4 ms·

I wouldn't say "Mongo is on life support" – it's actually a very successful business growing 30% YoY on a massive scale. Yet, I agree that the license switch ha

I wouldn't say "Mongo is on life support" – it's actually a very successful business growing 30% YoY on a massive scale. Yet, I agree that the license switch has definitely damaged their long-term ecosystem.

smt88 3y ago
They grew 30% if you look at revenue, but that's not how people determine whether a business is healthy. EBITDA is a better metric, and that number was getting dramatically worse every year until 2023. But even in 2023, EBITDA was -$202M. I don't see it ever approaching $0. So it's still a shit business on top of a shit product that no one ever really needed.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  MongoDB is great if what you need is a replicated log or queue. It's what Kafka should have been.
  - smt88 3y ago
    As others have said, you can just use your RDBMS for that now. Mongo is a feature of better products.
    - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
      Postgres doesn't have a sane and working replication story. (Mysql does, but it's full of legacy warts, of course.) Mongodb is foolproof and works out of the box. The other alternative here isn't Mongodb, it's Couchdb, but that isn't an RDBMS.
- basil-rash 3y ago
  Why do you choose EBITDA? Last I heard it was utter nonsense”, at least according to Warren Buffet. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnKylAyLbQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnKylAyLbQ
  - phonon 3y ago
    Their "Comprehensive Losses" for the last 3 years are (in thousands) (171,150) (343,375) (309,090) So there you go...
    - librasteve 3y ago
      they lost 300 million in one year?
      - christkv 3y ago
        Stock compensation cash flow was positive meaning they added cash to their account.
    - jeltz 3y ago
      Are they literally setting money on fire?
  - roenxi 3y ago
    You'd probably save time if you directly suggest what income metric you want to use. In the video, Buffet is basically saying he cares about income after interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. In other words, that he cares about actual income. That'd be very on-brand for Buffet. That measure won't be good for MongoDB Inc. either; they've been millions in the red for years. Losing $100 million in a year would be the best result they've achieved in a while now.
    - _v7gu 3y ago
      so by Buffet's metric, Mongo is doing even worse
  - jpgvm 3y ago
    Buffets point is that it can be gamed to look good. In this case even if they are gaming it to look better than it is.... well it's still awful.
  - blitzar 3y ago
- Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  I think anyone who administers mongodb would agree it has a list of very dangerous behaviors for novices. Try to upgrade a running instance node between some versions, and one may thrash object keys or worse. Best to dump and re-load your data every major upgrade to recover all set properties... and there still may be slight differences in the query language later. Wait, your data sets are 1.5TiB per node.... that is a lot of downtime... The cursor, projection, and re-format queries can be very good at reducing reporting traffic. However, the 3 page long syntax can be unreadable to the uninitiated. The json essentially jams a bunch of equivalent SQL queries in 1 transaction, but you still have to be careful as there is no real guarantee of ordering without auto-indices in clusters. mongodb is not as clean as SQL, but works for storing constantly changing meta data. i.e. if you find your SQL schema ends up with tuples that have a lot of poorly designed null entries, table edits, and or simply implements an object storage class abstraction in massive meta-data and object-class catch-all tables. And yes, the mongodb new licensing model telegraphs an unfavorable policy posture. However, I do understand not wanting fortune 500 companies exploiting your teams time for free. Profit is not an indication of quality, but rather fiscal utility. ;-)
  - DrNash17 3y ago
    what is mongo's new licensing model?
- rrr_oh_man 3y ago
  I was totally expecting someone to come up with some vanity metric here, but a negative EBITDA of several HUNDRED MILLION? Jesus. How did that happen. B2B business should be a symphony of ka-chings for them.
- dangtony98 3y ago
  I'm actually very bullish on MongoDB. While the article and significant sentiment in threads suggest a push off MongoDB toward PostgreSQL, I do think MongoDB has its own place in the stack and that it won't be obsoleted. I've personally had many pleasant experiences working with it in past projects. Regarding business metrics, I may have a slight bias coming from the startup world but we often value revenue the most, especially in the earlier stages of a company; we can reduce costs and perform various optimizations in the future but what stays at the foundation is whether or not there is strong product market fit such that more customers keep coming in and coming back to use the underlying product — I would say MongoDB's current growth trajectory is in line with that. I'm hopeful overall that they can turn profitable (maybe not this year or next but eventually so).
  - smt88 3y ago
    HN should be full of Mongo's users and advocates, and yet this site loathes it. That by itself is a sign that it's a zombie. The reason we don't just look at revenue is that you can "buy" revenue with ads and sales teams. But if that revenue growth costs more than it pays because your customers aren't sticky, then your business doesn't work. You can't apply startup principles to this large, aging public company.
    - mushi 3y ago
      “This site” loved ReThinkDB. How is it doing?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

smt88 3y ago

They grew 30% if you look at revenue, but that's not how people determine whether a business is healthy. EBITDA is a better metric, and that number was getting dramatically worse every year until 2023. But even in 2023, EBITDA was -$202M. I don't see it ever approaching $0. So it's still a shit business on top of a shit product that no one ever really needed.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago
MongoDB is great if what you need is a replicated log or queue. It's what Kafka should have been.
- smt88 3y ago
  As others have said, you can just use your RDBMS for that now. Mongo is a feature of better products.
  - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
    Postgres doesn't have a sane and working replication story. (Mysql does, but it's full of legacy warts, of course.) Mongodb is foolproof and works out of the box. The other alternative here isn't Mongodb, it's Couchdb, but that isn't an RDBMS.
basil-rash 3y ago
Why do you choose EBITDA? Last I heard it was utter nonsense”, at least according to Warren Buffet. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnKylAyLbQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnKylAyLbQ
- phonon 3y ago
  Their "Comprehensive Losses" for the last 3 years are (in thousands) (171,150) (343,375) (309,090) So there you go...
  - librasteve 3y ago
    they lost 300 million in one year?
    - christkv 3y ago
      Stock compensation cash flow was positive meaning they added cash to their account.
  - jeltz 3y ago
    Are they literally setting money on fire?
- roenxi 3y ago
  You'd probably save time if you directly suggest what income metric you want to use. In the video, Buffet is basically saying he cares about income after interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. In other words, that he cares about actual income. That'd be very on-brand for Buffet. That measure won't be good for MongoDB Inc. either; they've been millions in the red for years. Losing $100 million in a year would be the best result they've achieved in a while now.
  - _v7gu 3y ago
    so by Buffet's metric, Mongo is doing even worse
- jpgvm 3y ago
  Buffets point is that it can be gamed to look good. In this case even if they are gaming it to look better than it is.... well it's still awful.
- blitzar 3y ago
Joel_Mckay 3y ago
I think anyone who administers mongodb would agree it has a list of very dangerous behaviors for novices. Try to upgrade a running instance node between some versions, and one may thrash object keys or worse. Best to dump and re-load your data every major upgrade to recover all set properties... and there still may be slight differences in the query language later. Wait, your data sets are 1.5TiB per node.... that is a lot of downtime... The cursor, projection, and re-format queries can be very good at reducing reporting traffic. However, the 3 page long syntax can be unreadable to the uninitiated. The json essentially jams a bunch of equivalent SQL queries in 1 transaction, but you still have to be careful as there is no real guarantee of ordering without auto-indices in clusters. mongodb is not as clean as SQL, but works for storing constantly changing meta data. i.e. if you find your SQL schema ends up with tuples that have a lot of poorly designed null entries, table edits, and or simply implements an object storage class abstraction in massive meta-data and object-class catch-all tables. And yes, the mongodb new licensing model telegraphs an unfavorable policy posture. However, I do understand not wanting fortune 500 companies exploiting your teams time for free. Profit is not an indication of quality, but rather fiscal utility. ;-)
- DrNash17 3y ago
  what is mongo's new licensing model?
rrr_oh_man 3y ago
I was totally expecting someone to come up with some vanity metric here, but a negative EBITDA of several HUNDRED MILLION? Jesus. How did that happen. B2B business should be a symphony of ka-chings for them.
dangtony98 3y ago
I'm actually very bullish on MongoDB. While the article and significant sentiment in threads suggest a push off MongoDB toward PostgreSQL, I do think MongoDB has its own place in the stack and that it won't be obsoleted. I've personally had many pleasant experiences working with it in past projects. Regarding business metrics, I may have a slight bias coming from the startup world but we often value revenue the most, especially in the earlier stages of a company; we can reduce costs and perform various optimizations in the future but what stays at the foundation is whether or not there is strong product market fit such that more customers keep coming in and coming back to use the underlying product — I would say MongoDB's current growth trajectory is in line with that. I'm hopeful overall that they can turn profitable (maybe not this year or next but eventually so).
- smt88 3y ago
  HN should be full of Mongo's users and advocates, and yet this site loathes it. That by itself is a sign that it's a zombie. The reason we don't just look at revenue is that you can "buy" revenue with ads and sales teams. But if that revenue growth costs more than it pays because your customers aren't sticky, then your business doesn't work. You can't apply startup principles to this large, aging public company.
  - mushi 3y ago
    “This site” loved ReThinkDB. How is it doing?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]