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

isnt that what Realm is trying to do on the mobile side ?

Phusion co-founder here (creators of the Passenger app server); just wanted to chime in and say that this article resonated a lot with our experiences with VCs and our ventures in open source. Even down to the "lifestyle business" remark. Like OP, I'd encourage first-time founders to talk to VCs when starting out just to get an idea of how they perceive your business. Yes, even if you don't plan on raising. You may walk away learning a thing or two :-)

As for RethinkDB; we loved it, and even wrote an article about it a few weeks ago, outlining how it could be awesomely used with Rails 5 [1]. Having tried to bootstrap a company solely around an open source product ourselves as well[2], we can't help but share their pain here a bit. For instance, and I'm just going on what OP has shared about RethinkDBs business model, we tried to build our business solely on support contracts initially too. That didn't work out great for us.

And it kind of makes sense if you think about it: the support contract is available in case your software is failing during critical operations, yet your main efforts in product improvements are to minimize those chances. So you may have two conflicting interests, and I think you will find yourself having a hard time satisfying both. Through product improvements, you're basically minimizing the probability that such a support contract is needed. That might make it more enticing to only get the contract whenever you actually really need it, and that moment might never come. Especially if you consider how many hoops customers have to jump through to procure something within the enterprise. I can imagine something similar happening for RethinkDB.

This was an important realization for us though: rather than charge for the probability of problems, consider charging for the product's merits instead. As much as it pained us to introduce a closed source premium version of Passenger a few years ago to do this, I can confidently say that it was the best choice we could have made for our open source users as well; it allowed us to have a sustainable income and allowed us to rapidly improve Passenger's open source core alongside the closed source version as well. So even though I commend OPs determination into keeping things strictly open source, I'd encourage him to look into a hybrid option as well. We wouldn't be around here today as a company if we didn't.

Lastly, seeing as OP is a fellow bootstrapper and a fan of Basecamp as well, I think Jason Fried put it best when it comes to VC monies: "if you start out by raising money, you get good at spending money, but if you start without money, you get really good at making money", or something like that :-)

[1] https://blog.phusion.nl/2016/08/04/using-rails-5-actioncable...

[2] https://blog.phusion.nl/2015/10/30/bootstrapping-a-business-...

Yeah, I often use React or a more react-like library because of this reason.

That said, I feel Vue does offer some things that, say, Angular/Knockout/Ractive don't to offset this, so I could see myself using it in some cases where I would otherwise go for React.

I rather like the documentation, for one, as well as the tooling that offers single-file components (js/css/markup) and plays well with the editors I use (Sublime, Atom).

I've also found that it's often easier for others to learn the angular-like markup compared to learning React.

> And large support contracts are lucrative with enterprise customers, but they will not buy into a relatively new database product and entrust its crown jewels to it.

While it's still entirely unclear whether and how RethinkDB and Horizon will develop from now on, I have become more hesitant to use a 'relatively new database product' even for my side projects, let alone something 'important'.

This was my first experience using some piece of technology (library, framework, etc.) that suddenly potentially won't survive, and it's probably a good thing that I learned this lesson with a relatively unimportant side project.

Still, it becomes a bit of a fulfilling prophecy: I'm now even less likely to invest in a new database product.

I really hope RethinkDB and Horizon will find a home, because I've really enjoyed working with both.

Cautious about hiring and spending, not growth. That is pretty decent, though we are working on ways to increase.

Hugging default alive means that when our growth goes up in a sustained reliable way, we can hire.

To seen a model try: http://growth.tlb.org