Great Customers Make Great Products

December 15, 2009 at 09:15 PM | categories: Startups, Riak, Search

At Basho, we're a very lucky bunch of people.

The first paying customer for the Enterprise edition of Riak was Mochi Media. They first rolled it out on a low-profile system. I won't lie to you by saying that everything was perfect; any interesting piece of software will show its warts the first time it is placed into an unforeseen environment. The people at Mochi were open, communicative, and interested in learning more about how Riak worked. As they became comfortable with its behavior operationally and under load, they put it into bigger and more business-critical applications. Those first experiences with Mochi helped us to reprioritize our early to-do list to best serve others like them, and we also gained a valuable advisor.

We've signed a few great customers since then, and the latest such is Collecta. Long before they started using our product inside their search service we were having great conversations with them about their use of Webmachine and other topics. Jack already told the story about the genesis of Riak Search better than I can, so you should read his account of it. Both the ideas and the very concrete problem set posed by Collecta gave John exactly what was needed to focus the project and deliver something really cool.

An important part of building a business around open source software is that it isn't just customers that care about the quality of your work. In addition to the valuable experiences we have had with customers, direct open source contributions have made a big difference as well. Since shortly after we first released Riak under the Apache 2 license, we have received valuable improvements in code, documentation, and ideas from people around the world. A few of those have become customers since then, but we are also deeply grateful to all of the others. We hope for Riak to thrive in various open source contexts, and it is because of those people that we are hopeful.

We're working this week with a potential new customer that wants to store and process terabytes of data in a single Riak cluster, and in a very visible public-facing system. Just like with Mochi and Collecta, the fact that we are talking to some very smart, capable people makes our job a pleasure even in the face of interesting new challenges -- perhaps especially then.

We really are lucky to work with such excellent people.

Thank you to the customers of Basho and everyone else who has helped us so far on the road of continuous improvement.

Justin


Don't look to Big Money to fund innovation. Innovators must look to each other.

December 09, 2009 at 10:10 AM | categories: Startups, Riak, NoSQL, Database

One thing that the last year has taught us is that innovation will not be constrained by an economy in the doldrums. People have big ideas and big ideas play, no matter the economy.

Ever since we started talking to select companies about Riak in early 2009, we have been overwhelmed by the creative ideas for how to put a distributed data store into production.

Flash-based ad serving, real-time search, network analytics, and single-source/multi-lingual content are just a few examples of applications that are, or have the potential to start, transforming their existing economies.

We have had a unique view into emerging ideas and we are convinced of one thing: if these companies want to use Riak, who cares how much they can pay now? Their ideas are big and they will make us better. Many are already pounding the heck out of Riak, which, not coincidentally, means their businesses are taking off.

So that is the real reason why Riak EnterpriseDS for Startups came about. Whether or not any of these companies become the next Comscore or Doubleclick doesn't matter. Cedexis, Teleskele, even a few stealth startups -- these people are smart and driven and their ideas are big. They push Riak to its limits and make us better.

The economics of the Riak EnterpriseDS for Startups program are in the end quite simple: we give you code, you push us to be better. If you like us, we ask that you share that opinion. If not, say what you will. We deserve it. But either way, we will do our damnedest to make sure you get the best code and the best support we can deliver.

Why? Because we know what it is like to passionately believe in an idea and find folks like Bob and Jameson at Mochi Media, Marty at Cedexis, Gohkan at Teleskele, and Tom Fredell who believe in us.

Don't look to Big Money to fund innovation nowadays. Big Money is scared. Look to other innovators and entrepreneurs. Look to each other.

Let us know if we can help.

Earl