4 ms·

The headline and even the article reads like a big nothing burger.

berkle4455 3y ago
A company with ~60 employees raising $70M seems pretty noteworthy to me. That's a lot of cash to go toward 14 jobs https://fly.io/jobs/ https://fly.io/jobs/.
- OriginalMrPink 3y ago
  I'm not doubting this at all. But let me be more specific what I don't like about their communication. "$70MM led by EQT Ventures." That's awesome, but what are you giving away for this? Are founders selling their shares? Where is the beef? $70M can be everything and nothing at the same time. "There are customers who are comfortable engaging with tiny Fly.io, and others who are comfortable engaging with the Fly.io that raised an additional $70M led by EQT ventures." I'm pretty sure that your enterprise customers are already wowed by a 25M infusion by AtoZ. So again, where is the beef, especially after stating: "Why do startups write announcements like these? We went back and forth on it. There are lots of reasons, most of them dumb." I can keep going with more examples. But the headlines says it all. The 70M clickbait 'we raised a bunch of money" - wow, so chill, bruv.
  - comice 3y ago
    > We’re all adults here, we can talk about this stuff, right? proceeds to not really talk about it
    - tptacek 3y ago
      What more were you hoping to hear? We were really blunt about it. We wrote this post in attempt to sign Alcoa as a customer.
      - comice 3y ago
        as the OP says: > but what are you giving away for this? Are founders selling their shares? Where is the beef? $70M can be everything and nothing at the same time.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        tptacek 3y ago
        You get that there's a whole section of this post headlined "Why We Raised A Bunch Of Money", right?
        comice 3y ago
        yes and I reread it a few times in case I was missing something. I even turned my adblocker off in case it was removing the section that answers OP's questions but it didn't appear. It's obviously perfectly fine if you don't want to or can't answer those questions and nobody is owed answers to them. Just, you're known for a straight talking style so the omission is conspicuous.
        tptacek 3y ago
        I honestly don't know what it is you're looking to hear. We said what we're using the money for: hardware, rolling out more regions, and a bunch more support and infra engineers.
        comice 3y ago
        you are telling us what fly will be spending the money on. what OP is asking is, what did the investors receive in exchange for giving fly the money.
        tptacek 3y ago
        Stock.
- lazyant 3y ago
  Not even 14 jobs, there's only one (or two) open positions listed there.
  - berkle4455 3y ago
    Oh, damn, I didn't even notice that the job is listed alongside a "no positions"
  - tptacek 3y ago
    We'll be hiring for many of these positions again shortly. We weren't funding constrained, just people constrained; there are whole sprawling threads on HN about how annoyed we managed to make some people (a small minority of applicants, but that doesn't make it any easier for us to metabolize) with our responsiveness in our hiring process. We halted most hiring to retool and nail down hiring processes, and also to onboard all the people we hired (so they can help us do more hiring stuff). Raising lots of money to hire 2 people is a funny flex, so I sort of wanted to leave this unanswered, but I also don't want to miss an opportunity to put on a hairshirt and talk about things we fucked up.

A company with ~60 employees raising $70M seems pretty noteworthy to me. That's a lot of cash to go toward 14 jobs https://fly.io/jobs/ https://fly.io/jobs/.

OriginalMrPink 3y ago
I'm not doubting this at all. But let me be more specific what I don't like about their communication. "$70MM led by EQT Ventures." That's awesome, but what are you giving away for this? Are founders selling their shares? Where is the beef? $70M can be everything and nothing at the same time. "There are customers who are comfortable engaging with tiny Fly.io, and others who are comfortable engaging with the Fly.io that raised an additional $70M led by EQT ventures." I'm pretty sure that your enterprise customers are already wowed by a 25M infusion by AtoZ. So again, where is the beef, especially after stating: "Why do startups write announcements like these? We went back and forth on it. There are lots of reasons, most of them dumb." I can keep going with more examples. But the headlines says it all. The 70M clickbait 'we raised a bunch of money" - wow, so chill, bruv.
- comice 3y ago
  > We’re all adults here, we can talk about this stuff, right? proceeds to not really talk about it
  - tptacek 3y ago
    What more were you hoping to hear? We were really blunt about it. We wrote this post in attempt to sign Alcoa as a customer.
    - comice 3y ago
      as the OP says: > but what are you giving away for this? Are founders selling their shares? Where is the beef? $70M can be everything and nothing at the same time.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - tptacek 3y ago
        You get that there's a whole section of this post headlined "Why We Raised A Bunch Of Money", right?
        comice 3y ago
        yes and I reread it a few times in case I was missing something. I even turned my adblocker off in case it was removing the section that answers OP's questions but it didn't appear. It's obviously perfectly fine if you don't want to or can't answer those questions and nobody is owed answers to them. Just, you're known for a straight talking style so the omission is conspicuous.
        tptacek 3y ago
        I honestly don't know what it is you're looking to hear. We said what we're using the money for: hardware, rolling out more regions, and a bunch more support and infra engineers.
        comice 3y ago
        you are telling us what fly will be spending the money on. what OP is asking is, what did the investors receive in exchange for giving fly the money.
        tptacek 3y ago
        Stock.
lazyant 3y ago
Not even 14 jobs, there's only one (or two) open positions listed there.
- berkle4455 3y ago
  Oh, damn, I didn't even notice that the job is listed alongside a "no positions"
- tptacek 3y ago
  We'll be hiring for many of these positions again shortly. We weren't funding constrained, just people constrained; there are whole sprawling threads on HN about how annoyed we managed to make some people (a small minority of applicants, but that doesn't make it any easier for us to metabolize) with our responsiveness in our hiring process. We halted most hiring to retool and nail down hiring processes, and also to onboard all the people we hired (so they can help us do more hiring stuff). Raising lots of money to hire 2 people is a funny flex, so I sort of wanted to leave this unanswered, but I also don't want to miss an opportunity to put on a hairshirt and talk about things we fucked up.