That the first thing to build is trust. The disease that plagues companies is not communicating out of fear you'll get in trouble if something is broken or didn't get done. Build trust to counteract fear.
Why we still use HTTP is beyond me. And I don't mean about the speed issues. Why have a protocol that's so complicated when most of the things we need to build with it are either simpler or reimplement parts of the protocol.
> So what doesn’t a startup need to succeed, but an established company would consider an important requirement.
> The first is a fully-distributed, incremental capability for quickly and consistently backing up and restoring large databases using configurable storage sinks (e.g. S3 or GCS). The same functionality, but non-distributed, will be available for free to all users.
I appreciate that you're trying to write a good database and build a business, but what do you mean by "startup"?
If a database can't guarantee it can make backups, why would a startup attempt to use it in the first place?
What makes Erlang work well when distributed is having one mailbox per process, to persist messages. Any language can add this as a library, yet most don't.
"When a sufficiently high-up decision maker decides he/she wants to buy your startup, he/she will attempt to meet with you constantly and put time pressure on you, so as to prevent you from shopping the deal and getting a better offer. The absence of this behavior indicates the other company is not serious about acquiring your business."
"Letting a potential acquirer interview your team is extremely distracting for them, and signals to the acquirer that you are willing to bend over."