Neo4j raises $325M series F • Hacker News Board

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#31

Post by tshaddox » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

tgtweak wrote: post #24

I always find it amusing how much graphQL there is without actual graph db behind it. Seems the concept of having fluid relationships is appealing for querying but not structuring/storing... which seems like a disconnect. I have only seen a few Neo4J systems in serious production workloads and they were ALL on logistics... I'm not sure that it's being positioned (or interpreted) as a nice simple solution to start out…

I don’t think that’s particularly amusing or a “disconnect.” From what I can tell, the entire point of GraphQL at Facebook was to expose an interface that looks like a graph database but is in fact able to load data from any number of different underlying data stores (without the query developer needing to know about that part).

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#32

Post by not_jd_salinger » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

httpz wrote: post #29

whalesalad wrote: post #5

> Series F Yikes > largest investment in a private database company I guess this is one of those PR moves that is trying to make something lame sound good? If your customer portfolio includes Walmart, Volvo and AstraZeneca why are you raising money a 6th time?

Series F by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing anymore. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Snowflake all had Series F rounds at one point.

Have any of them figured out how to generate a profit or have they just switched from extracting money from VCs to extracting it from the public?

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#33

Post by nick_ » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

Grimm1 wrote: post #12

What this tells me is that the graph db space has a lot of room in it for someone to come along and make a kick ass product, because honestly every time I've had a problem a graph db can solve I remember I basically only have a few mediocre choices to choose from. Neo4J has been very meh in my experience, but they are the biggest.

Have you checked out RedisGraph extension for Redis?

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#34

Post by not_jd_salinger » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

haolez wrote: post #6

Series F? Is that a bad smell or is it considered normal nowadays? Genuine question.

Both. I personally find the fact that having these later and later rounds of funding considered normal a huge indicator that something is very wrong with the current industry.

It means there's a lot of capital being dumped into trying to find some hidden source of profit and it's getting harder and harder to find it.

It's the capital equivalent of going from finding oil in your back yard to blasting it out of tar sands in the Canadian tundra. Sure the capital/oil keeps flowing, but the inherent unsustainability of the system starts to show its face more clearly.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#35

Post by handrous » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

tgtweak wrote: post #24

I always find it amusing how much graphQL there is without actual graph db behind it. Seems the concept of having fluid relationships is appealing for querying but not structuring/storing... which seems like a disconnect. I have only seen a few Neo4J systems in serious production workloads and they were ALL on logistics... I'm not sure that it's being positioned (or interpreted) as a nice simple solution to start out…

GraphQL has been such a bad name to deal with. I've seen so much "we need a graph, so isn't graphQL a good idea?" or "this is a graph database, so doing graphQL on it will be way easier & more natural than on a SQL db, right?". Even from technical and semi-technical people.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#36

Post by feu » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

Grimm1 wrote: post #12

What this tells me is that the graph db space has a lot of room in it for someone to come along and make a kick ass product, because honestly every time I've had a problem a graph db can solve I remember I basically only have a few mediocre choices to choose from. Neo4J has been very meh in my experience, but they are the biggest.

Do you have any opinions on ArangoDB or Dgraph? My new tech lead is talking about switching from MongoDB to one of those.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#37

Post by feu » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #35

tgtweak wrote: post #24

I always find it amusing how much graphQL there is without actual graph db behind it. Seems the concept of having fluid relationships is appealing for querying but not structuring/storing... which seems like a disconnect. I have only seen a few Neo4J systems in serious production workloads and they were ALL on logistics... I'm not sure that it's being positioned (or interpreted) as a nice simple solution to start out…

GraphQL has been such a bad name to deal with. I've seen so much "we need a graph, so isn't graphQL a good idea?" or "this is a graph database, so doing graphQL on it will be way easier & more natural than on a SQL db, right?". Even from technical and semi-technical people.

Is the latter not the case? I'm genuinely asking here, as this is a point of view expressed by my tech lead (though in our case it's a graph DB vs an existing MongoDB setup).

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#38

Post by distrill » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

not_jd_salinger wrote: post #32

httpz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Series F by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing anymore. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Snowflake all had Series F rounds at one point.

Have any of them figured out how to generate a profit or have they just switched from extracting money from VCs to extracting it from the public?

Is profit not normally extracted from the public? Rideshare costs are definitely increasing as they move towards profitability, this seems to be the expected and reasonable path towards that.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#39

Post by handrous » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

feu wrote: post #37

handrous wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GraphQL has been such a bad name to deal with. I've seen so much "we need a graph, so isn't graphQL a good idea?" or "this is a graph database, so doing graphQL on it will be way easier & more natural than on a SQL db, right?". Even from technical and semi-technical people.

Is the latter not the case? I'm genuinely asking here, as this is a point of view expressed by my tech lead (though in our case it's a graph DB vs an existing MongoDB setup).

Not especially, no. It likes trees, or things that can easily and naturally be represented as trees, best, as far as I've ever been able to tell. Granted, I suppose, that's a kind of graph.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#40

Post by softwaredoug » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

> By 2025, graph technologies will be used in 80% of data and analytics innovations, up from 10% in 2021, facilitating rapid decision making across the enterprise.”

What is behind the thought that graph databases are going to grow so much in the next few years? To me they've always had a niche use... Are they really going to be ubiquitous (like this funding seems to assume?)