Hacker News Reader

The only problem I have with Fly is that it is VC backed. It's receiving a lot of developer love now, but wonder what happens when it eventually gets acquired by a behemoth in a few years and the same fate as Heroku is bestowed upon it.

View on HN

We aren't super interested in selling. I want to work on Fly forever and selling is a quick way to end that.

But I also don't think you can build a from-scratch cloud without VC money. It's very expensive.

Appreciate the honesty and transparency but sadly VC isn't chasing the profits from being a cloud- or app-server-provider. Looking at the profiles of the VCs which participated in funding rounds, most of them are exit-oriented. A16z's portfolio proudly opens with "exits". Intel Capital is also very proud of their ~50% IPO or acquisition stat. Hopefully you can work on Fly forever but history has learned that probably won't be the case - and that's not judgemental.

You'll notice that the ones they feature most are IPOs. Which isn't the same as getting acquired. I'm not opposed to an IPO, I am opposed to get subsumed by a larger company.

> But I also don't think you can build a from-scratch cloud without VC money. It's very expensive.

Linode did it 20 years ago (somehow). Dunno if there's a more recent example though. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com