Andreessen Horowitz, Salesforce Put $1.4M In Flotype (YC W11)

Nice idea.

If Flotype inherited NowJS' concept of one namespace for both server- and client-side it's a very smart thing built on NodeJS.

I am sure there're tons of companies who would love to get a out-of-the-box real-time communication system w/o going too deep into node.js (which is btw perfect for this job).

The idea behind nowjs is great but still isn't that trivial—your code has to be build around their core concept and at the end of the day you are pretty dependent on one sole company for core functions such as communication for your product. Further, there's is more to consider (are messages saved, if yes at flotype or do I have to build my DB and so on) and you quickly face the make or buy decision because with taking NodeJS and building your own communication stack on top. I want just to say that an integration with Flotype is more than just adding a one-liner—correct me if I am wrong—and currently it's too risky to rely on a new product which future is unknown. The point or what I am feeling uncomfortable with is that it's just proprietary tech.

I think Sri will solve this issue (maybe with a freemium model where also the sources are under a public license and you pay money just for the servers)

What's this, an enterprise product? How was it sold since there are companies using it already?

It says Coming Soon all over the website, can't sign up or anything.

From the TC article:

"Bridge, a technology that enables real-time communication between any server, any device, on any platform. Bridge is essentially an API that developers can use to avoid the complexity of building real-time messaging into their applications, and help push more data faster between servers, web browsers, mobile phones and other devices."

Sounds very similar to Amazon SNS, which Amazon describes as

"...a web service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and send notifications from the cloud. It provides developers with a highly scalable, flexible, and cost-effective capability to publish messages from an application and immediately deliver them to subscribers or other applications. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers."

Right now their website doesn't have much information so it's difficult to determine how they plan to differentiate themselves from existing platforms that (appear to) solve the same problem.

Congrats to @sridatta and his Flotype team!! We are a European startup and having met only 1 time Sridatta in a bus to Google RootAccess event, he was kind enough later to give us advice for our YC interview couple of Months later. Thanks! You spread great karma :)

Anyone know what this is built on? Is it zero mq or some other open source messaging system, or is it all proprietary?

Congratulations to the Flotype team!