Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#61

Post by kposehn » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

Great product. I'm a frequent user of Segment from the early days and have been curious to see when an open-source competitor comes around that will match feature-for-feature.

Thoughts:

1. You've got most major ads sources that I care about, but it seems that there is a higher bar to implementation. Segment lets me just plug in Google & FB ads and dump the entire shebang right into my data warehouse. A lot of marketing teams are going to have less time/resources to deal with implementation so smoothing this out is key.

2. Functions are an underrated and highly powerful feature of Segment. The ability to operate on data in transit, create custom connectors that "just run" (akin to CF Workers) and the like is a big selling point for more technically advanced marketing teams. It doesn't seem present here and that would hold a customer such as myself back on bigger scope projects.

3. I'd love to see a "compare us to your segment usage" where I select my data sources and destinations to see what you cover vs. Segment in a specific use case (and possibly pricing advantages on a self-hosted vs. non). This would make it much easier to sell through procurement and devops for new customers that are switching.

4. There are going to be a lot of people like me that are soon to start fresh in terms of marketing stack, so going after people before they select Segment might also be a play.

Looking forward to seeing where you all take this. Good luck!

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#62

Post by tomnipotent » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

vklmn wrote: post #58

tomnipotent wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're aiming to replace Kafka in some cases How are your handling data between collection agents and storage? With Kafka, I know what I'm getting when it sits between the two and the advantages it offers.

The same way as Kafka. Jitsu nodes (=collection agents) writes to write ahead log, and then either sends data to destination right away, or sends data in batches.

Thanks! I take it this file is where I can get started to learn more:

https://github.com/jitsucom/jitsu/blob/0aaa74b59eb9d8c885c80...

I see that it instantiates an "AsyncLogger" - does the service wait until data is written to the log prior to returning success to the client?

Is the WAL the same source used to feed both database storage destinations and other SaaS destinations?

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#63

Post by public_void » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

Hey congrats on the launch, clearly a lot of thought and effort went into this. I'm pretty new to this space, and maybe this is a dumb question but how does this differ from Mixpanel? Would I use this for something different?

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#64

Post by xondono » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

oDot wrote: post #46

xondono wrote: post #44

Kudos on the work done and I hope you the best of luck. A little note of advise: I wouldn’t start my company description as “the Y of X” or “the Y alternative to X”. It’s okay to mention if you are similar to another well known company, but don’t use it to describe your company, specially not in the first line.

I disagree, much easier to understand when it's described like this

I’m just saying this is better:

We are building Jitsu, (https://github.com/jitsucom/jitsu, https://jitsu.com/) We help companies collect events from their apps, websites, and APIs and send them to databases.

Think of us as an open-source Segment alternative.

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#65

Post by xondono » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

vklmn wrote: post #47

xondono wrote: post #44

Kudos on the work done and I hope you the best of luck. A little note of advise: I wouldn’t start my company description as “the Y of X” or “the Y alternative to X”. It’s okay to mention if you are similar to another well known company, but don’t use it to describe your company, specially not in the first line.

There's always a tradeoff. By describing our company as "alternative to X" you saving tons of time by explaining what you company does. People are overloaded with information, and average attention span very short. But I see the disadvantages too! We have an internal debate about tagline a few months ago, and essentially decided to go with "Open-source alternative to Segment". But it wasn't an easy decision! However,…

It’s okay to use that for an elevator pitch, I’d just reverse the order.

First tell me what you do, then tell me what you are similar to.

>> We are building Jitsu, (https://github.com/jitsucom/jitsu, https://jitsu.com/) We help companies collect events from their apps, websites, and APIs and send them to databases. Think of us as an open-source Segment alternative

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#66

Post by 0xferruccio » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

Congrats on the launch, much needed! Would love to see if it's possible for you to connect to https://june.so for easy to use product analytics.

Are you following the same tracking convention spec as Segment?

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#67

Post by tailspin2019 » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

This looks really cool. I'm keen to try it.

It looks like it might play well with my current logging system of choice, Seq [0].

Do you support inbound webhooks? I can see webhooks as a destination but not as a source?

[0] https://datalust.co/seq

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#68

Post by vklmn » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

kposehn wrote: post #61

Great product. I'm a frequent user of Segment from the early days and have been curious to see when an open-source competitor comes around that will match feature-for-feature. Thoughts: 1. You've got most major ads sources that I care about, but it seems that there is a higher bar to implementation. Segment lets me just plug in Google & FB ads and dump the entire shebang right into my data warehouse. A lot of marketi…

Thank you!

1. Thats exactly the reason we have native connectors for Facebook and Google Ads (we didn't use ones from Airbyte and Singer). Jitsu can pull any combination from FB/GAds — it's almost like SQL! Airbyte/Singer just can't do that. Later we're going to vet other connectors too and decide if we need to re-implement them

2. We have functions too! https://jitsu.com/blog/javascript-transform

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#69

Post by vklmn » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

0xferruccio wrote: post #66

Congrats on the launch, much needed! Would love to see if it's possible for you to connect to https://june.so for easy to use product analytics. Are you following the same tracking convention spec as Segment?

Yes, if segment compatibility mode is enabled

Re: Launch HN: Jitsu (YC S20) – Open-Source Segment Alternative

#70

Post by vklmn » Thu, Nov 04, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

tailspin2019 wrote: post #67

This looks really cool. I'm keen to try it. It looks like it might play well with my current logging system of choice, Seq [0]. Do you support inbound webhooks? I can see webhooks as a destination but not as a source? [0] https://datalust.co/seq

You can hack almost anything using inbound Event API (https://jitsu.com/docs/sending-data/api) and JavaScript transformations (https://jitsu.com/blog/javascript-transform)