Exactly, they gave it a good go as a company but their burn rate was likely too high/too soon and differentiation insufficient (whether lack of actual novel features and/or communicating advantages in marketing). For example, a polar opposite of something like Couchbase which is used by giant enterprise shops to move away from Memcache and/or CouchDB.
It was also competing in a way Peter Thiel and Paul Graham warn about. Reinventing something without a vital quantum of improvement is like trying to juggle while climbing Half Dome.
I hope Rethink lives on as open source and adds MongoDB support. If they can hustle to encourage more people to try it by selling its obvious advantages, they have a slim but nonzero chance of rebooting.
Next time, gotta find more paying, alpha customers first and then start building. Then, try VC only after being capital-constrained when hiring/expansion/development is a blocker to realizing imminent profit. New category brands and segment-optimized products are riskier but more likely to be able to set up moats with defensible, competitive value.
Exactly, they gave it a good go as a company but their burn rate was likely too high/too soon and differentiation insufficient (whether lack of actual novel features and/or communicating advantages in marketing). For example, a polar opposite of something like Couchbase which is used by giant enterprise shops to move away from Memcache and/or CouchDB.
It was also competing in a way Peter Thiel and Paul Graham warn about. Reinventing something without a vital quantum of improvement is like trying to juggle while climbing Half Dome.
I hope Rethink lives on as open source and adds MongoDB support. If they can hustle to encourage more people to try it by selling its obvious advantages, they have a slim but nonzero chance of rebooting.
Next time, gotta find more paying, alpha customers first and then start building. Then, try VC only after being capital-constrained when hiring/expansion/development is a blocker to realizing imminent profit. New category brands and segment-optimized products are riskier but more likely to be able to set up moats with defensible, competitive value.