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Bitwarden raises $100M

bitwarden.com

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Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#341

Post by bombcar »

michaelmior wrote: post #334
asdajksah2123 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people at Bitwarden and their supporters need to answer 1 simple question. How do they increase their valuation 10+x without pulling those tricks. Because that's what the VC funding demands. No VC is giving out $100mm for a 20% or even 100% return, which could possibly be achieved by simple growth. They're giving that money because they're expecting exponential return. Maybe there is an enterprise play somewhere…

> Maybe there is an enterprise play somewhere The post mentions the plan to implement advanced business features, and also "Business users deserve consumer ease-of-use along with advanced integration and deployment features."

This is the only way it works out, and even those are susceptible to falling years later (Google's "free domain email for life" as an example).

The way it works is if the free/small customer cost to maintain is just absolutely minuscule compared to the total costs/revenue.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#342

Post by robertlagrant »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #271
robertlagrant wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you got to that position by just selling something customers want, then good on you.

Sure, good on you, but once you got that position, what's stopping you from monetizing your users by selling their personal data to advertisers? I don't understand why anyone would celebrate and worship monopolies? Publicly listed companies are not your friends. You're just a dollar sign for them.

The same thing that stops anything: terms of service.

Also: no one is worshipping, and no monopoly has been mentioned. Nor has companies being anyone's friend. There is more non sequitur than content here :)

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#343

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #213
P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would .net/C# have anything to do with the success or failure of a startup? Is this some weird SV bubble thing I'm seeing?

C# is a rarity in SV and startups in general. There's a resourcing constraint for a team hiring only geographically in SV. SV and startups are dominated by JavaScript/TypeScript and Python. It makes the parts of the team a bit more plug-n-play and in some calculus, makes it easier to grow the team as the company grows. There's also a bit of cultural asymmetry that may make it harder to hire experienced senior C# engi…

IOW, it's a weird SV bubble thing.

I get the idea that most developers in SV don't know C#/.Net, that happens everywhere. Some areas are java, some .net, some Ruby/Python.

What I was surprised about was this weird rationalization that C#/.Net was somehow dangerous to a startup. Not only is that not true, C#/.Net is going to be better for a startup long term due to the stability that comes with that ecosystem that you flat don't get in ruby, python, js, etc.

There is absolutely nothing outside of the hiring difficulty that would ever cause problems for a startup wrt to C#/.Net.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#344

Post by bachmeier »

michaelmior wrote: post #334
asdajksah2123 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people at Bitwarden and their supporters need to answer 1 simple question. How do they increase their valuation 10+x without pulling those tricks. Because that's what the VC funding demands. No VC is giving out $100mm for a 20% or even 100% return, which could possibly be achieved by simple growth. They're giving that money because they're expecting exponential return. Maybe there is an enterprise play somewhere…

> Maybe there is an enterprise play somewhere The post mentions the plan to implement advanced business features, and also "Business users deserve consumer ease-of-use along with advanced integration and deployment features."

That just makes it worse. I'm a paying customer right now. VC + focus on business means the consumer stuff dies or gets neglected to the point that it should die. All resources get moved to the high-growth parts of the business once VC enters a company. Bitwarden will not be the first to get VC to change its operating principles.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#345

Post by tut-urut-utut »

MaKleSoft wrote: post #125

If you're a Bitwarden user and this doesn't worry you, you haven't been paying attention to the history of almost every company that has accepted VC funds. It doesn't matter how well intentioned the founders are - once you accept that kind of money, it's not your product anymore. You are now in the business of making money, nothing else, and those skewed incentives will start bleeding into their product and business…

Now that you criticized Bitwarden for accepting the funding, please explain how is your approach different. Are you really not interested in monetization of your own product, and developing it only for the benefit of your users, without any economic incentive from your side?

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#346

Post by woodbinebeach »

I am afraid that my free tier plan data will go away. As for the self-hosting option, I am concerned that I don't have enough infrastructure to ensure the safety of my data. I wish their backend supports cheaper static store like object storage instead of full-featured database.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#347

Post by bombcar »

pwpw wrote: post #155
MaKleSoft wrote: post #125

If you're a Bitwarden user and this doesn't worry you, you haven't been paying attention to the history of almost every company that has accepted VC funds. It doesn't matter how well intentioned the founders are - once you accept that kind of money, it's not your product anymore. You are now in the business of making money, nothing else, and those skewed incentives will start bleeding into their product and business…

That’s a hell of a disclaimer after a decently alarmist comment. You may be correct, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate for you to raise that point given the conflict of interest.

I would have simply reversed the order of the post.

"We're building padloc because we see no way to avoid X Y Z"

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#348

Post by serial_dev »

serial_dev wrote: post #245
Gasp0de wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitwarden is also open source and self hosted. If they should ever make their product not free, I can just keep running the last version and fork it to further improve it together with other people, can't I?

You can, but will you?

The points I was trying to make is that...

1. sure, it's great that it is open source and that I could self host, but honestly, it's just not worth the trouble for me and I'd rather pay 10-20 euros for someone to take care of that for me. Self hosting my password manager would take a significant time investment and constant worry whether I'm doing it right. It might be because I'm primarily an app developer now and not a backend expert anymore.

2. Most big projects like Bitwarden are alive because there is a company and many full time employees behind it. Once that's gone, relying on a couple of passionate volunteers might not be enough to keep the project alive.

All in all, I've been using Bitwarden since the LastPass fiasco, I'm very happy with it, paid user with my family, but if I had to self host or volunteer, I'd not have the bandwidth to do so and I'd rather switch to another solution, even if it would mean I need to pay.

I think that when people say "it's open source, I could just self host and maintain the project" often underestimate how much effort that really is. Sure, it's possible, but will you actually do it?

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#349

Post by scarface74 »

roustem wrote: post #279
scarface74 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now they are also raising rounds of funding “chasing after the enterprise”. Every single time a small bootstrapped company tries to “accelerate growth by going after the enterprise” the product gets worse for consumers. See also DropBox. 1Password’s desktop app is much worse than it use to be all while each platforms built in capabilities are getting better.

from the founder of 1Password: would love to learn where you think it is worse. 1Password 8 has a ton of new features and it is faster than the previous version. Some of the new features like Universal Autofill and SSH Agent do not exist in any other product. It also fixes many problems that accumulated in the app over the years. More on features here: https://1password.com/products/features/ a more visual descriptio…

It’s more of a preference for a “real native Mac app” instead of an Electron app. Long time Mac users can feel the difference.

Re: Bitwarden raises $100M

#350

Post by bombcar »

burntalmonds wrote: post #197
MaKleSoft wrote: post #125

If you're a Bitwarden user and this doesn't worry you, you haven't been paying attention to the history of almost every company that has accepted VC funds. It doesn't matter how well intentioned the founders are - once you accept that kind of money, it's not your product anymore. You are now in the business of making money, nothing else, and those skewed incentives will start bleeding into their product and business…

Yeah, that's why I have just stuck with Apple's keychain.

This is the real answer for most people - especially if they've drunk the coolaid as it were.

Keychain will continue to get better and better for those in the Apple ecosystem, and for much of those outside it, Chrome provides enough.

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