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Vercel raise $40M Series B

vercel.com

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Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B

#31

Post by akuji1993 »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #21

Many congrats Vercel! I've been a big fan since Zeit platform version 1 - I remember the transition to platform version 2 was difficult but over time I can see how incredible of a platform you've become. Just a note from a fan - I hope you all can determine a way to approach the future with longevity and corporate independence. The web really needs your entire teams dedication towards performance, end user experience…

> avoid being acquired

Don't think that's possible after raising such amounts of money. Their way out is now either getting aquired for loads of cash or going public. Going public also means loosing parts or all of your control over the company. Those investors will want to see their money back some time in the future.

Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B

#32

Post by flyinglizard »

juliann1 wrote: post #23
flyinglizard wrote: post #17

From first hand experience - Vercel is pretty magical. I’ve helped my wife develop an e-commerce site for her planetary-themed kids merch [1], we chose NextJS with a Shopify Storefront backend and deployed the entire thing to Vercel. Didn’t even need SSL certs, no fiddling with CDNs, it’s just magic. We are super happy with how it turned out vs dealing with full Shopify front end/backend stores. [1] https://littleast…

Hey thats a really nice website! congrats :)

She’ll be happy to hear - we’ve just launched last week :)

Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B

#33

Post by tootie »

talolard wrote: post #2

Poor Gatsby. We run a Gatsby site, it was great to setup fast fast fast and has been a pain in the butt ever since. Next, from our limited experimentation, has much better ergonomics and it looks like the company has a stronger grasp on go to market. Crazy how fast that happened

Gatsby is a weird platform. It's gotten absolutely humongous for a product that is designed to only solve the simplest problems. Netlify has taken it to it's limit by adding redirects and lambdas. But it's still a platform for fancy brochures and blogs.

Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B

#35

Post by maelito »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #28
adim86 wrote: post #9

Hi, serious question what is Vercel? As a developer, what do I use it for? Back-end as a service? Hosting? Database? from reading their homepage several times and looking at their products I still cant tell... can some explain?

I had the same question. I’m an experienced developer and I could not figure out the substance of what this product offers from a glance at its front page. It vaguely seemed like a replacement for react but it’s hard to believe you could raise $40M for that so something else must be going on. I generally was under the impression that the industry was moving away from client side rendering since it’s so slow. At least…

React is just one lib used by Vercel

Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B

#36

Post by bdickason »

adim86 wrote: post #9

Hi, serious question what is Vercel? As a developer, what do I use it for? Back-end as a service? Hosting? Database? from reading their homepage several times and looking at their products I still cant tell... can some explain?

I use it as a one line deploy tool for my personal sites. It’s incredibly simple / set-and-forget and supports custom domains, rollback, etc.

For my simple sites it feels like hosting is just solved. Every time I rev my site I just push to git and I’m done.

Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B

#37

Post by CyberRabbi »

naavis wrote: post #25
jack_riminton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also appreciate an explanation of what it is because after 10 mins on their site I still can't pin it down

The front-page is pretty unclear, but if you open the documentation page, it is fairly clear: https://vercel.com/docs > Vercel is a cloud platform for static sites and Serverless Functions that fits perfectly with your workflow. It enables developers to host Jamstack websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and requires no supervision, all with no configuration.

I still have no idea what it is after reading that blurb. AWS “fits perfectly” with my workflow so in concrete terms how is this different?

Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B

#39

Post by madeofpalk »

seveibar wrote: post #19
adim86 wrote: post #9

Hi, serious question what is Vercel? As a developer, what do I use it for? Back-end as a service? Hosting? Database? from reading their homepage several times and looking at their products I still cant tell... can some explain?

Vercel is a serverless platform like AWS Lambda or Netlify. Run your API endpoints and your client application on it but your database elsewhere. They'll make deploying your website one command but take care of an enormous amount of developer operations, including dev/staging/production environments, secrets management, server scaling, and https certificates.

Vercel is like Netlify, but I would not say it is "like AWS Lambda". Vercel a deployment + hosting platforms for static websites and "serverless" functions, but Lambda extends past what Vercel/Netlify is for.

In terms of actual hosting (removing the build/deployment pipeline), Vercel is a subset of AWS Lambda.

Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B

#40

Post by gcatalfamo »

For the last two projects I really wanted to use Vercel but there is something about its interface that makes me unable to understand it. I ended up both times on Netlify instead. Is it me not being a dev by trade or it happens also to others?
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