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Python is growing well, even relative to Java, for $$$ data stack stuff that VCs have a reason to like Compare: Funding databases is some of the most appealin

Python is growing well, even relative to Java, for $$$ data stack stuff that VCs have a reason to like Compare: Funding databases is some of the most appealing for sw infra VC b/c as business fundamentals like monetization (pay for hosting, data, etc), growth, retention, are some of the most successful & low-risk Funding the sw compute tier is a peg down but appealing for similar reasons. Basically same-but-weaker than DBs on the above dimensions, but still worth it as customers struggle w/ compute at scale (technical + business), so still works. Think early databricks vs snowflake, and how databricks grew to owning more than compute to data lakehouse, dashboards, etc: started as pure compute and now closer to snowflake. Python is popular for a lot of these compute tier stacks. Orchestrators, AI, ETL, etc. The technical, social, & economic reasons are all interesting & relevant for why.

vosper 3y ago
Where’s the profit in funding a library, though? The others examples you gave are SaaSable, I don’t see that for a library. Paid support, sure, maybe, but does that get the kind of return a VC needs?
- lmeyerov 3y ago
  They're not selling the library but a managed cloud runtime for a scaleout compute tier. The clientside library is part of the freemium, and as workloads need to go bigger, they want to be the easy button for that. That's similar to anyscale (ray), coiled & saturncloud (dask), and early databricks (spark). Managing infra for that kind of thing is annoying. These companies don't OSS their cloud stack. Wishing them luck! A lot of arrow-core compute tier & db co's emerging, so cool to see the many years paying off.
  - vosper 3y ago
    > They're not selling the library but a managed cloud runtime for a scaleout compute tier. The clientside library is part of the freemium, and as workloads need to go bigger, they want to be the easy button for that. That's what I had missed - thanks.

vosper 3y ago

Where’s the profit in funding a library, though? The others examples you gave are SaaSable, I don’t see that for a library. Paid support, sure, maybe, but does that get the kind of return a VC needs?

lmeyerov 3y ago
They're not selling the library but a managed cloud runtime for a scaleout compute tier. The clientside library is part of the freemium, and as workloads need to go bigger, they want to be the easy button for that. That's similar to anyscale (ray), coiled & saturncloud (dask), and early databricks (spark). Managing infra for that kind of thing is annoying. These companies don't OSS their cloud stack. Wishing them luck! A lot of arrow-core compute tier & db co's emerging, so cool to see the many years paying off.
- vosper 3y ago
  > They're not selling the library but a managed cloud runtime for a scaleout compute tier. The clientside library is part of the freemium, and as workloads need to go bigger, they want to be the easy button for that. That's what I had missed - thanks.