Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A • Hacker News Board

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#11

Post by jeremiahlee » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:00 AM UTC

I've been a customer for 3 years. `now` has felt like such a great evolution of the Heroku experience, which seemed to stop evolving after it got acquired by Salesforce.

Zeit focused on all types of applications when it started, not just static frontend and FaaS. I wish it would return to supporting apps beyond JAMstack.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#12

Post by sandGorgon » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:01 AM UTC

Nextjs is most likely going to be the new Ruby on Rails. javascript all the way down, static rendering, PWA, server side rendering...everything baked in.

This is a big backing for Next.

However rebranding to Vercel is bad.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#13

Post by tsar_nikolai » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:02 AM UTC

I absolutely love the company and am a happy customer, but for the love of time, why give up such a good pun for a name?

(For people not familiar with the german language, zeit means time. And 'time now' is simply an amazing name for a product that enables you to ship, well, now)

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#14

Post by DangerousPie » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:03 AM UTC

I always found the name incredible confusing since there is a major German newspaper called ZEIT: https://www.zeit.de/

I wonder whether the rebrand is because of that. If they want to operate in Germany the new name is definitely better.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#15

Post by tango12 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:03 AM UTC

franky47 wrote: post #6

Congrats on the funding, but I'd like to know what prompted the name change. ZEIT sounded mysterious and edgy, while Vercel sounds like a company selling expensive handbags (to me).

EDIT: Not sure why, but from the article:

> Vercel strongly connects to the words versatile, accelerate, and excel.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#16

Post by kalev » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

Might the name change come from one of lead investors named 'Accel', who wanted to align the name of zeit more with their own brand? Vercel/Accel? I honestly don't understand why you would do that though, as you just threw one of the most well known brand names in JS ecosystem out of the window.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#17

Post by jlelse » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:07 AM UTC

The name "Zeit" was very confusing for Germans. "Zeit" is the regular word for time and there's also a newspaper called "Die ZEIT".

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#18

Post by zoul » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:09 AM UTC

“We decided to retain our signature triangle logo, although we have simplified it.”

Is this satire? Can’t tell.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#19

Post by Rauchg » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:11 AM UTC

Vercel CEO here. We are incredibly delighted to bring the new brand to the world and share the news of our funding.

For everyone who's been on this journey with us so far, thank you, and we look forward to a lot more!

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#20

Post by choward » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:13 AM UTC

tango12 wrote: post #15

franky47 wrote: post #6

Congrats on the funding, but I'd like to know what prompted the name change. ZEIT sounded mysterious and edgy, while Vercel sounds like a company selling expensive handbags (to me).

EDIT: Not sure why, but from the article: > Vercel strongly connects to the words versatile, accelerate, and excel.

That's just marketing speak. It doesn't actually explain why they changed their name.