Great product. It should have happened last week, then we truly could have said that all Enterprise Apache Open Software products died of the AWS plague in 2018: Hadoop is gone with Cloudera/Hortonworks merging, Kafka with Confluent's new license covering their ecosystem of tooling. Databricks now have their own Spark runtime, which will get more TLC than Apache Spark. On top of Apache, Mongo, Neo4J, Redis Labs abandoning open-source. Wow, just wow.
We clearly say in all announcements that this is about doubling down on open source. In contrast to all current the efforts everywhere that restrict open use, we plan to do even more work openly.
This is best thing that could have happened to any open source project. And to any founder whose heart beats for technology and open source...
Curious where you get "Hadoop is gone" by two companies (who employ hundreds of open source contributors and committers) merging. I think it's in fact the complete opposite. I get the whole buy-in into the FUD that Cloudera ships proprietary software so they're evil, but the fact of the matter is their core system (CDH) is 100% open source. Impala, open source. Kudu, open source. Anything that is in CDH that isn't in Apache Hadoop is in a pull request. You can literally download every last source file that you trust your data with.
What is it about European Enterprise Data software companies that they never make it past this stage without either being bought up or moving to the States?
-Europe is fragmented market. It is not given that German software will be gladly accepted and used in France, Italy or UK and vice versa. There are barriers there that does not exist in the US.
-The capital market and the stock market are not as developed as in USA in terms of market participants and available funds. Going public is unlikely event. If it happens, it would not get a lot of publicity and it would not raise as much money. Some European companies prefer to go public in the US.
-There is public mistrust about big software companies. Many people are afraid that big software companies will steal and abuse their personal data.
-There is also mistrust about venture capital and generally big finance institutions that they somehow "control" the economy, exploit small family businesses, and just make money on mistreating normal people.
I know that some of this sounds ridiculous, but it is true for astonishing number of people in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. UK is a little better, but they mistrust everything about the rest of Europe.
One reason is because I think there isn't such an obsession with becoming a billionaire here. If you're a founder, and someone offers you a deal which will personally see you net €10-20m after tax, why wouldn't you take it?
The funding options in Europe are abysmal compared to US or even UK. EU response to this is various EU funding programs that are mostly throwing money away for little to no benefit. At least in the tech sector.
EU capital markets are underdeveloped compared to those in the US. European banks are too small, and mostly national. More importantly, the marketplaces are too small and too national. European stock exchanges are a joke compared to NASDAQ and NYSE.
There's also the small detail of pension funds generally being forbidden from investing in stocks. That's the money that's fuelling SV, if my impression is correct. This policy comes from a general risk-aversion that's also evident in all other areas.
I wonder what it would take to create the set of conditions for another "Silicon Valley / SF Bay Area" to appear in Europe. It seems like inevitably, any tech companies that are successful always end up getting bought out and leave to the U.S. instead of staying.
What are the primary issues? Lack of VC funding, culture, government policy? On the surface, it doesn't seem like there's anything particularly lacking, at least from my superficial understanding as an American viewing in from the outside.
> On the surface, it doesn't seem like there's anything particularly lacking, at least from my superficial understanding as an American viewing in from the outside.
My personal opinion is that, whilst we (still, just...) live in a "single market", Europe isn't a "market" just by itself.
Sure, you can do business cross-borders quite easily, but there's not the same critical mass of language, culture, business environment, and confidence as there is in the States. The US is a bunch of loosely connected areas that at least have language, currency, and to a lesser degree, culture that permeates them.
The differences between the UK and France when launching a product are substantial - and whilst it's technically "easy" (a bit of i18n here, a Stripe GBP-EUR transaction there), unpicking user needs and behaviours across language barriers can be hard.
If you incubate a product in SV, you can roll that out to the rest of the US with only slight changes in approach. If you incubate a product in Portugal, you have your work to cut out from the get-go to reach more than just 10m people.
My stretch is that it encourages companies to try and "dominate" their home market rather than trying to do the harder thing and spread - that slows the hockey-stick as you try and wring the last few dollars out of a mature environment and makes investment outcomes less tasty.
Combine all of that with a generalised point about Europeans being less "work-driven" and so probably a less % of people trying.
It's attitude and sheer luck. People in the US seem to take more risk, this leads to huge rewards (start-ups) but also leads to an insane amount of inequality in wealth. I have never seen more in-your-face wealth inequality than in America (and yes, I've been to China and Asia in general quite often). Then a second component is the sheer amount of people trying their luck. Imagine that winning in a startup is like tossing a coin with a p=1e-7 probability of landing on "win". The Netherlands has 2.000.000 people aged 20-30 and the US has 40.000.000 people aged 20-30. Imagine that all these people start a startup we have a probability of P(X>0) with n=2.000.000, p=1e-7 is given by 0.18 and the probability for P(X>0) with n=40.000.000, p=1e-7 is 0.98. The point I'm trying to make is that a lot or more people in the US try to start something, this leads to many more failures, but also to some singular huge successes.
It’s not just funding - valley startups have a big group of experienced talent that knows how to scale in exactly the right moment. Startups and growth can die by small mistakes not making these small mistakes can compound quickly.
The other side is that the Valley is not a US place it’s a global tech place, the amounts of international money are staggering and additionally the number of international talent is staggering.
A third thing is that markets are not rational, if your investors are from the network they will hype you in that network, so your valuation is only partially dependent on product.
If you look at how China managed to build up an impressive tech sector the conclusion is clear: protectionism, else Europe will keep being sold off and lose its best talent to large companies abroad. This is the missing piece, not all these arbitrary number crunching or ill-informed cultural studies. Indeed looking at history many European countries have build up large innovative industrial and scientific sectors.
Naturally, if Europe starts to protect its tech sector the US will react aggressively and it will have major political repercussions. It is nonetheless necessary.
It's mostly generations of VC Funding. There's a genuine lack of experience on both sides so only the 0,01% of Entrepreneurs and VCs are capable of playing at an international level.
It's getting better, but not fast enough so that "just raise elsewhere" is a common answer, of course that's a route also most can't take for one reason or another.
The US lacks labor laws which means hiring people is a low risk activity since you can easily fire them. You can also work them for 60 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. The labor laws that do exist, for example in California, are about workers being able to switch companies versus them not losing their jobs.
That means you can quit your job, start a startup, hire people, shut down the startup and then find another job with ease. When you need to give two months notice to just leave a job that whole process slows down significantly.
I've been following data Artisans for a while and love their tech! It seemed that being not from silicon valley made it more difficult for them to gain traction.
One part of the acquisition is the integration of Alibaba's in-house modifications called Blink. It will be interesting to see what is behind that. To me it looks like this could be a very health collaboration.
It's an aqui-hire, i guess. Not great for Data Artisans customers. Alibaba are flexing their muscles. Google have their own data platform. We want to show we have our own too - they see it as competitive advantage. Alibaba are not an enterprise software company, like Data Artisans were.
They already are for American, and Chinese entering the market might actually introduce some fresh air to the stuffy atmosphere created by being at the absolute bottom of the American corporate outsourcing chain. Except in Germany and France - there they are cheap labour for domestic conglomerates.
[+] [-] jamesblonde|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sewen|7 years ago|reply
We clearly say in all announcements that this is about doubling down on open source. In contrast to all current the efforts everywhere that restrict open use, we plan to do even more work openly.
This is best thing that could have happened to any open source project. And to any founder whose heart beats for technology and open source...
[+] [-] monstrado|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rusk|7 years ago|reply
Hold on ... what?!?
[+] [-] jamesblonde|7 years ago|reply
MySQL, JBoss, Elastic. The list is much longer.
[+] [-] devdimi|7 years ago|reply
-Europe is fragmented market. It is not given that German software will be gladly accepted and used in France, Italy or UK and vice versa. There are barriers there that does not exist in the US.
-The capital market and the stock market are not as developed as in USA in terms of market participants and available funds. Going public is unlikely event. If it happens, it would not get a lot of publicity and it would not raise as much money. Some European companies prefer to go public in the US.
-There is public mistrust about big software companies. Many people are afraid that big software companies will steal and abuse their personal data.
-There is also mistrust about venture capital and generally big finance institutions that they somehow "control" the economy, exploit small family businesses, and just make money on mistreating normal people.
I know that some of this sounds ridiculous, but it is true for astonishing number of people in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. UK is a little better, but they mistrust everything about the rest of Europe.
[+] [-] jlangenauer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rapsey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesblonde|7 years ago|reply
https://www.logicalclocks.com/what-is-it-with-european-data-...
[+] [-] tormeh|7 years ago|reply
There's also the small detail of pension funds generally being forbidden from investing in stocks. That's the money that's fuelling SV, if my impression is correct. This policy comes from a general risk-aversion that's also evident in all other areas.
[+] [-] lawrenceyan|7 years ago|reply
What are the primary issues? Lack of VC funding, culture, government policy? On the surface, it doesn't seem like there's anything particularly lacking, at least from my superficial understanding as an American viewing in from the outside.
[+] [-] wastedhours|7 years ago|reply
My personal opinion is that, whilst we (still, just...) live in a "single market", Europe isn't a "market" just by itself.
Sure, you can do business cross-borders quite easily, but there's not the same critical mass of language, culture, business environment, and confidence as there is in the States. The US is a bunch of loosely connected areas that at least have language, currency, and to a lesser degree, culture that permeates them.
The differences between the UK and France when launching a product are substantial - and whilst it's technically "easy" (a bit of i18n here, a Stripe GBP-EUR transaction there), unpicking user needs and behaviours across language barriers can be hard.
If you incubate a product in SV, you can roll that out to the rest of the US with only slight changes in approach. If you incubate a product in Portugal, you have your work to cut out from the get-go to reach more than just 10m people.
My stretch is that it encourages companies to try and "dominate" their home market rather than trying to do the harder thing and spread - that slows the hockey-stick as you try and wring the last few dollars out of a mature environment and makes investment outcomes less tasty.
Combine all of that with a generalised point about Europeans being less "work-driven" and so probably a less % of people trying.
[+] [-] Rainymood|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dependsontheq|7 years ago|reply
The other side is that the Valley is not a US place it’s a global tech place, the amounts of international money are staggering and additionally the number of international talent is staggering.
A third thing is that markets are not rational, if your investors are from the network they will hype you in that network, so your valuation is only partially dependent on product.
[+] [-] l5870uoo9y|7 years ago|reply
Naturally, if Europe starts to protect its tech sector the US will react aggressively and it will have major political repercussions. It is nonetheless necessary.
[+] [-] Roritharr|7 years ago|reply
It's getting better, but not fast enough so that "just raise elsewhere" is a common answer, of course that's a route also most can't take for one reason or another.
[+] [-] nraynaud|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcinzm|7 years ago|reply
That means you can quit your job, start a startup, hire people, shut down the startup and then find another job with ease. When you need to give two months notice to just leave a job that whole process slows down significantly.
[+] [-] moonhorse|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worldsayshi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rapsey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkaufmann|7 years ago|reply
One part of the acquisition is the integration of Alibaba's in-house modifications called Blink. It will be interesting to see what is behind that. To me it looks like this could be a very health collaboration.
[+] [-] statictype|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesblonde|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knbknb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theredbox|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] expertentipp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] growlist|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maa5444|7 years ago|reply
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