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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

#41

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.…

Supabase is particularly valuable for its users. Or right now “vibecoders”

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

#42

I'm confused. I saw users left Databricks left and right. Two companies I worked for previously got out of it due to cost. Do they still have a lot of $$$?

https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/d...

Thanks. OK they still have a lot of money.

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

#43
post #39

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.

That reason also includes SOC2, FedRAMP, data at rest jurisdiction, availability zones etc. And if large enough you can negotiate the standard pricing.

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

#44
post #43
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That reason also includes SOC2, FedRAMP, data at rest jurisdiction, availability zones etc. And if large enough you can negotiate the standard pricing.

For sure. And oftentimes these less sexy features or certifications are much more cumbersome to implement/acquire than the flashy stuff these startups lead with

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

#45
post #37

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?

A non-trivial portion of my consulting work over the past 10 years has been working on data pipelines at various big corporations that move absurdly small amounts of data around using big data tools like spark. I would not worry about purchasing services from Databricks, but I would definitely try to poach their sales people if you can.

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

#46
post #40

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…

It’s harder than signing up for Firebase.

You have to understand a separate set of concerns. Spin something up on ec2, hook it into a db, configure https , figure out why it went down, etc.

You’re right though, once I build a complex front end I want someone else to do the backend.

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

#47

Looks like the acquihire of Bit.io in 2023 wasn't enough to be able to deliver their own OLTP offering https://blog.bit.io/whats-next-for-bit-io-joining-databricks... https://www.databricks.com/blog/welcoming-bit-io-databricks-... Or it's just a business decision to corner the market, as someone else said

> Or it's just a business decision to corner the market, as someone else said

Given how lax antitrust enforcement is, probably this

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

#48
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this give you pause? You just don't want the data to be where Databricks is? Either way, there are plenty of other serverless Postgres options out there, Supabase being one of the most popular.

Can’t speak for anyone but myself and my experience anecdotally, having used Databricks: I consider them to be the Oracle of the modern era. Under no circumstances would I let them get their hooks into any company I have the power from preventing it.

This is exactly how I feel. I do not want to be in the Databricks ecosystem.

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

#49

Looks like the acquihire of Bit.io in 2023 wasn't enough to be able to deliver their own OLTP offering https://blog.bit.io/whats-next-for-bit-io-joining-databricks... https://www.databricks.com/blog/welcoming-bit-io-databricks-... Or it's just a business decision to corner the market, as someone else said

They aren’t exactly hiding it. I kept my eye on bit.io because they looked very promising. Next day, gone. Shut down immediately. Something is fucky with the investment pipeline because it’s not ”worth” that much on its own, it’s a market dominance play, bad for innovation..

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

#50

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?

Capture enterprise AI enthusiasm by providing a 1-stop shop for data and AI, optionally hosted on your own cloud tenant. Keep deploying functionality so clients never need another supplier. Partner with SAP, OpenAI, anyone who holds market share. Buy anyone that either helps growth or might help a competitor grow.

Enterprise view: delegate AI environment to Databricks unless you’re a real player. Market is too chaotic, so rely on them to keep your innovation pipeline fed. Focus on building your own core data and AI within their environment. Nobody got fired for choosing Databricks.

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