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> The most important thing here: we raised venture money for Dioxus. Important, but in a _bad_ way? What will the VC expect out of Dioxus? How will you make mo

> The most important thing here: we raised venture money for Dioxus. Important, but in a _bad_ way? What will the VC expect out of Dioxus? How will you make money?

jkelleyrtp 3y ago
Venture doesn't necessarily mean bad. Long term the goal the goal is to dissolve the gates to Apple and Google's walled gardens, which I personally believe is a net good. As much is the idealist in me wants to do that with no venture backing, the realist in me knows we need Dioxus to be self sustaining and providing legitimate value for people to switch. Google spends 76 million dollars a year on catering alone - there's no way you can compete with Android and Flutter without huge resources. Apple and Google capture the value for their platforms via fees and lock-in. Our goal is to capture value by providing really good utilities for building and deploying apps. You can't move heaven and earth without a really big lever, and venture gives us more leverage.
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  If you don't mind me asking, what's the actual business model here? Are you going to charge for those utilities?
  - jkelleyrtp 3y ago
    Yes, we're looking at something like a Vercel/Expo model, probably built on Fly, Cloudflare, or AWS, but designed to be self hosted. We've got a decent amount of enterprise adoption and I think there's money to be made by selling something like a self-hosted Vercel. TBD on licensing - I'd want it to be open source but we wouldn't want people reselling our deploy platform. We raised a seed to prove that people want to build with dioxus. If that hypotheses is validated, then we invest in the deploy model. If not, we have OSS grants and corporate sponsors that will keep the project alive for years even if the VC money runs out. I'm not super interested in making money at the hobbyist tier - those developers are our evangelists. Enterprise self hosting is likely harder but I think we can provide a lot of value to teams building apps in large companies.
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      Neat, thank you!
    - anp 3y ago
      As a former Expo employee and someone who took a run at this space (moxie) before running out of steam, it’s really exciting to hear this is the approach you’re taking! I’ll be keeping an eye out :).
    - margorczynski 3y ago
      Cool stuff man, wishing you and the team all the best as a person who quite often uses Flutter for side projects but isn't a big fan of Dart. Any ETA on it being stable/1.0?
      - jkelleyrtp 3y ago
        Stable/1.0 is always tough to call, and you can't predict the future of course, but it does seem obvious that enterprise value 1.0 software. It's more likely that we 1.0 different pieces of the stack (core, rsx!, html) so the ecosystem can build on top of stable primitives. We probably couldn't 1.0 the renderers themselves for a while. It's probably another year of iteration until I feel like we're 100% stable, but my penchant for another rewrite is at an all time low.
- SkyMarshal 3y ago
  Speaking of Flutter, that and Electron seem to be the only really mature multi-platform build systems. What is Dioxus's competitive proposition vs those two? The performance and memory efficiency+safety of Rust is one, any others?
  - jkelleyrtp 3y ago
    I'd add React-Native / expo to your list. Flutter is written in Dart but renders to a canvas on the web making it a very, very poor choice for web apps. Especially backend/fullstack apps. Plus you can't use tailwind or whatever flavor of css library there is today. Flutter just nailed the "get up and running" part which we've got as well: `cargo binstall dioxus-cli`, `dx new`, `dx bundle` is literally less than 30 seconds. Hopefully `dx deploy` coming soon. Electron is... it's electron. A whole chromium instance, an IPC bridge between your frontend and the system, NodeJS, etc. If you compile for size, our desktop apps are 3mb. You can easily deploy them on an embedded/low end device. We're hoping to eat some market share in the embedded-ish land (not true embedded, but like industrial or POS). Dioxus also has mobile and desktop compatible server functions which basically no other projects have. Expo has been kinda exploring this space. One of our examples is deploying your own LLM on your own infrastructure with a dioxus mobile app UI and it fits in a single file and builds in under a minute.
    - SkyMarshal 3y ago
      Thanks, wasn't aware of Expo, though it seems to only do mobile+web apps but not desktop apps? > If you compile for size, our desktop apps are 3mb. I'm aware of this from familiarity with Tauri, but hearing it again still amazes me. Very cool. I have an app in mind I want to build, and really would like to have standalone versions on Android+iOS+Linux+Mac+Windows, plus a web app. But there's no way I can manage all that as a single developer. And the fact no development tool has really nailed this yet is telling how hard it is. Whoever really gets this right will save a ton of developer hours across the industry, and that's valuable. Good luck, hope you guys pull it off! PS - one feature request: a local/offline-first mode that eases development of apps that work even with poor or no internet connection. Basically I want to build something like Obsidian that is multi-platform, and does all processing and data storage locally first, in an accessible format like SQLLite or flat files, then syncs with the cloud when available, all with as few developer resources as possible. A tool that enables that would be amazing.
azemetre 3y ago
Yeah, it's becoming more common in my group of SWEs to specifically opt to NOT use VC backed software. Everyone has stories about companies closing shop and projects failing to continue onward. Why would Dioxus be any different? If VC's cared about tearing down walled gardens of Google and Apple, why not explicitly donate the money instead? Why have strings attached at all?
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > it's becoming more common in my group of SWEs to specifically opt to NOT use VC backed software so, what they use instead? Bugged, dead OSS dropped by creators?..
  - wpietri 3y ago
    "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
  - azemetre 3y ago
    No, normal OSS whose existence isn't tied to VC mostly. It's not like a hard/fast rule, just a heuristic.
    - riku_iki 3y ago
      There are very few good quality, stable, active OSS projects which is not fed by VC/corps money. In this case (UI for rust) there is no much choice.
      - fabrice_d 3y ago
        Funding by VC and funding by corps sponsors are 2 very different things. Check how linux desktop projects such as Gnome & KDE kept the lights on for >20 years without VC funding.
        riku_iki 3y ago
riku_iki 3y ago
> What will the VC expect out of Dioxus? there are several ways to monetize: - consultancy - "Pro" extensions on top of OSS core
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Consultancy is unlikely to give VC a 100x return. Enterprise extensions means the cursed land of open core and refusing to have features in the open source version, or a heavy SaaS push combined with a possible license change along the road, and these are the primary reasons to avoid VC-backed "open source for now".
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    > Enterprise extensions means the cursed land of open core and refusing to have features in the open source version yes, there are risks in exchange of VC money. You can branch your "Libre" project any time, and continue building on top of infra developed using VC funds and which you get for free. But what are other choices?

> The most important thing here: we raised venture money for Dioxus. Important, but in a _bad_ way? What will the VC expect out of Dioxus? How will you make money?

jkelleyrtp 3y ago

Venture doesn't necessarily mean bad. Long term the goal the goal is to dissolve the gates to Apple and Google's walled gardens, which I personally believe is a net good. As much is the idealist in me wants to do that with no venture backing, the realist in me knows we need Dioxus to be self sustaining and providing legitimate value for people to switch. Google spends 76 million dollars a year on catering alone - there's no way you can compete with Android and Flutter without huge resources. Apple and Google capture the value for their platforms via fees and lock-in. Our goal is to capture value by providing really good utilities for building and deploying apps. You can't move heaven and earth without a really big lever, and venture gives us more leverage.

steveklabnik 3y ago
If you don't mind me asking, what's the actual business model here? Are you going to charge for those utilities?
- jkelleyrtp 3y ago
  Yes, we're looking at something like a Vercel/Expo model, probably built on Fly, Cloudflare, or AWS, but designed to be self hosted. We've got a decent amount of enterprise adoption and I think there's money to be made by selling something like a self-hosted Vercel. TBD on licensing - I'd want it to be open source but we wouldn't want people reselling our deploy platform. We raised a seed to prove that people want to build with dioxus. If that hypotheses is validated, then we invest in the deploy model. If not, we have OSS grants and corporate sponsors that will keep the project alive for years even if the VC money runs out. I'm not super interested in making money at the hobbyist tier - those developers are our evangelists. Enterprise self hosting is likely harder but I think we can provide a lot of value to teams building apps in large companies.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Neat, thank you!
  - anp 3y ago
    As a former Expo employee and someone who took a run at this space (moxie) before running out of steam, it’s really exciting to hear this is the approach you’re taking! I’ll be keeping an eye out :).
  - margorczynski 3y ago
    Cool stuff man, wishing you and the team all the best as a person who quite often uses Flutter for side projects but isn't a big fan of Dart. Any ETA on it being stable/1.0?
    - jkelleyrtp 3y ago
      Stable/1.0 is always tough to call, and you can't predict the future of course, but it does seem obvious that enterprise value 1.0 software. It's more likely that we 1.0 different pieces of the stack (core, rsx!, html) so the ecosystem can build on top of stable primitives. We probably couldn't 1.0 the renderers themselves for a while. It's probably another year of iteration until I feel like we're 100% stable, but my penchant for another rewrite is at an all time low.
SkyMarshal 3y ago
Speaking of Flutter, that and Electron seem to be the only really mature multi-platform build systems. What is Dioxus's competitive proposition vs those two? The performance and memory efficiency+safety of Rust is one, any others?
- jkelleyrtp 3y ago
  I'd add React-Native / expo to your list. Flutter is written in Dart but renders to a canvas on the web making it a very, very poor choice for web apps. Especially backend/fullstack apps. Plus you can't use tailwind or whatever flavor of css library there is today. Flutter just nailed the "get up and running" part which we've got as well: `cargo binstall dioxus-cli`, `dx new`, `dx bundle` is literally less than 30 seconds. Hopefully `dx deploy` coming soon. Electron is... it's electron. A whole chromium instance, an IPC bridge between your frontend and the system, NodeJS, etc. If you compile for size, our desktop apps are 3mb. You can easily deploy them on an embedded/low end device. We're hoping to eat some market share in the embedded-ish land (not true embedded, but like industrial or POS). Dioxus also has mobile and desktop compatible server functions which basically no other projects have. Expo has been kinda exploring this space. One of our examples is deploying your own LLM on your own infrastructure with a dioxus mobile app UI and it fits in a single file and builds in under a minute.
  - SkyMarshal 3y ago
    Thanks, wasn't aware of Expo, though it seems to only do mobile+web apps but not desktop apps? > If you compile for size, our desktop apps are 3mb. I'm aware of this from familiarity with Tauri, but hearing it again still amazes me. Very cool. I have an app in mind I want to build, and really would like to have standalone versions on Android+iOS+Linux+Mac+Windows, plus a web app. But there's no way I can manage all that as a single developer. And the fact no development tool has really nailed this yet is telling how hard it is. Whoever really gets this right will save a ton of developer hours across the industry, and that's valuable. Good luck, hope you guys pull it off! PS - one feature request: a local/offline-first mode that eases development of apps that work even with poor or no internet connection. Basically I want to build something like Obsidian that is multi-platform, and does all processing and data storage locally first, in an accessible format like SQLLite or flat files, then syncs with the cloud when available, all with as few developer resources as possible. A tool that enables that would be amazing.

azemetre 3y ago

Yeah, it's becoming more common in my group of SWEs to specifically opt to NOT use VC backed software. Everyone has stories about companies closing shop and projects failing to continue onward. Why would Dioxus be any different? If VC's cared about tearing down walled gardens of Google and Apple, why not explicitly donate the money instead? Why have strings attached at all?

riku_iki 3y ago
> it's becoming more common in my group of SWEs to specifically opt to NOT use VC backed software so, what they use instead? Bugged, dead OSS dropped by creators?..
- wpietri 3y ago
  "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
- azemetre 3y ago
  No, normal OSS whose existence isn't tied to VC mostly. It's not like a hard/fast rule, just a heuristic.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    There are very few good quality, stable, active OSS projects which is not fed by VC/corps money. In this case (UI for rust) there is no much choice.
    - fabrice_d 3y ago
      Funding by VC and funding by corps sponsors are 2 very different things. Check how linux desktop projects such as Gnome & KDE kept the lights on for >20 years without VC funding.
      - riku_iki 3y ago

riku_iki 3y ago

> What will the VC expect out of Dioxus? there are several ways to monetize: - consultancy - "Pro" extensions on top of OSS core

yencabulator 3y ago
Consultancy is unlikely to give VC a 100x return. Enterprise extensions means the cursed land of open core and refusing to have features in the open source version, or a heavy SaaS push combined with a possible license change along the road, and these are the primary reasons to avoid VC-backed "open source for now".
- riku_iki 3y ago
  > Enterprise extensions means the cursed land of open core and refusing to have features in the open source version yes, there are risks in exchange of VC money. You can branch your "Libre" project any time, and continue building on top of infra developed using VC funds and which you get for free. But what are other choices?