I like vercel and use it for all my projects, but in light of the goal of helping everyone build the next web, I think it would make a lot of sense to enable drag and drop deploy, like netlify. I recently tried to show someone who used windows and had neither node nor git installed how to deploy a static website with vercel, but it was such a pain that we ended up using netlify.
Vercel raise $40M Series B
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Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#62u/rauchg grew zeit.co ( Now ) [0][1] -> next.js [2] -> Vercel [3] iteratively over 3 years to raise Series A and B within 8 months of each other. Along the way, showing how OSS businesses can win: Slowly but steadily (looking at you mesosphere). Congrats to everyone at Vercel! God knows it has taken very many pivots to finally reach here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12320489 [1] https://news.ycombinator.…
the timing of the A and B are certainly unusual. curious what changed and whether it was "a formula starting to work" or "need cash" or "pre emptive B". i guess it's not really any of my business but it'd be nice to know.
Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The term "serverless", to me, makes as much sense as "No Software" (Salesforce) did back then: none. I do get the point of "you're not managing any actual servers", but still.
If it's helpful think of it as "less servers".
or "servers you don't manage / have to think about"
Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> avoid being acquired Don't think that's possible after raising such amounts of money. Their way out is now either getting aquired for loads of cash or going public. Going public also means loosing parts or all of your control over the company. Those investors will want to see their money back some time in the future.
> Going public also means loosing parts or all of your control over the company. not a very intellectually honest statement to make considering founder supervoting shares are extremely common in tech.
How long will that persist? Any such company has no chance of being included in e.g. S&P 500 so there's clearly strong pressure in the opposite direction...
Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#65Many congrats Vercel! I've been a big fan since Zeit platform version 1 - I remember the transition to platform version 2 was difficult but over time I can see how incredible of a platform you've become. Just a note from a fan - I hope you all can determine a way to approach the future with longevity and corporate independence. The web really needs your entire teams dedication towards performance, end user experience…
> avoid being acquired Don't think that's possible after raising such amounts of money. Their way out is now either getting aquired for loads of cash or going public. Going public also means loosing parts or all of your control over the company. Those investors will want to see their money back some time in the future.
> Going public also means loosing parts or all of your control over the company
only if all shares have equal voting rights.
Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gatsby is a weird platform. It's gotten absolutely humongous for a product that is designed to only solve the simplest problems. Netlify has taken it to it's limit by adding redirects and lambdas. But it's still a platform for fancy brochures and blogs.
I agree with this weird mismatch of overcomplexity for the problem it's trying to solve. I did really like though the Gatsby model of ingesting all your source data into GraphQL and then having a standardised way to query and build pages from this. I wish Next.js would learn something from this. I was using Next.js to build a staticly-generated website (so within the remit of Gatsby) but eventually i outgrew the limi…
I think for any commercial site, it's likely cheaper to use a platform like next or nuxt and a CDN rather than choking your build pipeline with static generation. You still get static performance and just offload it to an edge network and CDN costs are racing downwards.
Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serverless web apps. Using their own Next.js as an example: everything in /pages/ is client app, everything in /api/ is serverless app. Client talks to the /api/ endpoints, /api/ endpoints talk to your domain services. Vercel also provide edge-location hosting and caching.
The term "serverless", to me, makes as much sense as "No Software" (Salesforce) did back then: none. I do get the point of "you're not managing any actual servers", but still.
"Nacho server" (not your server) also works.
Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#68Oh god. Even companies raising $40,000,000 can’t explain what they do: “Vercel combines the best developer experience with an obsessive focus on end-user performance. Our platform enables frontend teams to do their best work.” Nice, inspiring evocative words, but I care to find what the fuck Vercel IS, and this is not an answer. Maybe if I reword the above it will become clear: Vercel lets developers have a really gr…
That's not surprising - lots of the time you want to write what he impact is up front.
It was pretty easy to just click "Documentation" and see more: https://vercel.com/docs
> Vercel is a cloud platform for static sites and Serverless Functions that fits perfectly with your workflow. It enables developers to host Jamstack websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and requires no supervision, all with no configuration.
Seems fairly clear what it does.
Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#69I love using Vercel. It’s impressive what they’ve built in Open Source and their own product with a relatively small team.
Microsoft/GitHub could be a good landing spot for them if they are to sell.
Re: Vercel raise $40M Series B
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The front-page is pretty unclear, but if you open the documentation page, it is fairly clear: https://vercel.com/docs > Vercel is a cloud platform for static sites and Serverless Functions that fits perfectly with your workflow. It enables developers to host Jamstack websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and requires no supervision, all with no configuration.
I still have no idea what it is after reading that blurb. AWS “fits perfectly” with my workflow so in concrete terms how is this different?
Marketing is responsible for communicating value to their users and buyers, not the entire population. Consider the possibility that if you can't wrap your mind around a product even after several explanations, maybe you're not the target audience.
I don't mean this in a negative way, and concede that Marketing often fails to even get their users and buyers to understand.