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Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

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Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#151
Jetbrains is one of the few tool vendors that do not have to aggressively market their way into our tech stacks. That alone is a key indication of how good and useful their products are. Great that this is rewarded. I really hope that they will stay this way and grow organically rather than with force.

(Long-term user/customer here. I am using IntelliJ since like version 2 (with some gaps).)

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#152

It’s rare these to read stories of software billionaires and think it’s well deserved. This is one of those rare cases. Also, IntelliJ runs on Java, for all the bashing that Java gets on HN, it’s an example of how “what technology you pick is less important than your focus on user experience”. It’s amazing that their products are so performant on Java

Absolutely agree. The amount of value that Jetbrains software provides far exceeds its price. Their existence is a net benefit to the whole software development field.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#153

It’s rare these to read stories of software billionaires and think it’s well deserved. This is one of those rare cases. Also, IntelliJ runs on Java, for all the bashing that Java gets on HN, it’s an example of how “what technology you pick is less important than your focus on user experience”. It’s amazing that their products are so performant on Java

TBF, Jetbrains IDEs do feel sluggish at least on macOS compared to the alternatives (like Xcode or VSCode) on my mid-2014 13" MBP. I don't know if the JVM has performance problems specific to macOS which would explain why big UI applications feel so laggy, or whether other systems with more recent CPUs simply have more reserves to hide the lower UI performance though (the latter is probably more likely).

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. and IntelliJ Ultimate has plugins that brings all the features of all of their IDEs(PHP, GO, Android, RUST, JS...) except CLion.

Does IntelliJ Ultimate include their C# functionality from Rider, as well? I used to use IntelliJ Ultimate, but I don't remember it including C# support.

I guess AppCode and Rider aren't included. As a Linux user I completely forgot they existed :).

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#155
post #143

It reads that they raised no external funding whatsoever? Is that true? If so, how? Did they just code an app and start immediately selling it, working another jobs until it become enough profitable to support them full-time? It sounds quite implausible that they did not receive any funding, but I guess it could be true. Very impressive achievement nonetheless.

> It reads that they raised no external funding whatsoever?

It sounds strange now but I suspect for most of history this was true of businesses large and small. I wonder when external funding became "the rule" for successful companies rather than the exception?

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#156
I love these guys. My team adopted IntelliJ when it was still 1.0... 2000, 2001 maybe? Far and away the best Java IDE. I even got to talk them at their Booth at JavaOne in 2008... wonderful people. Very happy to see they have stuck it out and made it on their own.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#157
post #143

It reads that they raised no external funding whatsoever? Is that true? If so, how? Did they just code an app and start immediately selling it, working another jobs until it become enough profitable to support them full-time? It sounds quite implausible that they did not receive any funding, but I guess it could be true. Very impressive achievement nonetheless.

And this is what the modern VC fueled world has brought us to.

Why is it impossible to believe that a company can start small, become profitable and grow without VC funding? This is how the vast majority of businesses become successful.

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#159
post #144

It’s rare these to read stories of software billionaires and think it’s well deserved. This is one of those rare cases. Also, IntelliJ runs on Java, for all the bashing that Java gets on HN, it’s an example of how “what technology you pick is less important than your focus on user experience”. It’s amazing that their products are so performant on Java

That is actually a misconception. You may have this mental classification of Java as a slow language if you looked at its performance 20 years ago. Now it's actually really fast, it goes neck to neck with C++. Sure, Rust or Go or C (or definitely assembler) might be faster in some workloads, but Java is definitely very very fast nowadays. It uses a lot of memory because of the way Garbage Collection works, but it is…

> it goes neck to neck with C++. Sure, Rust or Go or C

I hate to be that guy but 1) java does not go neck to neck with c++ unless you mean it can be in the same order of magnitude and 2) C++ is not slower than C or Go or Rust

Note: by c++ I mean c++ compiled by a decent compiler e.g. gcc/clang/msvc

Re: Jetbrains founders turn billionaires without VC help

#160
post #143

It reads that they raised no external funding whatsoever? Is that true? If so, how? Did they just code an app and start immediately selling it, working another jobs until it become enough profitable to support them full-time? It sounds quite implausible that they did not receive any funding, but I guess it could be true. Very impressive achievement nonetheless.

The company I currently work for also started this way to my knowledge, and I think we're better off for it. It may be harder than getting funding right from the start, but I wouldn't say it's implausible.
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