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Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

vercel.com

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Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#31

Post by gitgud »

A shame they changed the name, I liked "Zeit". The re-branding reminds me of the browser IDE "Hyperdev" which changed to "Gomix" and finally to "Glitch"... Everytime the name changes, people care less... but I'm no businessman

> [1] ...Therefore, all new plans include unlimited Bandwidth, Builds, and Serverless Function Execution

Also, the new pricing is a bit more approachable, when I last looked it seemed a bit expensive for Serverless functions.

[1] https://vercel.com/blog/simpler-pricing

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#35

Post by brazzy »

adim86 wrote: post #25
jlelse wrote: post #17

The name "Zeit" was very confusing for Germans. "Zeit" is the regular word for time and there's also a newspaper called "Die ZEIT".

LOL, really? source? Is Germany a big market for them? Apple is also a regular word... its's the name of a fruit in English

> Is Germany a big market for them?

It's a big market for most internationally operating companies, seems a smart move to take that into account early.

> Apple is also a regular word... its's the name of a fruit in English

And it caused them pretty big problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

I'm sure they've thoroughly vetted "Vercel" against potential trademark conflicts.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#36

Post by bengale »

Awesome. I normally work on just web apps but had to build a website recently that had some complex bits in some pages but mainly a marketing site. The experience with nextjs and deploying with zeit was brilliant. Docs are good, everything works well, just an all round good experience. Please don't break it!

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#37

Post by subpixel »

franky47 wrote: post #6

Congrats on the funding, but I'd like to know what prompted the name change. ZEIT sounded mysterious and edgy, while Vercel sounds like a company selling expensive handbags (to me).

Zeit means "time" in German, is the name of a German newspaper, and surely made organic SEO a challenge...much like Now did.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#38

Post by brazzy »

karanganesan wrote: post #26
Rauchg wrote: post #19

Vercel CEO here. We are incredibly delighted to bring the new brand to the world and share the news of our funding. For everyone who's been on this journey with us so far, thank you, and we look forward to a lot more!

curious why was the name Zeit not preferred?

It's a German word and the name of one of Germany's biggest newspapers, and probably part of the name of dozens of businesses in all kinds of industries in Germany.

Using a made-up brand name is the standard way to avoid potential trademark conflicts, and at the same time be more easily findable via Google.

Re: Vercel, formerly Zeit, raises $21M Series A

#39

Post by k__ »

franky47 wrote: post #30
sandGorgon wrote: post #12

Nextjs is most likely going to be the new Ruby on Rails. javascript all the way down, static rendering, PWA, server side rendering...everything baked in. This is a big backing for Next. However rebranding to Vercel is bad.

That's the objective of Blitz.js [1]: build on top of Next.js for a rails-like experience, but made by an independent open-source community. [1] https://blitzjs.com/ - https://github.com/blitz-js/blitz

Pretty slick!

I thought about making "higher level" frameworks by combining "lower level" frameworks myself.

How did you do it? I mean, it's not just wrapping the libraries, but also the CLIs.

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