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Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures

forbes.com

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

#81

Post by Xavdidtheshadow »

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…

> other frameworks like Next.js, Rails, Django, etc.

I think that's the biggest difference. Gatsby spits out a bunch of html and js files that can be served anywhere. No database migrations, impossible for someone to install malware on your site, no server costs (static site hosts are multiple and free).

That's the big value prop to me. Hosting is simple, dev tools are familiar (npm and react), plus I don't have to mess with webpack.

(I agree that I have no clue how they'll make money, but I do really like their existing ecosystem).

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

#82

Post by floydnoel »

ritchiea wrote: post #26
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…

That's great but isn't a site that must be statically built and deployed to add a new page a niche use case for todays web? You can't use it for a site like HN, a content hub, a social media site, so many use cases that rely heavily on dynamic content from a database. And yes technically you can use it for those things but you're building the static front end with lots of page building logic and complex graphQL queri…

Gatsby has a lot of optional functionality built with plugins. Server-side rendering is among them. I built a product on top of Gatsby, so far it works fantastic.

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

#83

Post by underwater »

floydnoel wrote: post #78
underwater wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Gatsby with Contentful for our marketing site and blog. It's been a nightmare. We publish content multiple times a week. It's taken a huge amount of effort and paying Gatsby a lot of money for their SaaS products to get a setup that any serious publisher (like a newspaper) would laugh at. The whole product being built around static site generation is a huge limitation. Things like republishing at a reasonable…

why don’t you use the SSR plugin and go that route?

I'm not sure what problem that would solve.

Our problems stem from the fact that Gatsby's architecture is based around assembling an in-memory model and GraphQL schema for all possible data nodes, and then generating pages by querying from that store.

These operations are dependent on each other, so Gatsby can't do things like fetch just the data needed for a single page. It's also error prone because it adds a whole bunch of complexity to everything they do: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/docs/gatsby-internals/

That kind of complexity is not needed for something that is inherently a pretty simple problem.

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

#84

Post by narrationbox »

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…

We use Gatsby for our landing[0] (and are also in the process of moving the main SaaS dashboard to it) and the experience has been nothing but amazing. Page loads almost instantly with little manual optimization required and compile time rendering makes deployment really simple - unlike Next.js you do not have to fiddle with production SSR using serverless functions or a separate node server. The only issue with Gatsby is that compile-time SSR errors are not exposed during normal development live reload so everything needs to be compiled twice, once for development and once to test that the production build can be generated without error.

[0] https://narrationbox.com

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

#85

Post by save_ferris »

> Gatsby says it aims to be the platform behind 1% of websites by 2024; it claims it currently supports 0.1%.

I find it really hard to believe that they're powering 0.1% of the web at this point, that's gotta be millions of sites. The only way that figure is accurate is if they're counting all of the people spinning up tutorial sites.

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

#86

Post by yodon »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #53
subpixel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where Netlify (who has raised $95M) fits in the landscape when the dust settles.

I think their strategy is to commoditize the Next.js and Gatsby differentiation; They host all JAM-stacks pretty equally. The add a lot of paid dynamic add-ons that are hard to do statically (and that they told you were BAD_THINGS at the start) like form processing and user management. I think their model is more realistic as a superset of what Gatsby can offer, but I'm not convinced it justifies 100 million dollars…

I like Netlify but I suspect it's much easier for Gatsby and Next to add Netlify-like functionality to their offerings than the reverse. I suspect one is unlikely to need both (Gatsby SaaS or Next SaaS) and (Netlify SaaS), which doesn't bode well for Netlify.

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

#87

Post by bbutterworth »

I initially got very frustrated with Gatsby. Most new web frameworks makes things easier and faster. Gatsby is not about making a website easier to make. Its about making really fast websites easier to make. Its complicated: you need to use GraphQL to load an image, and you need to choose the right query based on what component you're using.

Eventually, I embraced the complexity, and the plugin system really helps.

Oh, but I still hate the 'theme' feature. I prefer the old 'starter' way.

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

#88

Post by cyral »

hckr_news wrote: post #36
gk1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can totally see why. Stripe’s docs are really the best I’ve seen. Not only are the docs good but the API is very logical and well made, definitely much better than their competitors like Authorize.Net.

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

#89

Post by jariel »

Yet again another company with mangled communications, please, please, would be Engineers making products, make sure that you communicate 'what it is' above all else.

The top-level marketing jargon is always the same: "Make your site in minutes, not weeks! Deploy globally! Uses modern tech"

Sure, that's ok.

But the 'How it works' visual on the page explains nothing really, it's just a pile of buzzwords.

The 'QuickStart' goes right into *command line installs of technology.

WTF DOES IT DO?

Are we point-and-click building hosted sites like Shopify? Do they even host? Is it just a web framework? A cloud-based dev environment?

Some people are attracted to 'new tech' like candy and will love to dig into this. I used to be this, but now after years of rabbit holes and a lot more experience, I've realized that the onus is on the 'maker' to explain, and frankly, my (your!) time is valuable.

Please take the time to make a small introductory section that uses a few words as possible to get the meaning across to a 'technically minded business person' or even a 'developer totally unfamiliar with the tech'.

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

#90

Post by jariel »

save_ferris wrote: post #85

> Gatsby says it aims to be the platform behind 1% of websites by 2024; it claims it currently supports 0.1%. I find it really hard to believe that they're powering 0.1% of the web at this point, that's gotta be millions of sites. The only way that figure is accurate is if they're counting all of the people spinning up tutorial sites.

Yes, this is totally misleading.

My bet is that it's not .1% of web sites, rather .1% of web traffic.

Because web content is a 1/x curve with the top few taking up all the usage ... if they have even a couple 'semi big name clients' then they could be behind 0.1% of traffic.

And maybe by 'web' they mean just USA.

And maybe by 'powered' they mean, the company 'uses gatsby somewhere' so they claim all traffic from the company in their data.

Which is kind of like Simpsons episode logic, but hey.

We need the Simpsons writing team to get together with the 'Silicon Valley' folks and make cartoons that mock startup stuff like this.

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