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Deno raises $21M

deno.com

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Re: Deno raises $21M

#121

+ People get paid, hopefully a few even get big $. - Investors want unicorn returns. Good luck!

What is their actual business model? I know there's Deno Deploy, and presumably they offer some kind of enterprise-support type deal. But the first is easily copied by competitors (in an already-crowded market), and the other isn't super lucrative. Is there anything else? I love Deno and want it to succeed, but it doesn't feel like a unicorn, and I'm worried about it being expected to become one

[deleted]

Re: Deno raises $21M

#122
post #69

This question is going to make me sound like a jerk, but why do you want to write your back-end in JS? Deno looks like a great improvement over node.js, but I don't feel compelled to use it. It seems like people jumped to node based on some performance promises that didn't really pay off (IMO). And since then, we have newer options like Rust, Go, and Elixir as performant back-end options, and even older choices like…

Hard to out my finger on a single reason for it but I prefer it for hobby projects.

Part of the reason is I am already using node for tooling for the front end.

It is less powerful than say C# for example in multitasking - but for hobby projects that rarely matters.

Typescript makes a big difference.

There is a lot of community support: stackoverflow, npm packages etc. Every SDK has a JS version.

It is fast enough for my needs.

NextJS is another good reason.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#123
post #53
post #33

Interesting how this will play out. It's an ambitious goal to consolidate client side and server side javascript ecosystems which is quite fragmented today. On the other hand, this may only increase fragmentation further by introducing another target to develop for (wait for transpilers that can automagically convert between deno and node code). I will always look at javascript as this problem kid that cannot get its…

There is already a system for building a NPM node package from a Deno package, called dnt (deno to node). It's maintained by some Deno team members. Here's a blog post they wrote about porting "Oak" (a deno HTTP server framework) to Node: https://deno.com/blog/dnt-oak The nice thing about Deno conceptually, is that it's much more similar to the browser platform than node is. It uses ES6 only, has things like `fetch`…

Can the same build pipelines be reused for CF/Fastly workers? The DX for workers is horrible with multiple buggy Wrangler implementations and zero observability into deployed workers.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#124
I think it's a good opportunity for Meteor, which is a very interesting framework but with some technical debt, to jump ship on Deno and start fresh again. Maybe they could try replacing their in-house synchronization mechanisms by managed services such as AppSync. Randomly wondering :)

Re: Deno raises $21M

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re expecting a unicorn why are they funding Deno?

VCs see a tiny chance that it can be a 100X return. So raising $20M at say a $50-100M valuation now, that means betting on a $5B+ exit. In return for getting money to take a shot at that level of artificially-fueled revenue growth, the founders are willing to cede control of the community to professional financiers. As others wrote, that's the VC model: make a ton of these bets, and as long as 2-4 turn out, the lotte…

Maybe they see a chance of it but they cannot seriously expect it

EDIT: the comment I responded to was completely rewritten and replaced with a different one. Please don’t do this

Re: Deno raises $21M

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is their actual business model? I know there's Deno Deploy, and presumably they offer some kind of enterprise-support type deal. But the first is easily copied by competitors (in an already-crowded market), and the other isn't super lucrative. Is there anything else? I love Deno and want it to succeed, but it doesn't feel like a unicorn, and I'm worried about it being expected to become one

I feel like they have a better business plan than NPM did at least. They'll probably get acquired by one of the big cloud players.

I guess that makes some sense. Still feels like it would be a weird thing to aim for, but maybe that's the state of the industry

Re: Deno raises $21M

#127

I'm not deep in Node world but I use it and see it being used, who is using Deno out there? Have there been some notable/major ship jumps? Or is it not that kind of situation (perception from when it came on the scene is that's exactly what it is, constantly trying to woo Node devs over). And also there's alot of recognizable brand competition out there from things like Cloudflare, Netlify (but they're an investor in…

Netlify, Supabase and Slack whitelabelling Deno Deploy for starters, I'm sure there are others out there self-hosting as well

See now that's interesting - All of those have very out-there brand reach and recognition but who knew they were using Deno, nobody heh. Okay, then, so it's a bit under the radar but ticking away down there, hence the raise. Fairplay.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#128

+ People get paid, hopefully a few even get big $. - Investors want unicorn returns. Good luck!

What is their actual business model? I know there's Deno Deploy, and presumably they offer some kind of enterprise-support type deal. But the first is easily copied by competitors (in an already-crowded market), and the other isn't super lucrative. Is there anything else? I love Deno and want it to succeed, but it doesn't feel like a unicorn, and I'm worried about it being expected to become one

Open source ecosystems that become big enough often end up either producing unicorns, or failing that, producing unicorn-level returns for existing companies.

There’s no guarantee that the creator of the ecosystem will be one of the unicorns, but they’re as good a bet as any other company to pull it off. VCs aren’t looking for 100% certainty, just a plausible path.

Re: Deno raises $21M

#129
post #33

Interesting how this will play out. It's an ambitious goal to consolidate client side and server side javascript ecosystems which is quite fragmented today. On the other hand, this may only increase fragmentation further by introducing another target to develop for (wait for transpilers that can automagically convert between deno and node code). I will always look at javascript as this problem kid that cannot get its…

there is a group formed including Deno that will work together to try to maintain standards + compatibility

https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-the-wintercg/

Re: Deno raises $21M

#130

+ People get paid, hopefully a few even get big $. - Investors want unicorn returns. Good luck!

What is their actual business model? I know there's Deno Deploy, and presumably they offer some kind of enterprise-support type deal. But the first is easily copied by competitors (in an already-crowded market), and the other isn't super lucrative. Is there anything else? I love Deno and want it to succeed, but it doesn't feel like a unicorn, and I'm worried about it being expected to become one

https://deno.com/deploy/pricing is their business model.

They charge you for CPU and bandwidth more than they pay for it.

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