(Not that I'm not a fan of RethinkDB. I've been playing with it since one of the earliest released builds and find it a really lightweight nice database to use.)
I do not know the specifics of this particular deal, nor have I used the product, but I hope the points are of going to be some use.
Let us look at it this way. Assume there are 200 funds out there who can do a series A of this size. That would naturally mean that not every fund is going to be either a leader or someone who spots new trends (there are not enough trends out there). Naturally, a lot of them have to invest in deals in other companies in a hot sector.
A lot of investment is momentum-driven and momentum is often driven by the narrative. You have to remember that as long as a successful exit happens, the fund winds up with a good deal irrespective of whether the public (IPO) or the acquiring company (M&A) eventually profits from it. NoSQL has that momentum at the moment.
A healthy start-up ecosystem can easily support more than a handful of companies in a single domain. Once the narrative for the domain really picks up, even the not-so-great ones (again, I have no clue about RethinkDB) stand a good chance of being acquired as long as there is decent enough traction and the sector is so hot that there is pressure on the GPs to make a play in it.
The later they get into the game, the pricier the ticket becomes, but you get lesser risk too.
And all of this is perfectly OK and fair.
This is a really good breakdown. I can't read our investors's minds, but I'm pretty sure this would be a worst case scenario for them. It's certainly not why we're doing Rethink -- if we thought it would be a #5 company in the space, we'd pack up and do something else (life's too short).
The NoSQL market is reminiscent of "horseless carriages" -- as long as you define a technology by an absence of something, you know you're early in the game. Databases are a fundamental part of the technology stack, and they tend to easily stick around for 20-30 years. We think we can build a long-term open source company that will stick around for that long (incidentally, that's why we take conventions in ReQL so seriously -- we imagine millions of programmers fifteen years from now cursing at us for a stupid naming convention).
It's not hard to imagine groundbreaking features in NoSQL products that nobody is shipping. That's why RethinkDB exists, and we think we won't be a niche product for long.
First up, congrats. Whatever the back story is, getting funded (save runaway revenue/profits/margins) is always a crucial inflection point in a company/product's lifecycle as an enabler for bigger and better things. Whether those will eventually happen or not, nobody knows. But there are a lot of things that only money can accomplish and investment is a key enabler for a start-up that needs capital to scale/grow. If you find an investor who is aligned extremely well, it is a massive bonus.
Historically, a lot of good has also happened from a combination of events that may not exactly be awesome. Outcomes always trump everything else. So don't sweat the mind-reading angle much!
Can't comment much on the technical aspects of the product as I am not even remotely qualified to do something like that.
I'm excited for your team and I have immense respect for anyone who builds an OSS company. There is much that the world owes to numerous companies and individuals releasing code like this and don't get enough credit for it. So, thank you and hopefully it will come together very well for everyone involved :)
-Dave (FoundationDB)
Not really, because "NoSQL" databases aren't really a coherent group of things. "Document databases" is a good name for an important subset, though. As are "Column-oriented datastores".
An investment happens when the investor thinks the company will be worth more to another investor in the future.
That's basically it (and it's basically what you said). The second investor in the sentence above could be another VC, a buyer (M&A), or the stock market (IPO).
There is actually real shortage of innovative databases. For example Redis was released just a few years ago, but all ingredients were here for decades.
It takes years to develop, quality demands are very high and takes long time to build reputation to get enterprise users. Also experienced people are scarce and get 'hired away' by big guys. Very hard field for start-up.
http://www.marketresearchmedia.com/?p=568
http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Big_Data_Database_Revenue_and_Mark...
From the little I have seen of NoSQL, I like it as a niche use-case DB, not entirely divorced from a RDMBS. Thus, not surprised it has the potential to grow like crazy.