[ivape]

Enterprises have lots of data. They store it somewhere, and there are multiple vendors that provide such "credible" infrastructure for this type of storage. Think of it like, your dad says he's willing to get a dog, but only trusts these-five-animal-shelters and nothing else. That doesn't mean that's correct (that those are the only places to get a dog), it just means that's what he trusts. Databricks is most likely a unicorn because they have successfully sold the idea that they are one of those trusted vendors, like Snowflake.

The truth of the 2010s up until now is that every startup was a massive sales con job. The wealth of this industry is not truly built on incredible tech, but on the audacity of salesmanship. It's a billion-dollar con job. That's one of the reasons I take every ridiculous startup that launches quite seriously, because you have no idea just how audacious their sales people are. They can sell anything.

Your question is very fundamental, and the answer is just as raw and fundamental too. I would love it if some of these sales people actually reform and write tell-alls about how they conned so many large companies in their years of working. This content has got to be out there somewhere.

[woooooo]

So, I'm not sure if this is less cynical or more cynical, but.. have you ever talked to the decision-makers who buy something like databricks?

They can't build it themselves, and it's highly dubious that they'd be able to hire and supervise someone to build it. Databricks may be selling "nothing special", but it's needed, and the buyers can't build it themselves.

[tibbar]

The thing is, it's actually a very difficult engineering/research/infra problem to run complicated queries on enormous data lakes. All the obvious ways to do it are prohibitively slow and expensive. Every bit of performance you can squeeze out of this, you unlock the ability for people to work with their data more easily. So there is huge value in having some centralized companies sink lots of R&D into trying to solve these problems well.

[th0ma5]

Is that how Databricks sees their customers? Yikes

[fock]

I can tell you the company I work at (4000 people, legacy banking IT) has 4 people running our Datalake. We likely have more people buying/"evaluating" Databricks currently (from overhearing calls in open-plan offices), so I guess they have a point. A very sad point...

[s1artibartfast]

My mental model is that there are few big money printing industries, and the major players and it will pay just about anything for a slight advantage. It's really about additive revenue, it's about protecting market share.