Good read dude. Really extracted the essence of the event. It feels like there was a collective shrug that neutrally conveyed, “it is what it is” when it came to the customer sponsored stuff. But it was a lot less condescending than I thought.
In the punctuated conversations I had, people were disappointed in the lack of advanced technical talks which usually come from people working in the field for a long time and usually in open source.
The "is what it is" thing seems like a good description. People seemed much more accepting that this is just how the world works. And in that world, an event like this is pretty good.
The technical thing is interesting. I didn't hear much of that (though part of that might be that the technical folks aren't around nearly as much). I'm sure that's a tough cocktail to make though, blending the economically necessary talks with the true technical ones. Seems like that's two ends of a long spectrum, and trying to do both would really divide the whole thing in half.
The barrier to entry to create better software than dbt is very low. It has no real moat. There are no significant network effects. They were - sort of - first to market, but how often has first to market - with a product that doesn't require high investment - actually panned out? I'm guessing the pressure from investors to deliver a lasting business model is incredibly high.
I'm sure the second part about pressure to create a business is true - such is the deal with Silicon Valley. I'm mixed on the moat question though. On one hand, for sure, it's hard to build a moat around an open source project, and one that relatively technically simple. On the other hand, mindshare and inertia matter a lot, and better products don't always (or even often) win. Plus, the open source puzzle that dbt created for themselves - that you can use it for free - creates the same puzzle for competitors too. If you want to release a new dbt competitor, you also have to compete against the same free thing too. (i've never thought about it this way, but that's somewhat of a moat, actually. "We are the builders of the popular free thing" maybe gets in the way of your ability to sell a thing for money, but it gets _even more_ in the way of someone selling a less popular thing for money)
Never been to Coalesce and maybe I'm too old and maybe I'm missing the point, but I've never understood the almost cult-like fervor around dbt Labs and dbt. Almost seems like it has been considered the Burning Man of the data world. And that people somehow wanted to believe that dbt was the harbinger of some sort of future where software isn't sold anymore and that 'information wants to be free'. Like somehow, value would be given freely because 'community'.
Eh, I think there are some True Believers who want everything to be open source and all of that, but I'd say that's more of the minority opinion. My sense is that the story is really three things:
1. dbt put out a good product that solved a clear problem in an accessible and ergonomic way. It was just good to use.
2. (I think it also let people work in a way that felt a little more fun? Analysis is by its nature messy, frustrating, and sort of disorganized, and dbt gave analysts a little garden that they could protect and control. I don't that that's necessarily good, but it's appealing, so there was some emotional attraction to using dbt, because it felt less stressful.)
3. They created a place for people to hang out. For years, it was obvious that there was no central gathering point for analytical people. Lots of companies, including us at Mode, tried to create it (hacker news, but for data!) and never pulled it off. dbt did, and people liked that.
But, to the point of the post, I think most people realized that dbt was a business and would one day need to make money. Hence the anxiety and to some degree cult elements - there was a lot of debate as to how that would happen, if dbt was "allowed" to do it, and so on. It was this looming transition that everyone expected, and wasn't sure what it meant.
This seems like it was written post Wordpress.ORG and WP Engine Benn.
To me, right now, Open source is a "get early customers" using as little marketing as possible while you build the product, keeping all the "required" features to the paid model. When a competitor starts to provide "cloud" version of the managed open source software - Sue them.
Yeah. TLDR. The founder of the Wordpress open source is cutting off one of the key hosting companies saying “they don’t contribute enough”. He wants 8% of all sales from their hosting.
Good read dude. Really extracted the essence of the event. It feels like there was a collective shrug that neutrally conveyed, “it is what it is” when it came to the customer sponsored stuff. But it was a lot less condescending than I thought.
In the punctuated conversations I had, people were disappointed in the lack of advanced technical talks which usually come from people working in the field for a long time and usually in open source.
The "is what it is" thing seems like a good description. People seemed much more accepting that this is just how the world works. And in that world, an event like this is pretty good.
The technical thing is interesting. I didn't hear much of that (though part of that might be that the technical folks aren't around nearly as much). I'm sure that's a tough cocktail to make though, blending the economically necessary talks with the true technical ones. Seems like that's two ends of a long spectrum, and trying to do both would really divide the whole thing in half.
yep, there's conflicting incentives at play, and it's a messy mix to cohesively put together if at all.
The barrier to entry to create better software than dbt is very low. It has no real moat. There are no significant network effects. They were - sort of - first to market, but how often has first to market - with a product that doesn't require high investment - actually panned out? I'm guessing the pressure from investors to deliver a lasting business model is incredibly high.
I'm sure the second part about pressure to create a business is true - such is the deal with Silicon Valley. I'm mixed on the moat question though. On one hand, for sure, it's hard to build a moat around an open source project, and one that relatively technically simple. On the other hand, mindshare and inertia matter a lot, and better products don't always (or even often) win. Plus, the open source puzzle that dbt created for themselves - that you can use it for free - creates the same puzzle for competitors too. If you want to release a new dbt competitor, you also have to compete against the same free thing too. (i've never thought about it this way, but that's somewhat of a moat, actually. "We are the builders of the popular free thing" maybe gets in the way of your ability to sell a thing for money, but it gets _even more_ in the way of someone selling a less popular thing for money)
If the popular free thing is good enough, then I think it's a moat. But is it good enough? My money is no, it's not. Time will tell.
Never been to Coalesce and maybe I'm too old and maybe I'm missing the point, but I've never understood the almost cult-like fervor around dbt Labs and dbt. Almost seems like it has been considered the Burning Man of the data world. And that people somehow wanted to believe that dbt was the harbinger of some sort of future where software isn't sold anymore and that 'information wants to be free'. Like somehow, value would be given freely because 'community'.
Eh, I think there are some True Believers who want everything to be open source and all of that, but I'd say that's more of the minority opinion. My sense is that the story is really three things:
1. dbt put out a good product that solved a clear problem in an accessible and ergonomic way. It was just good to use.
2. (I think it also let people work in a way that felt a little more fun? Analysis is by its nature messy, frustrating, and sort of disorganized, and dbt gave analysts a little garden that they could protect and control. I don't that that's necessarily good, but it's appealing, so there was some emotional attraction to using dbt, because it felt less stressful.)
3. They created a place for people to hang out. For years, it was obvious that there was no central gathering point for analytical people. Lots of companies, including us at Mode, tried to create it (hacker news, but for data!) and never pulled it off. dbt did, and people liked that.
But, to the point of the post, I think most people realized that dbt was a business and would one day need to make money. Hence the anxiety and to some degree cult elements - there was a lot of debate as to how that would happen, if dbt was "allowed" to do it, and so on. It was this looming transition that everyone expected, and wasn't sure what it meant.
"They created a place for people to hang out."
This makes sense; cynical me assumed that it was always and only about getting customers, because every other vendor conference that I'm aware of is.
This seems like it was written post Wordpress.ORG and WP Engine Benn.
To me, right now, Open source is a "get early customers" using as little marketing as possible while you build the product, keeping all the "required" features to the paid model. When a competitor starts to provide "cloud" version of the managed open source software - Sue them.
I don't know the wordpress story...was their arc something similar?
Yeah. TLDR. The founder of the Wordpress open source is cutting off one of the key hosting companies saying “they don’t contribute enough”. He wants 8% of all sales from their hosting.