- Don't use products from startups with unknown, dubious business models that are clearly subsidised by VC money until they "figure out how to monetize". (recently I saw a company saying "our business model is still firming up, whatever that means).
- Open source doesn't mean it's safe. Very few open source companies have solid business models and if the vast majority of the contrinbutors to the project come from the same company, then if they go down or get aquihired reviving the project and its community is not always guaranteed or simple. OSS projects need major adoption to be safe from this sort of damage.
- I sometimes even research the VCs backing the founders as well. I have seen companies founded by associates in VC firms leaving the firm to start a company because they know 1. they can get funding from their old pals in the firm, 2. they are going to be selling the company quickly to X because of some insider information about X's need or an internal project to find a company to buy in the space. Some founders are serial "build and flip"ers and I avoid using their products.
I feel much safer buying crtical services from a bootstrapped and profitable startup than a well funded one that doesn't have a clear business model.
1-3 is a roulette. Unless they have a technology that you cannot substitute with an open source solution then it is difficult to justify using it. There must be a solid extraction plan available so that you can move your data to an alternative solution in reasonable time. Sometimes it is better to hire a team and expand existing open source solution with necessary features. Sometimes this could lead to a side product and another stream of revenue.
This is network infrastructure stuff. Not the kind of thing you leave to fester.
This is why I tell every startup I talk to (not that many, to be fair) to charge as soon as they possibly can, preferably in the first months after launch (b2b of course, consumer is a different beast).
In this regard, large established players have the benefit of the doubt when using a proprietary SaaS service: they are unlikely to fold, and if they sunset a product, they will likely give ample warning well ahead of time. (But not always even so: I see any new Google consumer product as a "while supplies last" sale.)
The old way of thinking was that a Serious Company is safer than a one- or two-founder operation. But Serious VC-funded Companies are unprofitable most of the time and burn through VC money, subsidizing their business. Even if they don't crash, a "successful outcome" is an acquisition, which most of the time results in shutting down the product and a post about what a "wonderful journey" this was. And don't forget all the products that Google just shut down over the years.
A self-funded slow-growth profitable startup can be a much more stable bet, even though it seems counter-intuitive.
It's not counter intuitive, it's just that it's really hard to guess which company is doing OK, getting slow steady and profitable growth and which does not. Additionally, the slow and steady company can still be acquired / decide to "bet big" / ... . So we are back to Google and co.
I think his point is that Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are even safer.
I really feel bad for those who committed their company to this company.
In my eyes it's evidence that you definitely shouldn't bet your company on a startup unless you have a backup plan that you can implement quickly or the benefits are massive (ie: the reward is worth potentially losing your business). Larger companies also kill products but they tend to give a lot more heads up.
The timing was less than ideal for sure.
However they arranged a good support system with the folks at Fly.io. We’ve already transitioned new customers to it and they are helping to migrate existing sites and certs next week.
I think it’s a risk you just have to take, but we learned a lesson that for things that are dependancies for your business it’s good to have a couple of alternatives lined up or working side by side. :)
It focuses on Zero configuration by skipping the account creation and hostname selection (and long term state) by using the hash of the tunnel destination public key as hostname.
I believe Cloudflare offers this as an option: https://www.cloudflare.com/products/argo-tunnel/
It's great that they (you?) are offering some assistance in transitioning to an alternative, but it's still a very crappy situation for customers during the holiday season with many people taking extra time off.
From their docs page here: https://www.backplane.io/docs
* A protocol for helping web widgets on a page communicate and share data https://openid.net/wg/bp/ . We used to support it at Livefyre to interop with certain Janrain products, but the ecosystem wasn't so big at the time. It wasn't under OpenID at the time.
* This roller coaster of a social network startup https://techcrunch.com/2015/03/06/the-backplane-black-box/
Why is everything SaaS, when it is fairly easy to use existing proven solutions?
Is it just money?
The system can be expanded and serviced (without interruption) by installing and removing modules, but the backplane is forever.
A hot SaaS startup purporting to be your backplane is about as backwards as it gets. Smart companies are using cloud services in exactly the opposite way: as temporary, interchangeable capacity slotted into a backplane they own.
it refers to a component interconnect backplane, an electrical / signal bus. not the rear interior surface of a cabinet.
considering that this is displayed on the CNCF interactive landscape page, does it mean that backplane will be quickly removed from the service proxy group, or does anyone think that CNCF is already aware? i reaalize it's not backed project or anything, but it clearly made it there somehow. considering how hot CNCF is right now, made even more apparent by the 8K+ sized crowd this week, i would imagine that the CNCF website brings a nice bit of traffic to these small companies.
it's too bad...backplane's vision seemed promising albeit lofty, and against some heavy odds (with some big players in the space).
If I miss the initial announcement, we would remove them when they don't tweet for 3 months: https://github.com/cncf/landscape#non-updated-items
(Disclosure: I maintain the landscape.)
Second, Backplane really looked like great tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43wFJBRTHG0
Well, no, it's literally not. It's actually a reasonably long lead time for “going out of business”, which basically no one ever announces before essentially all hope of finding a way to keep the business running is exhausted, which intrinsically means there is little runway left.
Two weeks notice at a time where people frequently take vacation time is very much "last minute".
> That the company would leave its users without any support?
"It's all gonna stop working on December 29th" does seem to do exactly that.
Well, it's their baseless speculation and your guess, so a level playing field. You can make the same point without baiting other commenters—in fact you just make your point without baiting other commenters, that's how.
Of all the times they could have chosen to shut down, they chose the absolute worst.
If I still programmed, I would never use this guy's products ever again.
