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Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform

techcrunch.com

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Re: Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform

#81

Post by csande17 »

I don't really like Gatsby's product, but I've got to admit that their business strategy makes a lot of sense. It's a pretty good three-step approach:

1. Convince the WordPress/enterprise crowd to switch over, both by touting the genuine benefits of static sites (security, scalability, TTFB performance, etc.) and by riding the Cool Kid Front-End Stack hype train.

2. Lock them in with an overly-complicated framework and build pipeline that requires organizations invest a lot of resources into switching. (Gatsby gets most of this for free by building on top of the Cool Kid Stack's nine-thousand-package NPM lasagna.)

3. Sell their captive audience expensive solutions to problems they wouldn't have with other frameworks. (See e.g. another commentor's discussion of incremental builds.)

This strategy might not contribute much to society, but neither do a lot of other startups--what matters to investors is that it'll probably make them a lot of money, assuming they execute it correctly.

Re: Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform

#83

Post by snake_case »

kilburn wrote: post #69
mattkevan wrote: post #50

Big fan of static site generators and the whole JAMStack idea in general - I use Jekyll extensively - but after building a site with Gatsby, I found it too over-engineered. React is great, and definitely has its place, but to set up React, GraphQL and all the surrounding tooling just to assemble some text files into a template seems like complexity for the sake of it. For me, the fun of static sites - after years of…

TLDR: I just completed a large project built with Gatsby, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The technology is extremely complicated, and the end result quite inflexible. Here's an idea of how the whole thing works when you have non-technical users: 1. You need some sort of Content Management System for non-technical users to be able to create content. 2. That CMS stores the content however it sees fit (db/files/wh…

> Development mode does not serve html files like production builds do. The site behaves differently in that mode, and some issues only happen in actual builds. When you encounter one such issue, the feedback loop becomes "full build for every change" == ~10min of waiting to try every single change. This is a HUGE productivity killer.

This got me so many times. I was frustrated enough that I set up a headless chrome prerenderer to snapshot my gatsby-built site before every single deploy just so I could verify the html diff to make sure my site looked correct still.

The trust issues alone were enough to make me switch off of it.

Re: Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform

#86

Post by lsalvatore »

csande17 wrote: post #81

I don't really like Gatsby's product, but I've got to admit that their business strategy makes a lot of sense. It's a pretty good three-step approach: 1. Convince the WordPress/enterprise crowd to switch over, both by touting the genuine benefits of static sites (security, scalability, TTFB performance, etc.) and by riding the Cool Kid Front-End Stack hype train. 2. Lock them in with an overly-complicated framework a…

Did you mean "overly-complicated" as in for people who don't work in the industry and just speculate on trends?

Re: Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform

#87

Post by gexla »

csande17 wrote: post #81

I don't really like Gatsby's product, but I've got to admit that their business strategy makes a lot of sense. It's a pretty good three-step approach: 1. Convince the WordPress/enterprise crowd to switch over, both by touting the genuine benefits of static sites (security, scalability, TTFB performance, etc.) and by riding the Cool Kid Front-End Stack hype train. 2. Lock them in with an overly-complicated framework a…

> Convince the WordPress/enterprise crowd to switch over

The Gatsby homepage mentions Wordpress as a possible data source. I don't evens see mention of their CMS on the front page. The only "service" I see them advertising there is Preview - which seems to be a development collaboration tool. I don't think they're convincing people to move away from Wordpress.

It's funny that the article talks about moving away from your monolithic "CMS system" (redundant?) so that you can use headless Wordpress or Drupal. In other words, you get to toss your monolithic content management system system so that you can keep your monolithic content management system system.

Re: Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform

#88

Post by clintonb »

rolltiide wrote: post #16
ordinaryradical wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very surprised that a static site generator can raise this much capital, but it suggests to me that 1) the security dilemmas of non-static but content driven sites are still big enough to warrant adoption of this methodology 2) potentially, there is something they are doing right in this space. I'd really like to know what 2 is as there's a lot of other options in this space that are also free, open source, and s…

> I'm very surprised that a static site generator can raise this much capital Why? They charge $50/mo and maybe the recurring revenue checks out for preferential investors to feel comfortable with making a profit. If Gatsby can get their service included in a bunch of the domain name registration sites, pushing out Wordpress, then they get exponentially more customers! The real question is what they plan to do with t…

> If Gatsby can get their service included in a bunch of the domain name registration sites, pushing out Wordpress, then they get exponentially more customers!

I don't follow this reasoning. The hosting sites that offer Wordpress, offer it because it is free. GatsbyJS is free. The service offered by Gatsby is not. Given the difference between $0 and $50/month, I don't see Wordpress going away anytime soon.

Re: Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform

#89

Post by vidarh »

clintonb wrote: post #88
rolltiide wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm very surprised that a static site generator can raise this much capital Why? They charge $50/mo and maybe the recurring revenue checks out for preferential investors to feel comfortable with making a profit. If Gatsby can get their service included in a bunch of the domain name registration sites, pushing out Wordpress, then they get exponentially more customers! The real question is what they plan to do with t…

> If Gatsby can get their service included in a bunch of the domain name registration sites, pushing out Wordpress, then they get exponentially more customers! I don't follow this reasoning. The hosting sites that offer Wordpress, offer it because it is free. GatsbyJS is free. The service offered by Gatsby is not. Given the difference between $0 and $50/month, I don't see Wordpress going away anytime soon.

How much of that $50/month do you think may be on offer to entice those hosting sites to try to upsell?

Re: Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform

#90

Post by dplgk »

lsalvatore wrote: post #86
csande17 wrote: post #81

I don't really like Gatsby's product, but I've got to admit that their business strategy makes a lot of sense. It's a pretty good three-step approach: 1. Convince the WordPress/enterprise crowd to switch over, both by touting the genuine benefits of static sites (security, scalability, TTFB performance, etc.) and by riding the Cool Kid Front-End Stack hype train. 2. Lock them in with an overly-complicated framework a…

Did you mean "overly-complicated" as in for people who don't work in the industry and just speculate on trends?

Well, it's not really targeted at actual developers.
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