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Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

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Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#31

Post by tiborsaas »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #16
tiborsaas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just going with the WordPress model. You can install WP anywhere, but for convenience you can pay a small fee and speed things up. But I also think that 28mill is outrageously lot of money for what the service is. True SV scale :)

it's different from wordpress, for the reason I mentioned above. The main value proposition of static site generators COMPARED TO 1st generation CMS like Wordpress is that they don't require a database and are lightweight and portable. It is common sense that not everyone will want to run their own database and a server, so a wordpress.com makes sense. But static sites can be deployed anywhere and there already is a…

For you with a technical background, it's different. For Bob the marketing guy, it's just another tool to create a website.

There's indeed little magic involved so Gatsby has to do a really good job to keep customers both integration and speed wise.

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#32

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

subpixel wrote: post #23
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

open source => paid hosting model makes sense when the tech is heavy and not easily portable anyway. For example, confluence develops kafka and makes money with kafka cloud. Mongodb develops mongodb and makes money with their cloud, etc. None of these are portable systems. On the other hand, the whole reason for static site generators is its lightweightness. So by design it's hard for these vendors to have lockin....…

The Gatsby model is Wordpress. Be the default choice, be open source, run a thriving hosting business and empower a huge economy around theming and extending your main product. The question is whether that model is repeatable.

The actual question is whether that model is the same as the wordpress model.

I dont know if you read my comment to which you replied, but my point is that if you look closely they are completely different games. If the VCs thought they were getting into Wordpress2.0, they will find that they were terribly wrong. It's a completely different market with completely different market dynamics.

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#33

Post by crucialfelix »

chmac wrote: post #17
ritchiea wrote: post #3

I just don't get Gatsby. It feels over-engineered for the small static site use cases it is the best tool for and definitely not a good alternative to dynamically generated pages from other frameworks like Next.js, Rails, Django, etc. Maybe the engineers that preceded me on the Gatsby project I worked on took a wrong turn but we ended up with long build times and ever growing complexity around the create pages functi…

AFAIK, the thing that sets Gatsby apart is the integration of the built static site and React to do pre-fetching. The output from Gatsby is not just HTML, it's HTML + React javascript, with data loaded from JSON files. That means that once the site has loaded, Gatsby can pre-emptively fetch all the linked pages, both React components and data, to give instantaneous second click page loads. That's a pretty impressive…

Nextjs does the same thing. That's not a business model.

Non tech people often know about Gatsby and compare it to WordPress.

I have to warn decision makers that it promises a lot but adds complexity that wastes developer time.

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#34

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

tiborsaas wrote: post #31
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's different from wordpress, for the reason I mentioned above. The main value proposition of static site generators COMPARED TO 1st generation CMS like Wordpress is that they don't require a database and are lightweight and portable. It is common sense that not everyone will want to run their own database and a server, so a wordpress.com makes sense. But static sites can be deployed anywhere and there already is a…

For you with a technical background, it's different. For Bob the marketing guy, it's just another tool to create a website. There's indeed little magic involved so Gatsby has to do a really good job to keep customers both integration and speed wise.

Bob the marketing guy couldn't care less where he hosts his Gatsby generated HTML website (at the end of the day it's just an HTML/JS/CSS bundle). He can just take that HTML and host it somewhere where it's FREE or provides much better quality.

Basically, the hosting can be unbundled from generating the site. And this is the territory which big companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are already good at.

of course, Gatsby cloud won't want that, and the only way to solve that problem is to create artificial lockins. And when they do so (because they need to justify their valuation), people will leave.

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#35

Post by hn_reddit_human »

Does the commercial offering from Gatsby offer hosting? I couldn't figure it out from the https://gatsbyjs.com page.

Gatsby and NextJS (Vercel) are both backed by CRV[1,2]. It seems like a fairly competitive overlap. Would love to hear takes from folks on HN about the feasibility and comparison of Gatsby's and Vercel's business models and competitive overlaps.

[1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200527005268/en/Gat... [2] https://medium.com/crv-insights/from-next-to-now-to-21m-for-...

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#36

Post by hckr_news »

gk1 wrote: post #12
cpursley wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gatsby has slick looking docs I think you might be on to something; I don't even bother with projects without good docs or a readme. Edit: Not sarcasm. I value my time.

Can't tell if that's sarcasm or not. I've 100% seen startups lose prospects and deals because the docs weren't great. If anyone who's selling software thinks their docs are only for users, and don't get read by prospective customers, they're missing out on customer prospects without even realizing. Many people even skip the homepage and everything else and jump straight to the docs to figure out what the product does…

If I recall correctly that’s what Patrick Collison said about one of the reasons why Stripe grew so quick as they had such useful docs. Good, robust documentation is crucial for any software project or business.

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#37

Post by emerongi »

chmac wrote: post #17
ritchiea wrote: post #3

I just don't get Gatsby. It feels over-engineered for the small static site use cases it is the best tool for and definitely not a good alternative to dynamically generated pages from other frameworks like Next.js, Rails, Django, etc. Maybe the engineers that preceded me on the Gatsby project I worked on took a wrong turn but we ended up with long build times and ever growing complexity around the create pages functi…

AFAIK, the thing that sets Gatsby apart is the integration of the built static site and React to do pre-fetching. The output from Gatsby is not just HTML, it's HTML + React javascript, with data loaded from JSON files. That means that once the site has loaded, Gatsby can pre-emptively fetch all the linked pages, both React components and data, to give instantaneous second click page loads. That's a pretty impressive…

Where does the $28M go?

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#38

Post by subpixel »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #32
subpixel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gatsby model is Wordpress. Be the default choice, be open source, run a thriving hosting business and empower a huge economy around theming and extending your main product. The question is whether that model is repeatable.

The actual question is whether that model is the same as the wordpress model. I dont know if you read my comment to which you replied, but my point is that if you look closely they are completely different games. If the VCs thought they were getting into Wordpress2.0, they will find that they were terribly wrong. It's a completely different market with completely different market dynamics.

I agree with you. My comment was meant as a reflection of what I imagine Gatsby's thinking to be. I am really impressed with the technology but quite baffled by the business model at a $200M valuation.

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#39

Post by nlarew »

crucialfelix wrote: post #33
chmac wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, the thing that sets Gatsby apart is the integration of the built static site and React to do pre-fetching. The output from Gatsby is not just HTML, it's HTML + React javascript, with data loaded from JSON files. That means that once the site has loaded, Gatsby can pre-emptively fetch all the linked pages, both React components and data, to give instantaneous second click page loads. That's a pretty impressive…

Nextjs does the same thing. That's not a business model. Non tech people often know about Gatsby and compare it to WordPress. I have to warn decision makers that it promises a lot but adds complexity that wastes developer time.

> Nextjs does the same thing. That's not a business model.

A business model doesn't need to be unique in order to be successful. Also Gatsby is open source, so I wouldn't expect to find profits falling out of the core library. They make their money through consulting and cloud ops.

> adds complexity that wastes developer time

Every framework comes with its own flavor of complexity. To blanket say that Gatsby wastes time ignores the real benefits it provides and the opportunity cost of getting those benefits through some other library (or even more daunting, writing and maintaining a homegrown framework).

If web performance matters to you or your business then effort focused in that direction is not a waste. The complexity of learning/developing with Gatsby/Next is significantly lower than getting those benefits without them.

Re: Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

#40

Post by rpastuszak »

crucialfelix wrote: post #33
chmac wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, the thing that sets Gatsby apart is the integration of the built static site and React to do pre-fetching. The output from Gatsby is not just HTML, it's HTML + React javascript, with data loaded from JSON files. That means that once the site has loaded, Gatsby can pre-emptively fetch all the linked pages, both React components and data, to give instantaneous second click page loads. That's a pretty impressive…

Nextjs does the same thing. That's not a business model. Non tech people often know about Gatsby and compare it to WordPress. I have to warn decision makers that it promises a lot but adds complexity that wastes developer time.

Yeah, I was reading that and thinking that you can replace every instance of Gatsby with Next.js and the text would still hold.*

I noticed that IDEO uses Gatsby for their site, so I'm starting to think that the main difference is PR/marketing.

* I've worked with Next, 11ty, jekyll, hugo, but not Gatsby, hence the interpretation. Gatsby feels like less boilerplate than Next. I'll check it out once I find an excuse to use it.

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