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by bureado
3420 days ago
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I read the article and my key takeaway was that licensing was a significant culprit. But Parse and Sandstorm are different. Do you think there is something systematic to open source or to VC-backed startups or to developer tools or something else? |
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1. Parse, to non-developers, was a wild success - not a failure. An $85M exit ( https://angel.co/parse ) on a $7M investment, that is a 10X+ return in 3 years. This doesn't seem to be talked about much, especially compared to the darling Firebase.
It represents exactly what an affluent ecosystem would want: A business savvy and technically proficient team that can be sold off to the highest bidder that investors vet. However, it is a "shut down" in the eyes of developers because the tool was overlooked.
2. Sandstorm is so advanced that it isn't quite understood yet, partly because nobody has invented the catchy phrase for it (even if they did, the timing is still too early). While most first-world users now have multiple devices, they only use 1 at a time, and they don't see these two problems: (A) They don't know their devices should sync more than what Apple tells them they should (B) They don't know that their devices, which they own physically, should be their private servers for all their services.
That is why I think Sandstorm shouldn't give up, because with the addition of 5B+ new people coming online, I don't care how scalable Google/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft are, things are going to be a lot more powerful/reliable/customer-satisfaction if people own and run their own services (fully automated by things like sandstorm). This isn't just a privacy/ownership thing, it is a customer expectation "thing" - using a service is like using a public bathroom, but owning that service is like using your apartment's bathroom. It doesn't matter how gross/nice any 1 experience is, ultimately the consistency of expectation wins out.
So yes, there is something systematic to VC-backed startups (like Parse, they're ultimately a hiring/resume gig - or randomly big industry creators, like Dropbox, Uber/Lyft, AirBnB), and there is something systematic to Open Source and developers (we often value different things). Developer Tools aren't particularly unique, other than the fact that they are either industry causing/creating architectures, or unfortunately on the tail end of a dying architecture. They are black and white in their success, high risk, with no middle ground - and since risks often fail, and humans are loss averse, the failures often seem to outweigh or overwhelm the successes. The important thing to remember though is that the winners cause and create prosperity for entirely new industries/sectors, for people and companies around the world, and for generations to come.