Redis Labs Raises $100M(redislabs.com)
redislabs.com
Redis Labs Raises $100M
https://redislabs.com/press/redis-labs-raises-100-million-series-f-financing/
113 comments
A billion dollar valuation implies billion dollar expectations. They must surely be well on their way to $100M ARR in order to attain a valuation this high - and likely at 100% annual growth rates. I'd say congratulations are in order.
As much as there are examples from history of companies that have blown venture capital on stupid things, I think Redis Labs has a good shot at reaching the holy grail of an IPO.
As much as there are examples from history of companies that have blown venture capital on stupid things, I think Redis Labs has a good shot at reaching the holy grail of an IPO.
Being a former Redis Labs employee (disclaimer: I own a few shares), I can attest that their leadership has a scrappy ethos and this is a company that doesn't waste money on stupid things.
How does redis make money?
Hosted cloud redis and enterprise redis. It's all in their website.
I used it a few times.
Pricy, and worth every penny.
Made my life so much easier
Pricy, and worth every penny.
Made my life so much easier
Do you mean the hosted or enterprise versions? The enterprise version is a behemoth (in a good way). Tuning an open source redis to be able to do what it does is nearly impossible.
Redid labs.
Click a few buttons it gives me an URL to point my apps at.
Now and then I’d get an email, hey instance X needs more memory, click here to see what’s going on, or just drag the slider to a higher plan.
Worked great, Hardest part was giving good names so I could remember what each instance was for.
Click a few buttons it gives me an URL to point my apps at.
Now and then I’d get an email, hey instance X needs more memory, click here to see what’s going on, or just drag the slider to a higher plan.
Worked great, Hardest part was giving good names so I could remember what each instance was for.
I doubt you need to be close to $100MM in ARR to raise at this valuation, given the current state of affairs.
My guess is that fast growth + $35-40MM in current ARR should have sufficed.
Just my 0.02.
My guess is that fast growth + $35-40MM in current ARR should have sufficed.
Just my 0.02.
Yeah, you could be right. 20x ARR is not unheard of. Cloudflare was trading at 30x recently.
I think the root of overcapitalization is fear. People who can't face their fears, will look for ways to run away from their fears.
For a founder, that way is runway. The founder who is terrified about the company's future, will raise a lot of money to not think about that future. Money buys them time and time buys them distance. A clean, safe separation from reality where unpleasant voices like "do we have product market fit?" or "is our moat large enough?" can be ignored or saved for "later". A "later" that seems further and further away depending on the money raised.
Overcapitalization, in that sense, is meant as a security blanket, not a safety net. In that sense, the complacency and eventual corruption of the organization derives from the need for safety that executives and their managers subconsciously & naturally prioritize above all else.
On that note, I'm curious how Slack will fare over the next few years.
For a founder, that way is runway. The founder who is terrified about the company's future, will raise a lot of money to not think about that future. Money buys them time and time buys them distance. A clean, safe separation from reality where unpleasant voices like "do we have product market fit?" or "is our moat large enough?" can be ignored or saved for "later". A "later" that seems further and further away depending on the money raised.
Overcapitalization, in that sense, is meant as a security blanket, not a safety net. In that sense, the complacency and eventual corruption of the organization derives from the need for safety that executives and their managers subconsciously & naturally prioritize above all else.
On that note, I'm curious how Slack will fare over the next few years.
I don’t think it’s (generally) a question of “product-market fit” when raising $100M. It’s a question of “product-market domination”.
It’s not a bet that the product will be profitable and successful—that should be a given. It’s a bet on the company becoming the leader in a huge market.
That said, your larger point still holds :) And of course raising the stakes this way can also increase the risk of ruin.
It’s not a bet that the product will be profitable and successful—that should be a given. It’s a bet on the company becoming the leader in a huge market.
That said, your larger point still holds :) And of course raising the stakes this way can also increase the risk of ruin.
You are correct. I've adjusted my comment to not confuse my point.
OK, I suppose they are on the exit line now. I wonder who the buyer is going to eventually be. I can't imagine an IPO, though; maybe my imagination is weak.
In the broader market there’s still hype for SaaS businesses which Redis can easily become because everyone wants to be a rentier and earn passive income.
Raising today 100M you'd want to at least, worst case, triple the exit valuation, and so you grow as crazy your enterprise sales for the next year or two so your 15x ARR gets to $3-4B and you sell for $6B+ and let the buyer carry all that support and tech debt.
I'm curious what the key value Redis Labs is bringing that justifies so much money (other than a sales team, support, and other minor changes to Redis). In other words, what key tech are they adding? The page dedicated to the software is really generic:
https://redislabs.com/redis-enterprise-software/overview/
I started using KeyDB and the project is great. I'm more inclined to support the tech they are integrating that check things off my Redis wishlist such as Active-Active replication and true multi-core support (not just IO treads).
https://keydb.dev/
https://redislabs.com/redis-enterprise-software/overview/
I started using KeyDB and the project is great. I'm more inclined to support the tech they are integrating that check things off my Redis wishlist such as Active-Active replication and true multi-core support (not just IO treads).
https://keydb.dev/
> key value
I see what you did there.
I see what you did there.
> key value
I see what you did there
I see what you did there
Probably the professional services part.
They will probably spend this money on consolidation. Buying up people who provide complementary tools or extensions, maybe a couple that were previously agnostic.
They will probably spend this money on consolidation. Buying up people who provide complementary tools or extensions, maybe a couple that were previously agnostic.
Redis is in the same position as many other companies in the open source tools space that have also done well: Grafana Labs also comes to mind. When large enterprise and government clients want to use open source infrastructure like Redis, they invariably have a myriad of requirements that aren't obvious to anyone who doesn't work at that scale. They are willing to pay a lot of money to solve these enterprise scale problems even though the underlying engine is open source, since building the tools to do so themselves would easily cost even more.
Right, but isn't RedisLabs screwed now that AWS has packaged Redis open source into an AWS service that is cheaper?
This episode discusses how such businesses avoid having the big cloud cos become competitors https://pca.st/episode/889547c9-ffe8-4332-ba7e-e4678bf22c3d
Thank you. I will listen to this one. Invest Like the Best is awesome.
AWS is everyone's competitor. Their playbook is to take open source products, package them up in the AWS cloud, and provide long term support. That does not mean that the AWS version of every open source product is the best version. Redis Labs doubtless has a deeper feature set that will appeal to customers in a different way than the AWS offering. Additionally, Redis Labs is cloud agnostic. That's a big differentiator.
Yeah, but it’s not cheaper than AWS or rather it can’t be profitably cheaper IMO because of lack of scale.
So as long as AWS option is good enough, as a CFO I’d go in that direction.
Nebulous claims like cloud neutrality don’t pay the bills and I have not really seen businesses jump from one cloud to another seamlessly, no matter the software.
Nebulous claims like cloud neutrality don’t pay the bills and I have not really seen businesses jump from one cloud to another seamlessly, no matter the software.
If AWS was "good enough" in all cases, no one would use redis labs solution on AWS.
https://redislabs.com/partner/aws/
as they sell it, obviously some organizations are buying it, so those orgs must find the AWS option "not good enough". is it possible that AWS will continue to improve it? yes, but presumably Redis Labs will also continue to improve their solution.
https://redislabs.com/partner/aws/
as they sell it, obviously some organizations are buying it, so those orgs must find the AWS option "not good enough". is it possible that AWS will continue to improve it? yes, but presumably Redis Labs will also continue to improve their solution.
Redis Labs developed all the modules (RedisSearch, RedisGraph, etc). Those are all licensed in such a way that Amazon cannot rehost them.
> are all licensed in such a way that Amazon cannot rehost them
You mean in such a way that Amazon cannot "productize" them, right? Surely you can host them on AWS if you're setting it up yourself.
You mean in such a way that Amazon cannot "productize" them, right? Surely you can host them on AWS if you're setting it up yourself.
From a licensing perspective, yes. However I looked into installing custom modules in Elasticache Redis once and you cannot do it (Same with RedisLabs' hosted solution although you can at least install their modules).
If you installed Redis on an EC2 instance manually you could run the modules.
If you installed Redis on an EC2 instance manually you could run the modules.
And anyone who says that's wrong to do is very disingenuous. That is a very legitimate business model, and IMO the only way to compete with AWS as an open source product.
I can see why folks would migrate from Redis to KeyDB as it is Redis protocol compatible.
Did you look at Aerospike? It has transactions, persistence, replication and is fault tolerant.
https://github.com/aerospike/aerospike-server
Did you look at Aerospike? It has transactions, persistence, replication and is fault tolerant.
https://github.com/aerospike/aerospike-server
Am I the only person that gets worried when a great open source project gets a lot of VC money?
Without VC funding, an open source project is a success if it is useful to the devs and provides a comfortable income to the maintainers. Basically, a "lifestyle" business.
With VC funding, the goal now becomes generating huge returns or failing fast, which is fundamentally at odds with a good open source project. Thus the pressure comes to either aggressively monetize the project, or else to get it acquired by someone.
Without VC funding, an open source project is a success if it is useful to the devs and provides a comfortable income to the maintainers. Basically, a "lifestyle" business.
With VC funding, the goal now becomes generating huge returns or failing fast, which is fundamentally at odds with a good open source project. Thus the pressure comes to either aggressively monetize the project, or else to get it acquired by someone.
The investor is not a VC though, but a private equity firm, which is probably even worse? I hope this won't negatively affect the future of the open source version.
I hope antirez has equity in it
If he doesn't, then I'm disgusted.
The fact that cloud providers are built on repackaging open source solutions and that the authors have no equity is one of my biggest disappointments in the modern tech world.
My feelings are made worse by the fact that we seem to be building more walled gardens, forgetting the original intent and ethos of the web.
It's wealth for the few on the backs of free labor provided by our best luminaries.
And then they don't give us the keys. We have to pay rent.
Ugh, I hate it so much.
We need stronger copyleft. And we need to stop contributing our time and resources to open source that isn't equitable to the authors.
The fact that cloud providers are built on repackaging open source solutions and that the authors have no equity is one of my biggest disappointments in the modern tech world.
My feelings are made worse by the fact that we seem to be building more walled gardens, forgetting the original intent and ethos of the web.
It's wealth for the few on the backs of free labor provided by our best luminaries.
And then they don't give us the keys. We have to pay rent.
Ugh, I hate it so much.
We need stronger copyleft. And we need to stop contributing our time and resources to open source that isn't equitable to the authors.
He worked for Redis Labs for many years. I'm sure they have a good understanding.
To be honest, your comment reads as if you think building a company such as Redis Labs is easy. Even with a tool like Redis freely available, it's hard and risky.
I understand the sentiment better with eg Amazon taking some open source, putting a sticker on it, and using their market dominance to extract free money from it. But that's not what Redis Labs is at all.
To be honest, your comment reads as if you think building a company such as Redis Labs is easy. Even with a tool like Redis freely available, it's hard and risky.
I understand the sentiment better with eg Amazon taking some open source, putting a sticker on it, and using their market dominance to extract free money from it. But that's not what Redis Labs is at all.
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Arent there OSS license types that disallow commercial forks and/or service businesses? I'm assuming if someone chose a license that allows for commercial activity, they want it to happen.
This is what GPL covers I believe? I want to be sure, but a lot of OSS license explainer sites I see aren’t super clear.
Yes there are. MariaDB has built a license that prevents strip-mining of open source code and prevents Cloud providers from offering it as-a-service.
CockRoachDB followed suit and implemented the same.
CockRoachDB followed suit and implemented the same.
Those aren't open source.
Right, and that may have consequences for whether a particular distro packages you or whether the OSI shines on you, but those are just part of the trade-off; a license like this is still a perfectly valid choice for a given endeavour.
No, there are not. Disallowing commercial use is a field-of-use restriction and thus violates the Open Source Definition.
https://opensource.org/osd#fields-of-endeavor
> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
The GPL and AGPL require reciprocity but do not disallow commercial forks. Other licenses out there may disallow commerical forks, but they are not Open Source licenses.
https://opensource.org/osd#fields-of-endeavor
> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
The GPL and AGPL require reciprocity but do not disallow commercial forks. Other licenses out there may disallow commerical forks, but they are not Open Source licenses.
AGPL was created for exactly this reason. It covers all SaaS, and requires all such services to open source all their software that directly touches any AGPL code (eg, as a library).
Antirez very consciously and specifically chose the BSD license for Redis with the exact expectation that companies will be more likely to contribute back to upstream if they are adopting and improving it without a legal stranglehold requiring them to do so.
Maybe he has equity, maybe not. I hope he does. But a company profiting off of Redis without contributing back is a very conscious choice by the author and not at all the fault of weak copyright enforcement.
Maybe he has equity, maybe not. I hope he does. But a company profiting off of Redis without contributing back is a very conscious choice by the author and not at all the fault of weak copyright enforcement.
I don't understand this argument. Hosting providers are providing... hosting. I don't see how the tools they host on their platform (eg redis) is relevant.
If they didn't offer automatically provisioned tools users would still use those tools, they'd have to set them up manually or using their own automation.
If they didn't offer automatically provisioned tools users would still use those tools, they'd have to set them up manually or using their own automation.
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A lot of people didn't want Richard Stallman to be right (either him specifically, or the GNU ethos he espoused). But damnit, he told me so.
I really love the BSD concept, but on a dark night when I'm feeling morose, I wonder if the way my thoughts on public policy are skewed, in the same way that we say that people who vote for taxes on themselves suffer from a delusion of being 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires'.
I want the option to build myself a business out of Open Software, even though it looks now like I may only do that once in my lifetime. But so do a lot of people who are much, much more selfish than I am.
I really love the BSD concept, but on a dark night when I'm feeling morose, I wonder if the way my thoughts on public policy are skewed, in the same way that we say that people who vote for taxes on themselves suffer from a delusion of being 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires'.
I want the option to build myself a business out of Open Software, even though it looks now like I may only do that once in my lifetime. But so do a lot of people who are much, much more selfish than I am.
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This is the point of open source.
You're basing this whole rant on an assumption that he doesn't, that is not supported by any fact. The dude worked for Redis Labs for years, and was listed on the executive page of their website alongside the founders, and he now retired and assigned control over the project to the company. Does he strike you as a person who would agree to that without getting his share?
https://redislabs.com/blog/thank-you-salvatore-sanfilippo/
I’m not sure if he does. That post is interesting - I didn’t know he was stepping away.
I’m not sure if he does. That post is interesting - I didn’t know he was stepping away.
Not totally away:
> So, dear Redis community, today I’m stepping back as the Redis maintainer. My new position will be, on one side, an “ideas” person at Redis Labs, in order to provide inputs for new Redis possibilities: I’ll continue to be part of the Redis Labs advisory board.
http://antirez.com/news/133
> So, dear Redis community, today I’m stepping back as the Redis maintainer. My new position will be, on one side, an “ideas” person at Redis Labs, in order to provide inputs for new Redis possibilities: I’ll continue to be part of the Redis Labs advisory board.
http://antirez.com/news/133
That was less than two months ago. Can this be a coincidence? Or did he know that a bunch of new money was in the offing and didn't like the direction things were about to go?
I don't know, but there are several different assumptions we could make - another being 'oh someone else took over and immediately sought a bunch of money'. The truth is probably a blend of everything we could dream up.
He likely has some as he was there for a number of years -- 5 I believe. But he didn't start the company. So I would guess much less than 5%, if not less than 1%.
Well, 1% of a $billion is $10 million. I think I could get by on that.
I am thinking he stands to benefit, else he would comment in this thread.
Maybe I am wrong to jump to this conclusion, though.
Maybe I am wrong to jump to this conclusion, though.
>... As the home of Redis, the most popular open source database, we provide a competitive edge to global businesses with Redis Enterprise, which delivers...
> Redis Labs - home of Redis [logo and motto]
I like Redis Labs, but: this wording is misleading and inaccurate.
@antirez (Salvatore Sanfilippo), the creator of Redis, joined them in 2015 [0]; however, he left recently. That's the only claim they can use to somehow be seen as the "home" of Redis, but it is still a very weird claim.
What's the home of an open source project?
My personal perception is that they shouldn't word things this way; I might be mistaken, or at least other people might see it differently. What's your take?
Again, to be clear: I have nothing against the company - I actually like and admire them and @antirez. I just don't want them to get down the rabbit hole of corporate jargon and marketing BS (see what happened with New Relic, as an example).
[0]: https://redislabs.com/press/redis-creator-salvatore-sanfilip...
> Redis Labs - home of Redis [logo and motto]
I like Redis Labs, but: this wording is misleading and inaccurate.
@antirez (Salvatore Sanfilippo), the creator of Redis, joined them in 2015 [0]; however, he left recently. That's the only claim they can use to somehow be seen as the "home" of Redis, but it is still a very weird claim.
What's the home of an open source project?
My personal perception is that they shouldn't word things this way; I might be mistaken, or at least other people might see it differently. What's your take?
Again, to be clear: I have nothing against the company - I actually like and admire them and @antirez. I just don't want them to get down the rabbit hole of corporate jargon and marketing BS (see what happened with New Relic, as an example).
[0]: https://redislabs.com/press/redis-creator-salvatore-sanfilip...
I think Salvatore Sanfilippo left the whole of Redis, not Redis Labs specifically.
http://antirez.com/news/133 -- The end of the Redis adventure
http://antirez.com/news/133 -- The end of the Redis adventure
Bain Capital, aren't they the ones that sunk toys-r-us?
Along with antirez stepping down, I'm nervous about the future of redis. Am I just being paranoid?
You're not being paranoid. There are few examples of PE firms running a company in a product-focused way that delights consumers.
PE firms are beholden to the bottom line. I can't think of one instance where PE bought a company and it got better for the end user.
Maybe that's just confirmation bias though? Ie the PE-owned well-run companies don't make the news?
I know one example: NXP Semiconductors. Got spun out of Philips, along with all the Philips cultural baggage (which means high bureaucracy and low productivity). A PE firm bought it, kept yelling about the bottom line for years on end, and everybody started cutting away waste, ineffective people (the "human furniture") got fired, prestige projects that had no economic value got killed, and they started shipping.
I'm sure it's not all been roses and sunshine but last I checked, NXP is a better company than when they were a part of Philips.
I know one example: NXP Semiconductors. Got spun out of Philips, along with all the Philips cultural baggage (which means high bureaucracy and low productivity). A PE firm bought it, kept yelling about the bottom line for years on end, and everybody started cutting away waste, ineffective people (the "human furniture") got fired, prestige projects that had no economic value got killed, and they started shipping.
I'm sure it's not all been roses and sunshine but last I checked, NXP is a better company than when they were a part of Philips.
There's a massive, influential economic ideology centered around the idea that "beholden to the bottom line" and "better for the end user" are the same goal. I was amused that you assume the opposite (as do I).
The exception to your rule that I'll mention is that sometimes PE firms will buy a company and reopen it after it stops operating, but that's pretty rare.
The exception to your rule that I'll mention is that sometimes PE firms will buy a company and reopen it after it stops operating, but that's pretty rare.
Would it be possible to add autoscaling RedisGraph and other modules in the affordable part of Redis enterprise? The RSAL license terms prevent anybody from really using the modules and the alternative is thousands of dollars, which is nuts to evaluate early stage software.
I’m not sure why Redis Enterprise needs so many different price levels. If Redis were priced like DynamoDB, there would be much less friction for folks like me to sign up. Right now it’s like all the other cloud database companies: want to use our database? Great! Calculate your storage needs in advance and convert that into our measure of choice (different for each provider)
I’m not sure why Redis Enterprise needs so many different price levels. If Redis were priced like DynamoDB, there would be much less friction for folks like me to sign up. Right now it’s like all the other cloud database companies: want to use our database? Great! Calculate your storage needs in advance and convert that into our measure of choice (different for each provider)
Seems a big jump in valuation (1bn) from previous round.
“Redis Labs, the provider of a database management system, has raised USD60 million in Series E funding round to accelerate the delivery of the most efficient database to the world. The funding was led by Francisco Partners, a leading private equity firm. With this funding round, Redis Labs’ valuation has now reached USD146 million.” - https://ciotechie.com/news/redis-labs-gets-usd60-million-in-...
“Redis Labs, the provider of a database management system, has raised USD60 million in Series E funding round to accelerate the delivery of the most efficient database to the world. The funding was led by Francisco Partners, a leading private equity firm. With this funding round, Redis Labs’ valuation has now reached USD146 million.” - https://ciotechie.com/news/redis-labs-gets-usd60-million-in-...
wow 60 at 146 is awful. This company must be almost entirely owned by VC at this point.
And by the way it's worded, I assume 146 is post-money.
I'm still learning all of these investment terms.
If the 146M is post-money, then they own (60/146M)%? If it's pre-money, (60/(60+146M))%?
If the 146M is post-money, then they own (60/146M)%? If it's pre-money, (60/(60+146M))%?
Yes, that is correct.
They are not VCs, they are a Private Equity firm: https://www.franciscopartners.com/about
PE investments are very different. They are probably going to either slim/trim or focus on some core money-making part of the business and then sell/breakup/flip the business in a couple of years. The portfolio stats are totally different from VC.
PE investments are very different. They are probably going to either slim/trim or focus on some core money-making part of the business and then sell/breakup/flip the business in a couple of years. The portfolio stats are totally different from VC.
newb here -- why would a developer pay for Redis? i.e. "Redis Enterprise"?
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There are proprietary modules like full text search that you might be interested in using. Also, perhaps you want/need dedicated tech support beyond what stack overflow will give you.
Check this out:
https://redislabs.com/redis-enterprise/advantages/
> Redis Enterprise is a robust in-memory database platform built by the people who develop open source Redis. It maintains the simplicity and high performance of Redis, while adding many enterprise-grade capabilities, such as linear scaling to hundreds of millions of operations per second, Active-Active geo-replication with local latency, Redis on Flash to tier data across dynamic and persistent memory and solid-state disk (SSD) to reduce total cost of ownership, and five-nines (99.999%) uptime based on built-in durability and single-digit-seconds failover. Redis Enterprise supports many data modeling methods with modules such as RediSearch, RedisJSON, RedisGraph, RedisTimeSeries, RedisBloom, and RedisAI, and allows operations to be executed across and between modules and core Redis functionality using RedisGears, a serverless engine that runs across shards and nodes of Redis Enterprise cluster. All this while keeping database latency under one millisecond, so your application can respond instantaneously. Learn how to implement the best in-memory database: Redis Enterprise.
https://redislabs.com/redis-enterprise/advantages/
> Redis Enterprise is a robust in-memory database platform built by the people who develop open source Redis. It maintains the simplicity and high performance of Redis, while adding many enterprise-grade capabilities, such as linear scaling to hundreds of millions of operations per second, Active-Active geo-replication with local latency, Redis on Flash to tier data across dynamic and persistent memory and solid-state disk (SSD) to reduce total cost of ownership, and five-nines (99.999%) uptime based on built-in durability and single-digit-seconds failover. Redis Enterprise supports many data modeling methods with modules such as RediSearch, RedisJSON, RedisGraph, RedisTimeSeries, RedisBloom, and RedisAI, and allows operations to be executed across and between modules and core Redis functionality using RedisGears, a serverless engine that runs across shards and nodes of Redis Enterprise cluster. All this while keeping database latency under one millisecond, so your application can respond instantaneously. Learn how to implement the best in-memory database: Redis Enterprise.
If an external contributor were to bring such features to the open source redis, would they refuse it?
Most likely.
Probably won't be able to refuse it outright. Though It's unlikely that an external contributor would be able to bring these features in easily. Redis Labs has a lot of people working on their enterprise offering.
Redis has sentinel and scaling features, as well as established patterns. Enterprises are likely willing to pay for experience of doing it right, reliably.
Not all of the value they provide can be replaced by a pull request.
That said, theres equal if not greater motivation for this hypothetical contributor to raise their own $100mm and compete with Redis Labs.
That said, theres equal if not greater motivation for this hypothetical contributor to raise their own $100mm and compete with Redis Labs.
Developers may not, enterprises might.
I've often wondered the same thing.
It's not the developers per se that are paying. It's their employer, i.e.: large companies who want things like
- professional support
- proprietary modules for Redis
- advice on integrating Redis into their legacy systems
- professional support
- proprietary modules for Redis
- advice on integrating Redis into their legacy systems
Yep, open-source is 'free' as in puppy. The TCO of open source software is not zero. It's just that some people are willing to absorb those external costs.
When I, as a developer, have an issue with some open source code, I spend some amount of time fixing it (labor cost), and some amount of time with a broken system (downtime). But it's not a big deal for me, if I spend 30 minutes troubleshooting a problem. Scale that up to a company with thousands of employees, and those can be big costs.
When I, as a developer, have an issue with some open source code, I spend some amount of time fixing it (labor cost), and some amount of time with a broken system (downtime). But it's not a big deal for me, if I spend 30 minutes troubleshooting a problem. Scale that up to a company with thousands of employees, and those can be big costs.
And of course, as we all know, you'll never spend any time troubleshooting proprietary solutions.
I’m not saying that proprietary software doesn’t have support costs.
I am saying that source code licenses are irrelevant to support and operations costs.
Both RedHat and Microsoft will sell you a support contract.
I am saying that source code licenses are irrelevant to support and operations costs.
Both RedHat and Microsoft will sell you a support contract.
They are experts in running a Redis cluster, and you can leave the complexities to them.
The "user" and the "customer" are pretty different for these kinda things.
Active active geo-distribution, for one. If you want globally distributed consistent clusters, enterprise makes it possible through their CRDT based enterprise-only option.
Is this really common to have a geo replicated redis. My impression was the geo replication is usually done at db level not at cache.
Redis _can_ be used as a cache, but it's not the only use case.
I've personally mostly used it as a message broker (celery in python, resque in ruby), but it can definitely be used as a database.
Bottom line, it's a very flexible tool, and can be more than "just a cache".
I've personally mostly used it as a message broker (celery in python, resque in ruby), but it can definitely be used as a database.
Bottom line, it's a very flexible tool, and can be more than "just a cache".
It may not be just a cache, but please, it is not a database. A database should guarantee data consistency, integrity, and ideally availability. ACID + HA. Redis does not do these. It is fast because it doesn't worry about the niceties of concurrency models and isolation models and recovery models and agreement protocols. And you can use it as a database as a very large clothing retailer I know did as an online feature store. However, it crashed on black friday due to overload and there was a massive revenue shortage because the ML models that should have been using it to retrieve features were going bananas. It was a case of misuse by said company - it should not be used for mission critical HA persistent data infra, IMHO.
How does Redis "not do data consistency"? Same question for HA?
On the HA point, my understanding was that it was one of the reasons to use Redis Labs, because they handle a lot of the setup and management of the infrastructure required to provide a setup that does provide HA.
That seems like a pretty restrictive definition of the word database. To me, redis is absolutely a database, just one with a very different model than the more common databases.
Sure but most people are using it as a cache. Their valuation reflects its use as a cache.
> I've personally mostly used it as a message broker
Did you geo replicate message broker?
> I've personally mostly used it as a message broker
Did you geo replicate message broker?
> most people are using it as a cache
Maybe, I actually have no idea, have you seen numbers?
> Their valuation reflects its use as a cache
How so?
> Did you geo replicate message broker?
No
Maybe, I actually have no idea, have you seen numbers?
> Their valuation reflects its use as a cache
How so?
> Did you geo replicate message broker?
No
Definitely not common but I can think of a few cases. Global rate limiting data store for example.
Congrats to the Redis Labs team!
I'm really intrigued by the concept of a multimode database. I'd love to hear from anybody who is doing this in practice. I run a document, sql, and graph db strung together with pub/sub. All in one definitely seems appealing but I'm trying to size up downsides, what migration work would be needed, and what integrations may break (especially SQL).
I'm really intrigued by the concept of a multimode database. I'd love to hear from anybody who is doing this in practice. I run a document, sql, and graph db strung together with pub/sub. All in one definitely seems appealing but I'm trying to size up downsides, what migration work would be needed, and what integrations may break (especially SQL).
That is a lot of money to raise for an established technology. Sounds like they might be standing up their own cloud?
For B2B startups the large amount of capital raised usually goes mostly to sales & marketing. The calculus usually goes something like this:
"I've got an existing product that I know enterprises want to buy. For every $50K I put into consultative sales, I'll sign a client whose LTV is $500K. Therefore, if I raise $100M for 10% of the company, I can hire more salespeople, increase the future earnings of the company by $1B, and hence all our existing shareholders will be better off and so will the new investor." Repeat until the target market is saturated, which for software startups can be a long way off.
This is why SaaS startups usually run at negative profits, even after they go public, and yet the majority of public investors still continually undervalue them (as in their value goes up over time). You have a machine where you put in $X and get back $5-10X over time, but the time period is usually many years. It makes sense to feed the machine with as much $$ as you have, and oftentimes some $$ that you don't have.
"I've got an existing product that I know enterprises want to buy. For every $50K I put into consultative sales, I'll sign a client whose LTV is $500K. Therefore, if I raise $100M for 10% of the company, I can hire more salespeople, increase the future earnings of the company by $1B, and hence all our existing shareholders will be better off and so will the new investor." Repeat until the target market is saturated, which for software startups can be a long way off.
This is why SaaS startups usually run at negative profits, even after they go public, and yet the majority of public investors still continually undervalue them (as in their value goes up over time). You have a machine where you put in $X and get back $5-10X over time, but the time period is usually many years. It makes sense to feed the machine with as much $$ as you have, and oftentimes some $$ that you don't have.
So a small company making some software is now transformed into another b2b huckster leech on the fat pigs that are the fortune 500 rent seekers?
Ugh, this economy.
Ugh, this economy.
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Happy to see money going where it's deserved.
Seems over priced.. A small team can make something similar in a few weeks?
Can even just fork it and run everything in bitcoin and gold ^.^
> A small team can make something similar in a few weeks?
You can say that about a lot of products on the market, and yet this magical team never rears its head.
You can say that about a lot of products on the market, and yet this magical team never rears its head.
This comment is HN distilled.
I did not read it for a while. But maybe I automatically read over it.
Reminded me of the (in)famous dropbox comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Much/most of the cost in big open source businesses is not creating the product but marketing and sales. Engineering is smaller but not trivial either if you are operating at scale in a large market. The people who actually pay money for these things expect them to work and to meet enterprise requirements like SOC2.
That said, being overcapitalized is perniciously corrupting. I saw first hand what happens when there's too much money floating inside a company. Malinvestment is an issue at the company level just as much as at the macroeconomic level.
Management starts acting like trust fund kids, forgetting that, one day, the money might run out, and making a profit is the only sustainable way to run a company.