a solo activity. The Vercel platform makes it a collaborative experience with deploy previews for every code change, by seamlessly integrating with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket." Etc. Etc. Etc. I get that it's something about making apps, something related to react, and that you're 'obsessive' etc. but nowhere do you seem to describe what this is, or even the thrust of it. Is it a framework, a hosted service for files, servers, lambas? Even your docs. introductory page doesn't say 'what the it is': https://vercel.com/docs https://vercel.com/docs I think many of us won't be bothered to 'try' something that can't be described in anything but 'higher order abstractions' (i.e. 'made for you', 'performs well', 'respected by others'). It's like your missing 1 or 2 very key sentences that would really help.
- leerob 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. "Our platform enables frontend teams to do their best work" -> Our platform includes frameworks (e.g. Next.js), deployment and hosting (e.g. serverless infrastructure), and collaboration (preview deployments, nextjs.org/live). The first section of the docs (https://vercel.com/docs https://vercel.com/docs) says: "Vercel enables developers to host websites and web services that deploy instantly and scale automatically – all without any configuration." How could we improve this further? Which part is still unclear? Open to any feedback.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    In the context of 'a person arriving knows nothing about Vercel' ... 'hosting websites' can mean a lot of things. Are you hosting static files? Like AWS S3? It's a giant file server? With some fancy framework specific aspects? Or is this like 'Wix', but using a specific framework? Servers? Lambdas? Where is the business logic? Is there storage, like RDMBS or or a document/noSQL DB? Maybe it's fair to assume a lot of people are familiar with Next.JS ... but I suggest most are not. 'Next.JS is a React front-end Framework' is helpful, but most of us already know React itself is a framework, so a 'framework on a framework' probably needs a few more words as well. So even a few well placed, even pedantic descriptions might help a lot, especially for those who arrive 'completely naive' i.e. have maybe 'heard of' Vercel, but that's it.
agustif 5y ago
Love Vercel, NextJS is my fav frontend framework. Great for using lambda funcitons abstracted away on their API folders... Best of luck
lazyjeff 5y ago
I recognized the username rauchg from when I worked with socket.io over 10 years ago. Super inspiring to see such a talented programmer do so much for the web.
steve_adams_86 5y ago
Vercel tooling is the best I’ve worked with in quite a while in the web dev world. It makes so much sense for our team to pay for it - it’s incredibly productive. Glad to see this.
saklani 5y ago
Vercel’s examples in the NextJS repo made life so much easier.
darepublic 5y ago
Might get downvoted for this but I'm not happy with how nextjs keeps expanding its scope. I don't want my server side react lib to do have anything to do with my deploy set up. Same with how nextjs now wants to meddle with my rest API. So while I use nextjs for some things I am having to opt out of more and more pieces of it.
- leerob 5y ago
  "I don't want my server side react lib to do have anything to do with my deploy set up." You can deploy Next.js anywhere that has a Node.js server. It's not dependent on any deployment set up. "Same with how nextjs now wants to meddle with my rest API." -> You also don't have to use API Routes! It's completely opt-in.

75 points by migueloller 5y ago

hellotherehn 5y ago

Fantastic platform!

leerob 5y ago
Thank you!

mxschmitt 5y ago

Great platform! They are able to improve the DX (developer experience) year after year and update their products to make building and hosting websites tremendously easy.

rst13 5y ago

I wonder how Netlify is doing in comparison

hellotherehn 5y ago
Based of non-scientific research, I think Netlify is approx 4x larger than Vercel in terms of headcount and annual revenue.

wumaodang 5y ago

Congrats Guillermo and team! Well deserved.

mahmoudimus 5y ago

The Developer Experience (DX) on Vercel is exceptional. Definitely rivals the best companies. Great job Guillermo! Way to really understand your customer profile.

daypay 5y ago

Easily the best platform I've used over the years. Excellent community, support, and toolings all around. Kudos to the team and all contributors.

jollybean 5y ago

Dear Vercel: Please describe 'what the it is' on the first page of your website. 1st line: "Vercel combines the best developer experience with an obsessive focus on end-user performance. Our platform enables frontend teams to do their best work." 2cnd: "Developers love Next.js, the open source React framework Vercel built together with Google and Facebook. Next.js powers the biggest websites like Twilio, for use cases in e-commerce, travel, news, and marketing." 3rd: "Vercel is the best place to deploy any frontend app. Start by deploying with zero configuration to our global edge network. Scale dynamically to millions of pages without breaking a sweat." 4th: "Accelerate with your team Frontend development is not meant to be a solo activity. The Vercel platform makes it a collaborative experience with deploy previews for every code change, by seamlessly integrating with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket." Etc. Etc. Etc. I get that it's something about making apps, something related to react, and that you're 'obsessive' etc. but nowhere do you seem to describe what this is, or even the thrust of it. Is it a framework, a hosted service for files, servers, lambas? Even your docs. introductory page doesn't say 'what the it is': https://vercel.com/docs https://vercel.com/docs I think many of us won't be bothered to 'try' something that can't be described in anything but 'higher order abstractions' (i.e. 'made for you', 'performs well', 'respected by others'). It's like your missing 1 or 2 very key sentences that would really help.

leerob 5y ago
Thanks for the feedback. "Our platform enables frontend teams to do their best work" -> Our platform includes frameworks (e.g. Next.js), deployment and hosting (e.g. serverless infrastructure), and collaboration (preview deployments, nextjs.org/live). The first section of the docs (https://vercel.com/docs https://vercel.com/docs) says: "Vercel enables developers to host websites and web services that deploy instantly and scale automatically – all without any configuration." How could we improve this further? Which part is still unclear? Open to any feedback.
- jollybean 5y ago
  In the context of 'a person arriving knows nothing about Vercel' ... 'hosting websites' can mean a lot of things. Are you hosting static files? Like AWS S3? It's a giant file server? With some fancy framework specific aspects? Or is this like 'Wix', but using a specific framework? Servers? Lambdas? Where is the business logic? Is there storage, like RDMBS or or a document/noSQL DB? Maybe it's fair to assume a lot of people are familiar with Next.JS ... but I suggest most are not. 'Next.JS is a React front-end Framework' is helpful, but most of us already know React itself is a framework, so a 'framework on a framework' probably needs a few more words as well. So even a few well placed, even pedantic descriptions might help a lot, especially for those who arrive 'completely naive' i.e. have maybe 'heard of' Vercel, but that's it.

agustif 5y ago

Love Vercel, NextJS is my fav frontend framework. Great for using lambda funcitons abstracted away on their API folders... Best of luck

lazyjeff 5y ago

I recognized the username rauchg from when I worked with socket.io over 10 years ago. Super inspiring to see such a talented programmer do so much for the web.

steve_adams_86 5y ago

Vercel tooling is the best I’ve worked with in quite a while in the web dev world. It makes so much sense for our team to pay for it - it’s incredibly productive. Glad to see this.

saklani 5y ago

Vercel’s examples in the NextJS repo made life so much easier.

darepublic 5y ago

Might get downvoted for this but I'm not happy with how nextjs keeps expanding its scope. I don't want my server side react lib to do have anything to do with my deploy set up. Same with how nextjs now wants to meddle with my rest API. So while I use nextjs for some things I am having to opt out of more and more pieces of it.

leerob 5y ago
"I don't want my server side react lib to do have anything to do with my deploy set up." You can deploy Next.js anywhere that has a Node.js server. It's not dependent on any deployment set up. "Same with how nextjs now wants to meddle with my rest API." -> You also don't have to use API Routes! It's completely opt-in.