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RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

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Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#81

Post by williamstein »

dsl wrote: post #69
tlarkworthy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebase works like that. The polling of databases is a really obvious limitation of existing databases once you see the alternative. (I work at Firebase)

I searched and searched, but I couldn't find a download link on Firebase.com. Help?

I think Firebase is a closed source program that can only be used via "the cloud", i.e., via a web application. It's not something you can run yourself. In contrast, RethinkDB+Horizon would have soon provided similar functionality to Firebase, but with the option of self hosting.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#82

Post by williamstein »

akg_67 wrote: post #79
williamstein wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the market I am targeting as huge, and I agree with you that it is probably easier for Wordpress to succeed than SageMathCloud. I'm perhaps too realistic about the potential market for SageMathCloud, which was a reason why A16Z wasn't interested. If I took VC funding I might not have the option to focus on a smaller market.

Just curious, what kind of resources you have and efforts you make in the area of marketing, business development, and sales of SageMath and SMC? Have you taken any external funding for SageMath and SMC beyond grants? The market may not be large enough and opportunity may not be as fast growing that VCs expect, still it may be possible to build a decent size business with SageMath.

Regarding SMC, right now we are growing our sales slowly but very consistently. Some universities tried SMC last year, liked it, and are significantly expanding their subscriptions this year. However, our top focus right now is on fixing every bug, implementing key features that users demand, and dealing with issues that become clear from support requests, while working hard behind the scenes to build better technical foundations for growth. We have enough users (e.g., often 500 simultaneous active users, and we hit about 1150 simultaneous running projects this week) to give us a good sense that what we are building provides value and is working (or not). Our business model is freemium, and the conversion rate for students using SMC in courses is high.

> Have you taken any external funding for SageMath and SMC beyond grants?

For SageMath, all funding is via grants, and I have almost no such grants these days (I used to get grants in the early days). There's a grant in Europe called OpenDreamKit that provides substantial funding right now. There's also one new NSF grant that will provide some funding for free open source textbooks built with lots of example using Sage.

For SageMathCloud, I did a round of Angel investment about a year ago in order to "bootstrap" things, and hopefully give us the time we need to build the business to be profitable. The Angel investors are a small group of people I know from the mathematics world. Right now the company is not profitable, even with a small number of low-paid developers, so it's critical to have this money to make up for the slack until we have more customers.

We can and should do a lot more marketing when the time is right. I hope that time is very soon.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#83

Post by tiglionabbit »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #40
ericd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen that in any db I've worked with. If that's true, that's pretty huge.

Firebase works like that. The polling of databases is a really obvious limitation of existing databases once you see the alternative. (I work at Firebase)

Well it's easy to shard when you don't support joins or foreign key constraints.

Btw, as a person who works on Firebase, perhaps you can answer this question that has been bothering me about it. There's no way to model a foreign key relationship that's traversable in both ways without trusting the client application to update both directions, right? Isn't that a bit of a dealbreaker for anything other than a toy app? I would assume if you wanted to make something that's actually reliable, you'd have to run all your mutations through your own personal server instead of letting clients mutate Firebase directly, right?

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#84

Post by williamstein »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #83
tlarkworthy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebase works like that. The polling of databases is a really obvious limitation of existing databases once you see the alternative. (I work at Firebase)

Well it's easy to shard when you don't support joins or foreign key constraints. Btw, as a person who works on Firebase, perhaps you can answer this question that has been bothering me about it. There's no way to model a foreign key relationship that's traversable in both ways without trusting the client application to update both directions, right? Isn't that a bit of a dealbreaker for anything other than a toy app?…

[edit: this is an irrelevant remark] RethinkDB supports joins: https://www.rethinkdb.com/docs/table-joins/ "Like many traditional database systems, RethinkDB supports JOIN commands to combine data from multiple tables. In RethinkDB joins are automatically distributed—a join command is automatically sent to the appropriate nodes across the cluster, the relevant data is combined, and the final result is presented to the user."

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#85

Post by tiglionabbit »

williamstein wrote: post #84
tiglionabbit wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's easy to shard when you don't support joins or foreign key constraints. Btw, as a person who works on Firebase, perhaps you can answer this question that has been bothering me about it. There's no way to model a foreign key relationship that's traversable in both ways without trusting the client application to update both directions, right? Isn't that a bit of a dealbreaker for anything other than a toy app?…

[edit: this is an irrelevant remark] RethinkDB supports joins: https://www.rethinkdb.com/docs/table-joins/ "Like many traditional database systems, RethinkDB supports JOIN commands to combine data from multiple tables. In RethinkDB joins are automatically distributed—a join command is automatically sent to the appropriate nodes across the cluster, the relevant data is combined, and the final result is presented to th…

I'm talking about Firebase :P.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#86

Post by Ros2 »

williamstein wrote: post #68
Ros2 wrote: post #67

>They were also worried about how small the total market cap >I do not think it is impossible to build an open source business (I think Wordpress is an example), and I do not need to raise VC. Is the right market here not everything like A16Z told you? The market for wordpress is crazy large with several blog platforms seeing 100+ million dollar exits and it seems no one who gets in this space fails--clearly the mark…

I don't see the market I am targeting as huge, and I agree with you that it is probably easier for Wordpress to succeed than SageMathCloud. I'm perhaps too realistic about the potential market for SageMathCloud, which was a reason why A16Z wasn't interested. If I took VC funding I might not have the option to focus on a smaller market.

>If I took VC funding I might not have the option to focus on a smaller market.

Agree 100% I just wanted to make sure your expectations were realistic based on the what you wrote. I hope the best for you!

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#89

Post by rfgty »

tracker1 wrote: post #54
timclemans206 wrote: post #2

The open source project that has really stood out to me in terms of funding is vuejs.org who's funding is almost entirely public at https://www.patreon.com/evanyou In the case of RethinkDB I wish they had started Horizon much sooner. Having plugins like for Stripe will make Horizon usable in the real world. I certainly like the goal set for Horizon that it be easy to extend a Horizon app by embedding it in a Node app…

I think they also could of, as a flat fee structure, with listed consulting fee rates, could have done what compose.io does just for RethinkDB, as well as a SaaS model for cloud-ready instances on a handful of popular cloud platforms. That may have taken away from the core development, but may have been a better case than some of the bits they did with Horizon, which does look interesting to say the least.

Could have.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#90

Post by rdtsc »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #57
rdtsc wrote: post #16

It seems new users and people who saw the ease of querying, distribution, good docs, solid architecture jumped on board. Lots of HN articles were written. The technology is really solid. Come to think of it, don't recall seeing a single negative RocksDB article on HN, ever. However databases are hard and they are a bit like operating systems. They are so important that people expect them to have a long track record o…

I'm confused, where does RocksDB come into this? Typo?

Oh sorry, yap, was thinking about RethinkDB.
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