ClusterHQ was a fantastic learning experience. I'm proud of what we achieved and the many strong relationships that were built in the team.
Ultimately the reason that ClusterHQ failed, I think, was that we believed we had product-market fit before we really did, and we started scaling too soon.
When we started, it wasn't possible to connect storage to containers at all, and so we had to put a lot of work into making that possible. And by the time we'd got Flocker working reliably across AWS, GCE, OpenStack & a dozen or so storage vendors, we'd been commoditized by Kubernetes.
Our premature scaling then made it harder to adapt as fast as we needed to. Many lessons learned!
Ultimately the reason that ClusterHQ failed, I think, was that we believed we had product-market fit before we really did, and we started scaling too soon.
When we started, it wasn't possible to connect storage to containers at all, and so we had to put a lot of work into making that possible. And by the time we'd got Flocker working reliably across AWS, GCE, OpenStack & a dozen or so storage vendors, we'd been commoditized by Kubernetes.
Our premature scaling then made it harder to adapt as fast as we needed to. Many lessons learned!
We're focusing on a rigorous approach to finding product-market fit, my colleague Alice has written more about this here: https://dotmesh.com/blog/dotmesh-hypotheses/