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Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

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Re: Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

#31

Post by manquer »

yalogin wrote: post #25

A tangential question here, will Databricks ever go public? At this point it's a large company making billion dollar acquisitions. For someone looking to join the company, I cannot imagine IPO to be a motivation anymore.

Later stage things are , the potential IPO is a benefit not deterrent. Recruiters and hiring managers will hint at potential IPO being not far off as an incentive to join. It minimizes risk, they do same for potential target’s founders like Neon here .

This is better than earlier stage startups , while you get far better multiples , it is also quite possible that you are let go somewhere into the cycle without the money to vest the options for tax reasons and there is short vesting period on exit.

For this reason companies these days offer 5/10 yr post leaving as a more favorable offer

——

For founders it is gives them a shorter window to a exit than on their own, and in revenue light and tech heavy startup like neon (compared to databricks) the value risk is reduced because stock they get in acquisition is based on real revenue and growth not early stage product traction as neon would be today .

They also have some cash component which is usually enough to buy core things in most founders look at like buying a house in few million range or closing mortgages or invest in few early stage projects directly or through funds

Re: Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

#33

Post by forgetfulness »

What is the lowdown on Databricks? Their bread and butter were hosted Spark and notebooks. As tasks done in Spark over a data lake began to be delegated wholesale to columnar store ELT, they tried to pivot to "lake houses", then I sort of lost track of them after I got out of Spark myself.

Did Delta Lake ever catch on? Where are they going now?

Re: Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

#35

Post by [deleted] »

ivape wrote: post #13
outside1234 wrote: post #11

Ok, can we just. How is Databricks an AI unicorn exactly?

Enterprises have lots of data. They store it somewhere, and there are multiple vendors that provide such "credible" infrastructure for this type of storage. Think of it like, your dad says he's willing to get a dog, but only trusts these-five-animal-shelters and nothing else. That doesn't mean that's correct (that those are the only places to get a dog), it just means that's what he trusts. Databricks is most likely…

[deleted]

Re: Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

#36

Post by 999900000999 »

Supabase just raised 200 million.

What’s with all these Postgres hosting services being worth so much now?

Someone at AWS probably thought about this, easy to provision serverless Postgres, and they just didn’t build it.

I’m still looking for something that can generate types and spit it out in a solid sdk.

It’s amazing this isn’t a solved problem. A long long time ago, I was apart of a team trying to sort this out. I’m tempted to hit up my old CEO and ask him what he thinks.

The company is long gone…

If anything we tried to do way too much with a fraction of the funding.

In a hypothetical almost movie like situation I wouldn’t hesitate to rejoin my old colleagues.

The issue then, as is today is applications need backends. But building backends is boring, tedious and difficult.

Maybe a NoSql DB that “understands” the Postgres API?

Re: Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

#37

Post by taw1285 »

I am fairly new to all this data pipeline services (Databricks, Snowflakes etc).

Say right now I have an e-commerce site with 20K MAU. All metrics are going to Amplitude and we can use that to see DAU, retention, and purchase volume. At what point in my startup lifecycle do we need to enlist the services?

Re: Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

#38

Post by ww520 »

yalogin wrote: post #25

A tangential question here, will Databricks ever go public? At this point it's a large company making billion dollar acquisitions. For someone looking to join the company, I cannot imagine IPO to be a motivation anymore.

If they are making money, there is no pressure to raise money from IPO.

Re: Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

#39

Post by _bohm »

999900000999 wrote: post #36

Supabase just raised 200 million. What’s with all these Postgres hosting services being worth so much now? Someone at AWS probably thought about this, easy to provision serverless Postgres, and they just didn’t build it. I’m still looking for something that can generate types and spit it out in a solid sdk. It’s amazing this isn’t a solved problem. A long long time ago, I was apart of a team trying to sort this out.…

"Easy to provision" is mostly a strategic feature for acquiring new users/customers. The more difficult parts of building a database platform are reliability and performance, and it can take a long time to establish a reputation for having these qualities. There's a reason why most large enterprises stick to the hyperscalers for their mission-critical workloads.

Re: Databricks in talks to acquire startup Neon for about $1B

#40

Post by investa »

999900000999 wrote: post #36

Supabase just raised 200 million. What’s with all these Postgres hosting services being worth so much now? Someone at AWS probably thought about this, easy to provision serverless Postgres, and they just didn’t build it. I’m still looking for something that can generate types and spit it out in a solid sdk. It’s amazing this isn’t a solved problem. A long long time ago, I was apart of a team trying to sort this out.…

Building backends is easy. It is sort of weird. In 2003 no one would bat an eyelid at building an entire app and chucking it on a server. I guess front-end complexity had made that a specialism so with all that dev energy drained they have no time for the backend. The backend is substantial easier though!

These high value startups timed well to capture the vibe coding (was known as builidng an MVP before), front end culture and sheer volume of internet use and developers.

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