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MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

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Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#301

Post by KGIII »

fourstar wrote: post #293
KGIII wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually gambled on this one. I'd noticed the hype and read around this morning. I didn't go in that big, but we will see. I bought 700 shares at $29.12, sometime around noon. I was a bit busy so didn't pay much attention to this thread, but they closed at a bit over $32.00. I haven't yet set a mark to sell them. I do have it set to notify me I'd they go below 29.00 and will sell them all if they go below $24.00. I…

In what world is 20k on one stock not "too much risk"?

I am financially secure. At most, I risk about $3500 because I'll sell if they go below $24 each.

I did the same thing with Tesla, though they were $24 at the time.

I've written about this before, here in HN comments. I often make stock choices based on the commentary at sites like Slashdot and HN. No, I don't listen to people saying to sell or buy, I listen to the hype and commentary about the companies themselves. As another example I did well with Yahoo!

To be clear, this isn't serious money. I have someone who professionally manages my finances. This is more an experiment and is meant to to play around.

I know, that probably sounds a bit terrible. But, it's not money I am worried about losing and I'm actually doing pretty good at speculating. I make greater returns than the person who does it for me - which is to be expected. I take a bunch of risks, don't do traditional research, and don't even check the daily prices.

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#302

Post by KGIII »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #297
KGIII wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually gambled on this one. I'd noticed the hype and read around this morning. I didn't go in that big, but we will see. I bought 700 shares at $29.12, sometime around noon. I was a bit busy so didn't pay much attention to this thread, but they closed at a bit over $32.00. I haven't yet set a mark to sell them. I do have it set to notify me I'd they go below 29.00 and will sell them all if they go below $24.00. I…

This comment is a nice illustration of the Keynesian beauty contest: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

That is a neat article, thanks! I'd never seen it before but it's fairly close to what I've been doing.

I do another one and someone told me there's a technical name for it. I forget the name.

When I go shopping, I'll discretely look in shopping carts. I'll make a mental note and check to see how well the shelves are stocked in comparison to other products. If I see a lot of the same company in carts, to the point where the store hasn't matched stocking well, then I'll look further into the parent company.

So far, it has done well. I'd never played in the market before and my 401k was always managed. So, this is pretty new for me. I've been at it since maybe 2011.

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#303

Post by adrianN »

munk-a wrote: post #65
shubhamjain wrote: post #22

MongoDB isn't usually seen favorably but everyone must admit that it's an unlikely success story that deserves admiration. Think about it. Bringing a database to the market with a completely different paradigm, growing it to the enterprise-production-ready level, and creating a billion-dollar business around is no small deal. Yes, they did ride the NoSQL zeitgeist but they survived when others had no major success. U…

If they had done so by presenting a product that was picked up due to it's merit and continued to gain traction based on that then I'd be rather impressed. Instead the story of MongoDB seems to be how extremely well targeted marketing and sales can build a so-so product into a huge IPO, there have been performance comparisons showing it isn't even the best at what it does so this IPO is riding on the network effect o…

That seems to be the business model of all "enterprise" products.

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#304

Post by lstyls »

manigandham wrote: post #274

As usual, the confusion and religious comments are numerous. There is no such thing as "nosql". There are different types of databases, with traditional relational being useful for 95% of scenarios (especially on increasingly fast servers with decent replication features) while the rest of the time something more specific is needed. SQL is just an interface, obviously common to relational databases but can be applied…

> There is no such thing as nosql

This is not at all correct. SQL has well defined semantics that are standardized around the relational model and ACID guarantees. A nosql datastore is one that intentionally makes tradeoffs that force it to deviate from that model. The name makes sense if you understand that SQL was the first broadly adopted language that targeted the relational model.

I'm not very familiar with the systems you mention other than Presto. But if they do not provide relational guarantees then even if they have SQL-like syntax the semantics are sufficiently different for them to not be implementing a true SQL. Hence, nosql.

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#305

Post by rtpg »

mrbrowning wrote: post #300
gxs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree - I think there is a perception that if you build an awesome product it sells itself. There is so much work to running a successful business, especially at that scale. Marketing, Sales, Implementation, Support, on top of G&A, and that's not even touching on HR and retaining employees in a competitive market. There is a reason some people are known as the "business" guys, I think expertise in that area is underr…

Mongo as a business has largely catapulted itself to where it is by making money off of information assymetry more than actual technical superiority. They may have since corrected a lot of the fundamental technical isssues with their product, but that doesn’t change the fact that (contrary to SV dogma) their success doesn’t rest on the creation of wealth, only its extraction from magpie-type customers. Downvoters lik…

Even assuming that the product is so-so, saying that they did not create wealth is a bit disingenuous. They basically created "NoSQL" discussions at a time where most settled on some SQL variant despite their difficulties.

It's not like they were just a vendor of some other product. They actually spent money on the product, on evangelism (kind of marketing, but also kind of development), on so much.

Stripe's technical achievements at first were basically "a nice button" and a slightly friendlier risk model. Yet they are lauded (as they should be!). We can cut Mongo some slack given how we act about other companies.

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#306

Post by KGIII »

sanderjd wrote: post #295
KGIII wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the part where I said 'often.' That is okay by me. Karma is only good if you spend it.

Sure, but your speculation suggests that the "often" is enough to explain the parent's downvotes. I think there's a better explanation that doesn't impugn certain "types" of people. I'm just speculating too of course.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think is a better (and more probable) answer?

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#307

Post by dplgk »

KGIII wrote: post #301
fourstar wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world is 20k on one stock not "too much risk"?

I am financially secure. At most, I risk about $3500 because I'll sell if they go below $24 each. I did the same thing with Tesla, though they were $24 at the time. I've written about this before, here in HN comments. I often make stock choices based on the commentary at sites like Slashdot and HN. No, I don't listen to people saying to sell or buy, I listen to the hype and commentary about the companies themselves.…

This assumes you catch it before it falls below $24, which you'll have to by hand since you said you don't have an automatic stop loss, just a notification.

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#308

Post by dplgk »

z3t4 wrote: post #201

Whats MongoDB's business model !? Open source, and separate "enterprise" closed source version !? Are contributors OK with this or are most contributors in-house ? It seems Nginx et.al are also using this business model ... I'm thinking about starting my own open source business.

Support contracts, setup, etc.

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#309

Post by philwelch »

rtpg wrote: post #305
mrbrowning wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mongo as a business has largely catapulted itself to where it is by making money off of information assymetry more than actual technical superiority. They may have since corrected a lot of the fundamental technical isssues with their product, but that doesn’t change the fact that (contrary to SV dogma) their success doesn’t rest on the creation of wealth, only its extraction from magpie-type customers. Downvoters lik…

Even assuming that the product is so-so, saying that they did not create wealth is a bit disingenuous. They basically created "NoSQL" discussions at a time where most settled on some SQL variant despite their difficulties. It's not like they were just a vendor of some other product. They actually spent money on the product, on evangelism (kind of marketing, but also kind of development), on so much. Stripe's technica…

I would say that NoSQL was more popularized by Amazon’s whitepaper on Dynamo, which they published in 2007.

Re: MongoDB shares jump more than 30% in $192M IPO

#310

Post by manigandham »

lstyls wrote: post #304
manigandham wrote: post #274

As usual, the confusion and religious comments are numerous. There is no such thing as "nosql". There are different types of databases, with traditional relational being useful for 95% of scenarios (especially on increasingly fast servers with decent replication features) while the rest of the time something more specific is needed. SQL is just an interface, obviously common to relational databases but can be applied…

> There is no such thing as nosql This is not at all correct. SQL has well defined semantics that are standardized around the relational model and ACID guarantees. A nosql datastore is one that intentionally makes tradeoffs that force it to deviate from that model. The name makes sense if you understand that SQL was the first broadly adopted language that targeted the relational model. I'm not very familiar with the…

SQL = structured query language. That's all it is, a language to access and manipulate data and data structures. It comes in several variations, standards and dialects. Any system can implement (a form of) SQL as an interface, just as any system can also implement ACID guarantees around data access, but these are completely separate concepts. ACID isn't even mentioned on the SQL wiki page. [1]

Relational databases have a history of offering both in a single package, but there is no "true" SQL. There are also plenty of non-relational data stores that offer SQL and/or ACID guarantees so this limited generalization isn't accurate or useful.

"NoSQL" has no meaning other than originally describing systems that did not have any SQL access at all, usually due to different storage layers, distributed architectures, custom access protocols, and general immaturity around usage. A decade later, all of these systems have evolved and there's both convergence and specialization everywhere.

It would be far better to just talk about the actual type of database, and the interfaces and guarantees it provides, rather than marketing jargon like nosql.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

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