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Sequoia backs Zed

zed.dev

231–240 of 346 posts

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#231
post #194

I'm willing to accept this claim: - You can make money when your product is a text editor. I am very skeptical of these claims: - When your product is a text editor, $42 million in capital can be effectively deployed to make meaningful improvements to your product. - When your product is a text editor, your lifetime inflation-adjusted profit will eventually exceed $42 million. Sequoia is apparently not so skeptical,…

Zed isn’t just a text editor. It is the only working platform for code assistants.

Neither Google nor Claude nor anyone can’t at the moment get right basic operations like file edits. Zed is flawless in co-operating with most LLM models. And not just that - also switching models during conversation and more.

I am at Zed Pro at $20 but when Zed offers $200 Max plan I will sign up right away.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#232
Is anyone actually using the collaboration features? Zed is my daily editor and I love it, but I've never touched the collaboration features, which is their "USP" when raising cash.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

There was a time around ST2 when it felt like everyone was using it and it could've become The Editor, then something happened and it's been left in the dust. I wasn't even aware but apparently even fourth version of ST was released, and that was in 2021. I lost track of what happened there (moved to Vim back then), was it VSCode that killed it?

Basically yes, vscode was free, almost as fast and had more features, like out of the box intellisense.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

There was a time around ST2 when it felt like everyone was using it and it could've become The Editor, then something happened and it's been left in the dust. I wasn't even aware but apparently even fourth version of ST was released, and that was in 2021. I lost track of what happened there (moved to Vim back then), was it VSCode that killed it?

vscode came along with a thriving extension ecosystem. That made up for any pitfalls really.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

There was a time around ST2 when it felt like everyone was using it and it could've become The Editor, then something happened and it's been left in the dust. I wasn't even aware but apparently even fourth version of ST was released, and that was in 2021. I lost track of what happened there (moved to Vim back then), was it VSCode that killed it?

Anecdotally a lot of people I know went from Sublime to Atom to VSCode. I think it mostly was about scale of community and momentum of updates.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#236
post #194

I'm willing to accept this claim: - You can make money when your product is a text editor. I am very skeptical of these claims: - When your product is a text editor, $42 million in capital can be effectively deployed to make meaningful improvements to your product. - When your product is a text editor, your lifetime inflation-adjusted profit will eventually exceed $42 million. Sequoia is apparently not so skeptical,…

No....there is value in having many developers use your tool for daily code development. You should think if it as a lot more than a text editor as well, just like Github is a lot more than just hosted Git (also VC backed at first).

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#237
post #20

I love the spirit of Zed. From the principles to the low-level implementation details, it all screams "good taste". It's immensely interesting as an object of study (the code is great, from GPUI all the way up). Having said that, I don't think an editor should be VC backed. It's the obvious pragmatic choice to get a team together to support a thing, but I'm concerned by it.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

They didn’t “solve” it, otherwise it would be a thriving editor that everyone would be using.

In reality 70% of the people I see are using Cursor (Subscription), Vscode (Free) or some JetBrains products (Subscription). I only know of some people including myself that have ST for opening large files, where performance matters.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#238
post #194

I'm willing to accept this claim: - You can make money when your product is a text editor. I am very skeptical of these claims: - When your product is a text editor, $42 million in capital can be effectively deployed to make meaningful improvements to your product. - When your product is a text editor, your lifetime inflation-adjusted profit will eventually exceed $42 million. Sequoia is apparently not so skeptical,…

> Sequoia is apparently not so skeptical, and willing to put the money on the table. That must have been a truly extraordinary pitch deck...

They invested like $200 million in FTX and had a glowing article about SBF about mile long on their website.

The big VC firms are by no means immune from just doing plainly stupid things.

Right now all the hype around anything even at the periphery of "AI" is enabling a lot of similar stupidity.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#239
post #231
post #194

I'm willing to accept this claim: - You can make money when your product is a text editor. I am very skeptical of these claims: - When your product is a text editor, $42 million in capital can be effectively deployed to make meaningful improvements to your product. - When your product is a text editor, your lifetime inflation-adjusted profit will eventually exceed $42 million. Sequoia is apparently not so skeptical,…

Zed isn’t just a text editor. It is the only working platform for code assistants. Neither Google nor Claude nor anyone can’t at the moment get right basic operations like file edits. Zed is flawless in co-operating with most LLM models. And not just that - also switching models during conversation and more. I am at Zed Pro at $20 but when Zed offers $200 Max plan I will sign up right away.

How does this compare to the rust rover with Junie? it is definitely well integrated for code edits and iterations with the IDE

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#240
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

They didn’t “solve” it, otherwise it would be a thriving editor that everyone would be using. In reality 70% of the people I see are using Cursor (Subscription), Vscode (Free) or some JetBrains products (Subscription). I only know of some people including myself that have ST for opening large files, where performance matters.

Why do you think that it is not thriving? Is the company struggling? Not everyone needs to use the thing to be thriving.
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