[burtonator]

I actually did this too... I create Datastreamer (http://www.datastreamer.io/) which (when I created it) was an RSS syndication platform as a service.

You gave us RSS feeds and then we would index them and send you the output without having to deal with the insanity of RSS feeds.

This was a decade ago though.

I've been running it since and now it's more of a massive search engine of content - nearly a petabyte at this point.

We have an Elasticsearch API which our customers query. We also have a streaming API if you just want to listen to the crawl data directly.

It's been a wild ride but here's my big takeaway - if your company is profitable it actually might be because you're sitting on something MASSIVE and don't realize it.

Datastreamer was the first company in the content indexing space and we were WAY ahead of everyone else.

I was more focused on enjoying life, traveling, backpacking, etc.

In retrospect when you're sitting on a rocket it might make sense to buy more gas and light up that bad boy.

I'm actually in the middle of a (mild) pivot of Datastreamer right now. We think it might have significant value for the coming 'code war' we're in right now with Russia.

With companies continually looking at social media as a way to manipulate democratic societies these governments need tools (and data) to figure out where they're being attacked and how their citizens are being manipulated.

[yeldarb]

> I was more focused on enjoying life, traveling, backpacking, etc.

> In retrospect when you're sitting on a rocket it might make sense to buy more gas and light up that bad boy.

I can identify with this. I started a Facebook game in early 2008 that picked up a million users in its first year.

Back then all the stars were aligned and if I would have had a bigger vision for it there’s no reason it couldn’t have turned into a massive company.

I remember reading the TechCrunch article about Zynga raising 100 million in VC and laughing because “why would a Facebook game company need that much money? I’m really profitable being completely bootstrapped!”

Don’t get me wrong, the lifestyle it has allowed me has been amazing. And it’s still going strong 10 years later (we have users who have been paying $10/mo for their premium subscription for that whole 10 years). But the opening to grow it into something huge was only available for a short period of time. Now users are too expensive, organic traffic is minimal, and most users on the platform are locked into their existing games and resistant to trying new ones.

Zynga rode that into becoming a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company. “Think bigger” is a take-away I’ll definitely bring with me to my next venture someday.

[kbenson]

The flip side of this is realizing where the path might have lead you. Were I in your position, I suspect my regret might be tinged with relief. Zynga might be an extremely profitable company, but they also epitomize some of what I view as the most egregious offenses in manipulation human nature for monetary gain.

So, were I presented with your prior circumstances and had I capitalized on them, would my convictions have caused the company to fail, or steered it a less profitable path, or possible have been compromised through a slow erosion, greed, or a combination thereof?

For another take, if the Zuckerberg of 2004/2005 was presented with what Facebook would be in 2019, extreme success, billions of dollars, social problems, and increasing questions about what role it does and has played in Democracy and an informed populace, how do we think he might have thought of all that?

[menzoic]

>For another take, if the Zuckerberg of 2004/2005 was presented with what Facebook would be in 2019, extreme success, billions of dollars, social problems, and increasing questions about what role it does and has played in Democracy and an informed populace, how do we think he might have thought of all that?

If Zuckerberg knew in advance how successful Facebook was going to be and how the product would look today, that could reduce focus and derail everything. The product evolved through multiple stages with different goals in mind. The path would definitely be different.

[bryanrasmussen]

considering known statements at the time I think probably Zuckerberg would think it sounded ideal.

[close04]

Everything I have read about Zuckerberg's history makes him look like a despicable and abject human being both on the surface and deep down. Of course I have a superficial view based on movies, articles, word of mouth, etc. But it feels backed by his actions.

[Cthulhu_]

He's not exactly going out of his way to disprove it; any public appearances he makes look heavily scripted and rehearsed, and performed robotically.

And for good reasons; on the one side he's the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world, and any slip-up he makes will cost the company billions in lost stockmarket value. On the other side he has a family who are at constant risk of abduction and / or murder by people that want ransom or who he or his company have pissed off.

[pbhjpbhj]

I've of the richest most powerful people on the planet, whose creation is able to influence democracy; most people probably dream of being such a person?

[jjeaff]

It also might have flared up and burned out. In fact, the statistics would put a much higher probability that it might have completely failed.

[jasonkester]

That doesn't seem like something to regret. In my mind, building a business is about giving you the freedom to do whatever you want. If keeping it small helps you do that, that's what you should do.

Take a minute to skim through the history of a bunch of "successful" companies on that rocket trajectory. Does it sound like it made the founders happier? Or do they seem like they were actually doing better at some sweet spot earlier on in the story?

That's what it always seems like to me. So when I built my business, I set out with the goal of finding that sweet spot of good profits, minimum workload, no staffing or investor headaches, and most importantly, maximum Jason freedom.

Reading your comment, it sounds like you did the same. Don't worry for a second about what might have happened. What did happen sounds pretty cool.

[siruncledrew]

I agree. It's fine to let something stay a side project. Having a company setup that pays for a lifestyle and stays fairly passive is a success based on the original intention.

Founders can look back and say "I could have had more" or "I could have been like X multi-million dollar company", but then the company is no longer a side project. Then the company is your life, which seems contrary to the initial motivation if the point of a side project is to not work 24/7 in a CEO lifestyle filled with meetings and managing.

[Lucadg]

Couldn't agree more. I had been travelling and backpacking for 8 years when Airbnb came along. To me my website was just a booking platform. Then I realised I could have done something huge. Oh no wait,I did, I traveled full time for 8 years. I sometimes try but I just can't regret this.

[sah2ed]

> Datastreamer was the first company in the content indexing space and we were WAY ahead of everyone else.

Meltwater.com is in the same space but is much older — it was founded in 2001.

Their engineering team recently blogged [0] about their petabyte-size Elasticsearch cluster which still uses a much older version of ES (1.7.x).

0: Optimal Shard Placement in a Petabyte Scale Elasticsearch Cluster https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18413862

[burtonator]

Actually, Meltwater was one of our first customers.

We powered their blog data back in the day. They acquired a smaller company in the space and incorporated their stack and used us for about 5 years.

[sah2ed]

Good to know.

With respect to the acquisition, is the smaller company Wrapidity?

[tiuPapa]

What's code war?

[dspillett]

It is what some are calling parts of modern espionage: using social media and other distributed systems to spread misinformation & propaganda, and more generally destabilise "the other side".

A play on words with "cold war" to highlight the similarities with what went on in that period.

[tiuPapa]

Ah, interesting