7 ms·

Bluesky is in good financial shape for quite some time based on existing funding. And we're also working hard to be sustainable, which we believe is entirely fe

Bluesky is in good financial shape for quite some time based on existing funding. And we're also working hard to be sustainable, which we believe is entirely feasible given our small team. But we're also ensuring that everything required to make the network sustainable over time is completely open.

coldpie 3y ago
That's not a very inspiring answer :( The consequences of taking VC money are going to come home to roost at some point.
- jakebsky 3y ago
  We'll see! The history of funded companies popularizing open protocols is not without precedent. I'm inspired by Netscape, which was the VC-backed company that made the web happen.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    A notable difference is that Netscape had a business model, namely, selling Navigator. Anyway, enjoy the ride.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Saying they "made the web happen" is just nonsense. They had one of several popular browsers, and one of several popular web servers. As much as I stayed up late to download new Netscape betas, had they never existed the web would still be just fine, and the customers of the ISP I ran at the time would have just used another browser.
    - andybak 3y ago
      Hmmmm. I would argue the web would have been significanty different. There was a fairly big gap between Mosaic and Internet Explorer that Netscape filled and it was the period that largely defined the web as it came to be. Since IE was developed specifically to counter the threat of Netscape - it was also defined by Netscape. What other browsers of note were around in that period?
      - vidarh 3y ago
        Netscape 0.9 was released in October '94. IE was released in August '95 and the first version was just a licensed rebrand of Spyglass Mosaic (which despite the licensed Mosaic name was not a version of Mosaic). There was a number of browsers coming up at that time, and Mosaic was if anything what drove much of that early boom, as the most successful option that led to both Netscape, Spyglass, and by extension IE. Remember that Mosaic was readily licensed (and source available, though not under an open source license) - there were a number of other Mosaic offshoots (e.g. AMosaic for Amiga was released in December '93, with datatypes support) Other browsers than Netscape around that era, excluding the text based ones, included: * 1992: ViolaWWW (Unix; pioneered embedded objects, stylesheets, tables, client-side scripting); Erwise (Unix); MidasWWW (Unix) * 1993: Spyglass (licensed the Mosaic name, but written from scratch; also the origin of IE), AMosaic (Amiga), Cello (Windows), any number of Mosaic licensees, Arena (Unix, Linux, NeXT; pre-release in '93; full public release '94; Arena was co-written by the later Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie, and pioneered layout extensions that turned into work on stylesheets and eventually CSS) * 1994: Argo (Bert Bos - co-creator of CSS; Unix; testbed for style sheets alongside Arena, and one of the first heavily plugin based browsers, with most functionality provided by plugins), IBM WebExplorer (Mosaic licensee); Slipknot (Windows; a really weird one which dealt with lack of SLIP/PPP connections by "hijacking" a Unix terminal connection, running lynx to retrieve the HTML, and then using zmodem to transfer both the HTML and images...) * 1995: IE (licensed version of Spyglass); Grail (Python; supported client side execution of Python...); OmniWeb (Mac) * 1996: Amaya (Unix, Windows, Linux, OS X), IBrowse (Amiga), Aweb (Amiga); Opera (Windows initially); Cyberdog; Arachne (DOS, Linux including framebuffer...; still updated as of two years ago...) Netscape took a lot of users from various Mosaic licensees, like Spyglass, and browsers like Cello; had it not existed, sure, things would have looked different, but timeline-wise the gap was narrow. Many of the browser - like Opera - that launched after Netscape had started development before Netscape launched, and others were abandoned in some cases directly because of Netscape. Some were probably no big loss, but Netscape's brief dominance contributed to the near monoculture we had for many years. There is no doubt it had improvements over Mosaic - I remember vividly the day the release with background image support spread across campus and every webpage looked garish for the next several years - but it was an advantage measured in months, and with competition heating up until Netscape stunted it for quite some time by becoming as dominant as they did until IE started catching up. A lot of the things Netscape is sometimes remembered for were not Netscape firsts either, or areas where they necessary had a lead. E.g. client-side scripting, style sheets, etc existed before Netscape; work on CSS was ongoing at CERN around the time Netscape launched etc. At most things would have looked different, and maybe some things might have taken a bit more time without Netscape scaring Microsoft. But I also remember a lot of ire at how Netscape pre-empted a lot of standards at the time by just throwing stuff at the wall, and untangling the mess they left took years.
  - alexb_ 3y ago
    Maybe I'm just being a hater, but the inspiration being a web browser that failed after being acquired by AOL at dot-com level stupid high prices, doesn't inspire confidence at all. Sure, it helped pave the way for Firefox, but Netscape itself never actually did anything.
    - jakebsky 3y ago
      Netscape created the first highly usable web browser, which introduced most people to the web. They also created SSL (TLS), JavaScript, the first high performance web server, and much more that that made the web go.
      - alexb_ 3y ago
        Oh yeah, I'm not denying that Netscape pioneered a lot of stuff. They also would have went out of business had they not been bought by AOL at a stupid, dot-com inflated price. You can do something that creates a lot of changes in the world, but if your business model involves giving people things for less than it takes to produce then I don't see how that's a business. What are VCs expecting to get a return on their capital? What's the plan to actually make a profit? Is the plan just to get bought out at a stupidly inflated price, similar to your inspiration of Netscape?
        vidarh 3y ago
        They pioneered very little. Viola pioneered client side scripting, stylesheets and more. Netscape popularized a number of things, thanks to heaps of cash that let them market heavily, and in the process overtaking a bunch of competitors, and snuffing out many of them. They did have a great browser that was best for a period of a few years, but it's not like there weren't plenty of alternatives either out or right around the corner when they launched. Fully agree with you they would not have survived long if the AOL sale hadn't happened.
        freeopinion 3y ago
        Perhaps Jake is saying that it is more important to make the world better right now than to have 100 year business plan. It sounds like Jake is willing to lead the charge for now and risk death later if it means that the concept succeeds under any flag. Or maybe I'm just putting words in their mouth. What if the founders of MySpace are totally ok with its place in history and happy that social media under any name carries on their vision? Maybe they don't consider that a failure.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Wow, all those VC's must have walked away very rich, considering how popular the web turned out to be!!!
  - pjlegato 3y ago
    Netscape didn't invent the web, its open protocol, or even the first browsers. They did not make the web happen. Netscape had a business model (charge people for browser software.) Netscape also went bankrupt. It was a colossal failure as a business.
  - gumby 3y ago
    Netscape did not start out an open source company -- quite the opposite. It was a saving throw once Explorer took away their dominance. And I wouldn't say it was a successful move.
rglullis 3y ago
Sorry, this is a non-answer. Is there a business model in mind or not?
- jakebsky 3y ago
  We've announced one business model and do intend to iterate and add others, but that's all we've announced for now. The plan is definitely to be sustainable over the long-term.
  - taco_emoji 3y ago
    Honestly this is fucking whacko to me. "We've incorporated a legal entity whose entire purpose is to make money, but we have no idea how that's going to happen." How is this even allowed? Anyway the answer is ads. This just means it's going to be ads. It's always fucking ads. No one has ever gone into a capitalistic venture sans business plan and ended up doing anything besides selling fucking ads.
    - andruby 3y ago
      I really hope they do freemium. If they can run it with a small enough team, then freemium could be feasible. Sell special tools and functions to the power users.
    - coldpie 3y ago
      Ads are the most frequent answer, but it's not the only one. There's also the team getting acqui-hired, or getting bought by a competitor & shut down, or just plain old going out of business and sold for parts. None of those are good for users, obviously, but they are all viable paths for repaying VCs in absence of a business model.
      - taco_emoji 3y ago
        Sure, I guess I meant for long-lived products.
    - 3y ago
JimDabell 3y ago
> we're also working hard to be sustainable When people ask you what your business model is, they are asking you how you are going to do this.

coldpie 3y ago

That's not a very inspiring answer :( The consequences of taking VC money are going to come home to roost at some point.

jakebsky 3y ago
We'll see! The history of funded companies popularizing open protocols is not without precedent. I'm inspired by Netscape, which was the VC-backed company that made the web happen.
- coldpie 3y ago
  A notable difference is that Netscape had a business model, namely, selling Navigator. Anyway, enjoy the ride.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Saying they "made the web happen" is just nonsense. They had one of several popular browsers, and one of several popular web servers. As much as I stayed up late to download new Netscape betas, had they never existed the web would still be just fine, and the customers of the ISP I ran at the time would have just used another browser.
  - andybak 3y ago
    Hmmmm. I would argue the web would have been significanty different. There was a fairly big gap between Mosaic and Internet Explorer that Netscape filled and it was the period that largely defined the web as it came to be. Since IE was developed specifically to counter the threat of Netscape - it was also defined by Netscape. What other browsers of note were around in that period?
    - vidarh 3y ago
      Netscape 0.9 was released in October '94. IE was released in August '95 and the first version was just a licensed rebrand of Spyglass Mosaic (which despite the licensed Mosaic name was not a version of Mosaic). There was a number of browsers coming up at that time, and Mosaic was if anything what drove much of that early boom, as the most successful option that led to both Netscape, Spyglass, and by extension IE. Remember that Mosaic was readily licensed (and source available, though not under an open source license) - there were a number of other Mosaic offshoots (e.g. AMosaic for Amiga was released in December '93, with datatypes support) Other browsers than Netscape around that era, excluding the text based ones, included: * 1992: ViolaWWW (Unix; pioneered embedded objects, stylesheets, tables, client-side scripting); Erwise (Unix); MidasWWW (Unix) * 1993: Spyglass (licensed the Mosaic name, but written from scratch; also the origin of IE), AMosaic (Amiga), Cello (Windows), any number of Mosaic licensees, Arena (Unix, Linux, NeXT; pre-release in '93; full public release '94; Arena was co-written by the later Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie, and pioneered layout extensions that turned into work on stylesheets and eventually CSS) * 1994: Argo (Bert Bos - co-creator of CSS; Unix; testbed for style sheets alongside Arena, and one of the first heavily plugin based browsers, with most functionality provided by plugins), IBM WebExplorer (Mosaic licensee); Slipknot (Windows; a really weird one which dealt with lack of SLIP/PPP connections by "hijacking" a Unix terminal connection, running lynx to retrieve the HTML, and then using zmodem to transfer both the HTML and images...) * 1995: IE (licensed version of Spyglass); Grail (Python; supported client side execution of Python...); OmniWeb (Mac) * 1996: Amaya (Unix, Windows, Linux, OS X), IBrowse (Amiga), Aweb (Amiga); Opera (Windows initially); Cyberdog; Arachne (DOS, Linux including framebuffer...; still updated as of two years ago...) Netscape took a lot of users from various Mosaic licensees, like Spyglass, and browsers like Cello; had it not existed, sure, things would have looked different, but timeline-wise the gap was narrow. Many of the browser - like Opera - that launched after Netscape had started development before Netscape launched, and others were abandoned in some cases directly because of Netscape. Some were probably no big loss, but Netscape's brief dominance contributed to the near monoculture we had for many years. There is no doubt it had improvements over Mosaic - I remember vividly the day the release with background image support spread across campus and every webpage looked garish for the next several years - but it was an advantage measured in months, and with competition heating up until Netscape stunted it for quite some time by becoming as dominant as they did until IE started catching up. A lot of the things Netscape is sometimes remembered for were not Netscape firsts either, or areas where they necessary had a lead. E.g. client-side scripting, style sheets, etc existed before Netscape; work on CSS was ongoing at CERN around the time Netscape launched etc. At most things would have looked different, and maybe some things might have taken a bit more time without Netscape scaring Microsoft. But I also remember a lot of ire at how Netscape pre-empted a lot of standards at the time by just throwing stuff at the wall, and untangling the mess they left took years.
- alexb_ 3y ago
  Maybe I'm just being a hater, but the inspiration being a web browser that failed after being acquired by AOL at dot-com level stupid high prices, doesn't inspire confidence at all. Sure, it helped pave the way for Firefox, but Netscape itself never actually did anything.
  - jakebsky 3y ago
    Netscape created the first highly usable web browser, which introduced most people to the web. They also created SSL (TLS), JavaScript, the first high performance web server, and much more that that made the web go.
    - alexb_ 3y ago
      Oh yeah, I'm not denying that Netscape pioneered a lot of stuff. They also would have went out of business had they not been bought by AOL at a stupid, dot-com inflated price. You can do something that creates a lot of changes in the world, but if your business model involves giving people things for less than it takes to produce then I don't see how that's a business. What are VCs expecting to get a return on their capital? What's the plan to actually make a profit? Is the plan just to get bought out at a stupidly inflated price, similar to your inspiration of Netscape?
      - vidarh 3y ago
        They pioneered very little. Viola pioneered client side scripting, stylesheets and more. Netscape popularized a number of things, thanks to heaps of cash that let them market heavily, and in the process overtaking a bunch of competitors, and snuffing out many of them. They did have a great browser that was best for a period of a few years, but it's not like there weren't plenty of alternatives either out or right around the corner when they launched. Fully agree with you they would not have survived long if the AOL sale hadn't happened.
      - freeopinion 3y ago
        Perhaps Jake is saying that it is more important to make the world better right now than to have 100 year business plan. It sounds like Jake is willing to lead the charge for now and risk death later if it means that the concept succeeds under any flag. Or maybe I'm just putting words in their mouth. What if the founders of MySpace are totally ok with its place in history and happy that social media under any name carries on their vision? Maybe they don't consider that a failure.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Wow, all those VC's must have walked away very rich, considering how popular the web turned out to be!!!
- pjlegato 3y ago
  Netscape didn't invent the web, its open protocol, or even the first browsers. They did not make the web happen. Netscape had a business model (charge people for browser software.) Netscape also went bankrupt. It was a colossal failure as a business.
- gumby 3y ago
  Netscape did not start out an open source company -- quite the opposite. It was a saving throw once Explorer took away their dominance. And I wouldn't say it was a successful move.

rglullis 3y ago

Sorry, this is a non-answer. Is there a business model in mind or not?

jakebsky 3y ago
We've announced one business model and do intend to iterate and add others, but that's all we've announced for now. The plan is definitely to be sustainable over the long-term.
- taco_emoji 3y ago
  Honestly this is fucking whacko to me. "We've incorporated a legal entity whose entire purpose is to make money, but we have no idea how that's going to happen." How is this even allowed? Anyway the answer is ads. This just means it's going to be ads. It's always fucking ads. No one has ever gone into a capitalistic venture sans business plan and ended up doing anything besides selling fucking ads.
  - andruby 3y ago
    I really hope they do freemium. If they can run it with a small enough team, then freemium could be feasible. Sell special tools and functions to the power users.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    Ads are the most frequent answer, but it's not the only one. There's also the team getting acqui-hired, or getting bought by a competitor & shut down, or just plain old going out of business and sold for parts. None of those are good for users, obviously, but they are all viable paths for repaying VCs in absence of a business model.
    - taco_emoji 3y ago
      Sure, I guess I meant for long-lived products.
  - 3y ago

JimDabell 3y ago

> we're also working hard to be sustainable When people ask you what your business model is, they are asking you how you are going to do this.