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Comment by hendzen | Hacker News Reader

It looks like you are trying to replicate the MongoDB Inc. business model (regardless of major differences in the actual product being offered).

MongoDB offers a commercial version of their product with enterprise features (encryption at rest, LDAP auth, etc) and support - MongoDB Enterprise.

Additionally they also offer managed, cloud hosted MongoDB deployments - MongoDB Atlas.

Over the last few years the valuation of MongoDB, Inc. has been slashed by institutional investors such as Fidelity and BlackRock. While they haven't had mass layoffs or some other negative corporate event, they have clearly had some difficulty making their (and apparently your) business model work.

Do you agree that this is a fair comparison? And what do you makes CockroachLabs more likely to succeed with this business model than MongoDB?

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(Post author here) I'm not incredibly familiar with the ins and outs of MongoDB Inc's business model, but I agree with your assessment. They certainly seem to have embraced both of the OSS business models I described in the post as viable alternatives. We are going to start with just one, and there's still a huge amount on our plate.

MongoDB Inc did have its valuation reduced by some institutional investors. Hard to say whether that was premature or what the impetus was behind their decision. MongoDB is an incredibly well-adopted product that has gotten considerably more capable over the years. I would argue they've had good success with this business model, as building a $1.6B business is a huge accomplishment whether you've got an OSS business model or not.

It would be fair to ask whether they've done the balancing act as well as they might have. They've certainly knocked OSS adoption out of the park. On the other hand, I've heard anecdotally that they waited a long time before introducing enterprise features.

Regardless, I view MongoDB Inc. as a big - and still growing - success, and consider much of what they've accomplished to be worthy of emulation.

> (Post author here) I'm not incredibly familiar with the ins and outs of MongoDB Inc's business model, but I agree with your assessment.

"I don't know much about one of our signifcant competitors' business model." doesn't sound like something you would want to hear from someone just announcing their business model.

I don't think that's a fair interpretation of 'not incredibly familiar.'

Point still stands. I'm not even in the market but have looked at the community vs enterprise editions of successful companies to learn what splits are already market-proven. Just curiosity for me in case I got into the business. If I was in the market, I'd know everything about market leaders, main competitors, and failures that seem like they should've worked. It's necessary to compete with them to best effect.

I'll add to the other commenter that LDAP is a great, enterprise feature since it's mostly used by them and most enterprise editions seem to have it.

Of course it was slashed. It's simply not a multi billion dollars company. They had a lot of hype from web dev, they hardly had any sales or sellable product, the product wasn't executing to quality expectations.

In the same vain, the next to be slashed will probably be Docker.

the mongodb model can make plenty of money for the company management and employees.

what it probably won't do is make plenty of money for investors.

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