[cocktailpeanuts]

open source => paid hosting model makes sense when the tech is heavy and not easily portable anyway. For example, confluence develops kafka and makes money with kafka cloud. Mongodb develops mongodb and makes money with their cloud, etc.

None of these are portable systems.

On the other hand, the whole reason for static site generators is its lightweightness. So by design it's hard for these vendors to have lockin....unless, they deliberately create lockins. Which is why i think this model is not really a good model. They created something that's valuable exactly because it frees people from getting locked in, but they will probably need to make money by trying their best to lock in users.

The only endgame I can see from this is these people using up all the VC money to give out freebies to attract as many users as possible, and then selling to Microsoft.

[subpixel]

The Gatsby model is Wordpress. Be the default choice, be open source, run a thriving hosting business and empower a huge economy around theming and extending your main product.

The question is whether that model is repeatable.

[cocktailpeanuts]

The actual question is whether that model is the same as the wordpress model.

I dont know if you read my comment to which you replied, but my point is that if you look closely they are completely different games. If the VCs thought they were getting into Wordpress2.0, they will find that they were terribly wrong. It's a completely different market with completely different market dynamics.

[subpixel]

I agree with you. My comment was meant as a reflection of what I imagine Gatsby's thinking to be. I am really impressed with the technology but quite baffled by the business model at a $200M valuation.

[nogabebop23]

wordpress crushed a lot of proprietary and far more difficult to use options - is that still the case for Gatsby? With 50+ million in VC capital is this a billion dollar market segment today?