[nemild]

I was in the startup world in the early 2010s, and saw MongoDB used in a number of startups (over ~5 years).

These companies included everything from very early stage Y Combinator backed startups to one of the most famous unicorns (tech issues at growing companies are rarely discussed publicly, so I was lucky that my friends were willing to privately share; compare that to successful tech decisions, which are widely discussed and blogged).

In that time, I heard many stories about the issues companies had with it - and angry debates about whether it was the right choice. In the early years, you were ancient if you used something more conventional than Mongo; in later years, you were dumb if you used Mongo in many startups (both views have their issues).

I wanted to understand:

- Why was MongoDB so popular

- What issues did startup engineers have with it

- Given these issues, why was it chosen in the first place

And most importantly, what lessons does this case study have for future dev tool decisions.