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> I don't know. I haven't seen these financials. But it's a frigging database, and not a particularly good one. A billion dollars!?

Salesforce is a frigging CRM tool; SAP is a frigging ERP system; Oracle is a frigging database. And not particularly good ones at that, in the estimation of many of their users. Their market caps are $30 billion, $90 billion, and $150 billion, respectively.

I'm disappointed that yours is the top-voted comment. We can do better than this.

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> Oracle is a frigging database

It's really not. Oracle has an enormous middleware portfolio, and plenty of other niches to boot. And, to be honest, much as it may be unfriendly, it's a pretty good database.

Yeah, I was being hyperbolic to try to make the point -- you can dismiss anything as merely a frigging X. You're absolutely right with regard to Oracle.

(Tangent: for anyone interested in Oracle's history/business, or just enterprise software in general, I highly recommend http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743225058)

This book is highly recommended by Aaron Levie from Box too. Fantastic book.

I agree with you: at one point in time, Oracle probably was worth $1.2 billion. For all we know, MongoDB could grow into a company that spawns a lot of NoSQL middleware whatevers.

Oracle had a net income of over $10B in 2013. That's some serious cashflow.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:ORCL&fstype=ii&ei=lM...

Seriously?

You're a stripe cofounder and you seriously can't see the difference between Salesforce, SAP, Oracle and a minor OSS DB?

Like all of the others charge for everything they do, have massive market penetration and one of them's fairly small can't charge for much? The OSS DB one?

Of course there's a difference (as reflected by MongoDB's relatively tiny valuation). The question is how likely it is that they can expand significantly from their current position. The trajectories of Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP — all of whom had similarly inauspicious beginnings — suggest that it's at least possible.

> Salesforce is a frigging CRM tool

Not really, they do a whole lot more than that, especially in the SDK land, I hear they even have their own IDE for coding the Salesforce way.

> SAP is a frigging ERP system

Another one of those companies that has its hand in a lot of cookie jars, for example, they sell HANA (http://www.saphana.com/welcome), which is a very fast in-memory analytical database (SQL).

> Oracle is a frigging database

Oracle database is actually just a small part of Oracle these days, look at their Sun aquisition. I mean, Oracle even has their own flavor of RHEL now.

No SAP is an ERP company. HANA sales have been woeful from what I've heard.

Likewise for Salesforce. They are still very much a one product company.

Back then, when they were the age 10gen/MongoDB is now, nobody valued those companies at (the appropriately adjusted equivalent of) 1.2 billion, because there was no clue they would be the winners.

All investors then were just overly cautious? Or perhaps there are now others ways to make money off of a company, not tied to the companies actual success and the value it adds to the economy?

> Back then, when they were the age 10gen/MongoDB is now, nobody valued those companies at (the appropriately adjusted equivalent of) 1.2 billion, because there was no clue they would be the winners.

Actually, MongoDB (formerly 10gen) is 6 years old. After 6 years, Salesforce's market cap was around $3 billion. (They IPO'd after 5 years.)

Ok, but Salesforce was also the fastest company to ever reach a billion dollars. They are definitely an outlier.

A market cap after n years is something different from a valuation derived from venture capital raised in prior years. Such a difference is precisely what makes for a good investment.

Salesforce revenue in the year of their IPO: $96M. IPO: $110M

MongoDB revenue last year: $36M [1]

[1] http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Big_Data_Vendor_Revenue_and_Market...

> nobody valued those companies at (the appropriately adjusted equivalent of) 1.2 billion

One counterpoint. My friend worked at a university. This was back in the era of punch-cards. Oracle came in with their relational database sales pitch (they were basically a very small sales team). His manager (who managed the punch-carders) saw the huge potential that everyone else did not (e.g. 'never going to happen'). Bought Oracle stock right when it went public (mid-80s). Kept on buying it. Retired in her mid 40s. Now lives on her own farm, tending her own sheep (not sure if it was sheep or some other livestock), in the country.

10gen's investors might have been cautious then but RethinkDB's investors can't be now. Now they see what the upper limit for RethinkDB can be too.

This evaluation is absurd. And comparing mongo with oracle is even more absurd.

I don't know. I haven't seen these financials.

this made me chuckle. nothing like have a strong opinion based on nada.

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