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Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

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61–70 of 203 posts

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

#62

I gave up on Zeit when Now v2 came out because, besides it being more complex and a pain to migrate to, they went back on their promises about no vendor lock-in. Up until late 2018, their site had a very different philosophy that they abruptly abandoned. [1] [2] Fool me once... 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20181107092845/https://zeit.co/n... 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20181107092845/https://zeit.co/n...

Same here. Migration path to Heroku was easier than migration path to Zeit v2, and Heroku hasn't fucked me over by forcing me to migrate to an entirely new model yet.

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

#63
post #15
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.

Self-delusional marketingspeak. To me 'Vercel' sounds like a brand of cheap batteries.

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

#64
post #24
post #18

“We decided to retain our signature triangle logo, although we have simplified it.” Is this satire? Can’t tell.

Same with this: > Vercel strongly connects to the words versatile, accelerate, and excel. It also "strongly connects" to the words "vermin" and "decelerate".

Also, "verizon" and "incel".

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

#65
post #59
post #56

Literally just discovered Zeit, what I liked about it was the ability to choose different run-times, with a generous free tier, with none of the existential baggage of the other PAAS's options out there. Sigh, oh well.

Everything you liked about ZEIT is present in Vercel! You can read more about it in our rebrand field book: https://www.notion.so/Vercel-Launch-1cab2369ab1c4d8db1987b68...

Everything I liked about Zeit was Now v1, so, not really?

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

#66
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s a complete and total wild ass guess but the obvious reason to change one’s name is if you’ve identified another entity that is using that name in a way which could prevent you from global exclusive use of the brand. It’s the kind of thing that could easily have come up in due diligence for the large recent investment.

Doing a quick search of TESS2 for trademarks look they already have the trademark registered for ZEIT (registered in 2017). So it was probably for other reasons. Which is a shame, because Zeit is very concise, easy to remember, and has a strong brand today - at least with their initial audience. Sounds like they're trying to go for a more corporate customer with their new name.

It’s a big world out there.

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

#67
post #45

As someone who has been involved in many branding projects, it is amusing to see all the negative commentary on the rebrand. This is human nature 101. Everyone always hates rebrands. In fact I am willing to bet that the executives who eventually bought into this new name also hated the new name when they heard it. Whenever we presented a new name to a company that wanted to be rebranded, we always asked them not to p…

What value is there in renaming anything? You've said that out that "Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name." but you imply it doesn't matter - so what's the point?

Isn't rebranding what companies do when they run out of ideas (one of my old employers changed its name at least 3 times because... why? I doubt they have a viable product yet. A name change isn't going to help).

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

#68

I gave up on Zeit when Now v2 came out because, besides it being more complex and a pain to migrate to, they went back on their promises about no vendor lock-in. Up until late 2018, their site had a very different philosophy that they abruptly abandoned. [1] [2] Fool me once... 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20181107092845/https://zeit.co/n... 2: https://web.archive.org/web/20181107092845/https://zeit.co/n...

I honestly don't understand this fetishization of "serverless" functions. It leads to so much vendor lock-in, tooling complexity, and straight-up lack of features.

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the objective of Blitz.js [1]: build on top of Next.js for a rails-like experience, but made by an independent open-source community. [1] https://blitzjs.com/ - https://github.com/blitz-js/blitz

This is very cool. One suggestion - I highly recommend you mention that you're leveraging nextjs. There is a certain buy-in that nextjs has that would be hard elsewhere. In fact I would say that I would totally pay an annual subscription for this (even on "starter marketplaces" like themeforest).

This is literally the first listed feature :)

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

#70
post #45

As someone who has been involved in many branding projects, it is amusing to see all the negative commentary on the rebrand. This is human nature 101. Everyone always hates rebrands. In fact I am willing to bet that the executives who eventually bought into this new name also hated the new name when they heard it. Whenever we presented a new name to a company that wanted to be rebranded, we always asked them not to p…

Is Google a rebrand?
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