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Wow, $1B.

I've been bullish on neon for a while -- the idea hits exactly the right spot, IMO, and their execution looks good in my limited experience.

But I mean that from a technical perspective. I never have any real idea about the business -- do they have an edge that makes people want to start paying them money and keep paying them money? Heck if I know.

I guess that's going to be Databricks problem now (maybe).

Actual revenue is irrelevant. This is a business decision to corner the market.

They offer serverless Postgres. Here's a link if anyone else needs it https://neon.tech/

What is the lowdown on Databricks? Their bread and butter were hosted Spark and notebooks. As tasks done in Spark over a data lake began to be delegated wholesale to columnar store ELT, they tried to pivot to "lake houses", then I sort of lost track of them after I got out of Spark myself.

Did Delta Lake ever catch on? Where are they going now?

Capture enterprise AI enthusiasm by providing a 1-stop shop for data and AI, optionally hosted on your own cloud tenant. Keep deploying functionality so clients never need another supplier. Partner with SAP, OpenAI, anyone who holds market share. Buy anyone that either helps growth or might help a competitor grow.

Enterprise view: delegate AI environment to Databricks unless you’re a real player. Market is too chaotic, so rely on them to keep your innovation pipeline fed. Focus on building your own core data and AI within their environment. Nobody got fired for choosing Databricks.

That does sound, as you allude, like IBM on its long downward spiral of globbing up products to stay relevant and touting them as an integral solution, while in-house development stuck to keeping legacy products alive for their Enterprise contracts. I wonder if they'll be foolish enough to start doing consulting around them, obliterating their economies of scale in the process; so far they are going with the "consulting partners" approach.

Oh well. Databricks notebooks were hella cool back when companies were willing to spend lavishly on having engineers write cloud hosted Scala in the first place, and at premium prices to boot.

Can someone translate this to non-CEO speak?

You basically pay databricks a “fee” to choose the more appropriate and modern stack for you to build on, and keep it up to date. Never used it, but it handles with lots of the administrative bs (compliance, SLAs, idk) for you so you can just ship.

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It provides central place to store and query data. A big org might have a few hundred databases for various purposes - databricks lets data engineers set up pipelines to ETL that data into databricks and when the data is there it can be queried (using spark, so there's some downsides - namely a more restrictive SQL variant - but some advantages - better performance across very large datasets).

Personally, I hated databricks, it caused endless pain. Our org has less than 10TB of data and so it's overkill. Good ol' Postgres or SQL Server does just fine on tables of a few hundred GB, and bigquery chomps up 1TB+ without breaking a sweat.

Everything in databricks - everything - is clunky and slow. Booting up clusters can take 15 minutes whereas something like bigquery is essentially on-demand and instant. Data ETL'd into databricks usually differs slightly from its original source in subtle but annoying ways. Your IDE (which looks like jupyter notebook, but is not) absolutely suck (new keyboard shortcuts, flakey, can only be edited in browser), and good luck if you want to use your favorite IDE, vim etc.

Almost every databricks feature makes huge concessions on the functionality you'd get if you just used that feature outside of databricks. For example databricks has it's own git-like functionality (which is the 5% of git that gets most used, but no way to do the less common git operations).

My personal take is databricks is fine for users who'd otherwise use their laptop's computer/memory - this gets them an environment where they can access much more, at about 10x the cost of what you'd pay for the underlying infra if you just set it up yourself. Ironically, all the databricks-specific cruft (config files, click ops) that's required to get going will probably be difficult for that kind of user anyway, so it negates its value.

For more advanced users (i.e. those that know how to start an ec2 or anything more advanced), databricks will slow you down and be endlessly frustrating. It will basically 2-10x the time it takes to do anything, and sap the joy out of it. I almost quit my job of 12 years because the org moved to databricks. I got permission to use better, faster, cheaper, less clunky, open-source tooling, so I stayed.

Which open source option did you end up going with? I'm in the same boat and would like to evaluate my options.

My stack atm is neovim, python/R, an EC2 and postgres (sometimes Sql Server). Some use of arrow and duckdb. For queries on less than few hundred GB this stack does great. Fast, familiar, the ec2 is running 24/7 so it's there when I need it and can easily schedule overnight jobs, and no time wasted waiting for it to boot.

Databricks is trying hard to get into serverless, but it seems like they refuse to allow it to actually be cheaper, which defeats the purpose of serverless.

There are so many gotchas. I'm getting so tired of working around it, but my company is all in on serverless so the pain will continue. A lot of it is tied up with Unity Catalog shortcomings, but Serverless and UC are basically joined at the hip.

A few just off the top of my head:

* You can't .persist() DataFrames in serverless. Some of my work involves long pipelines that wind up with relatively small DFs at the end of them, but need to do several things with that DF. Nowhere near as easy as just caching it. * Handling object storage mounted to Unity Catalog can be a nightmare. If you want to support multiple types of Databricks platforms (AWS, Azure, Google, etc.), then you will have to deal with the fact that you can't mount one type's object storage with another. If you're on Azure Databricks, you can't access S3 via Unity Catalog. * There's no API to get metrics like how much memory or CPU was consumed for a given job. If you want to handle monitoring and alerting on it yourself, you're out of luck. * For some types of Serverless compute, startup times from cold can be 1 minute or more.

They're getting better, but Databricks is an endless progression of unpleasant surprises and being told "oh no you can't do it that way", especially compared to Snowflake, whose business Databricks has been working to chew away at for a while. Their Variant type is a great example. It's so much more limited than Snowflake's that I'm still learning new and arbitrary ways in which it's incompatible with Snowflake's implementation.

I had an interview with a senior data engineering candidate and we were talking about how expensive Databricks can get. :D I set up specific budget alerts in Azure just for Databricks resources in DEV and PROD environments.

hmm, what is a serverless Pg? I don't quite understand. I thought you needed a database server if you wanted to run Pg.

basically they separate the compute and storage into different components, where the traditional PG use both compute and storage at the same server.

because of this separation, the compute (e.q SQL parsing, etc) can be scaled independently and the storage can also do the same, which for example use AWS S3

so if your SQL query is CPU heavy, then Neon can just add more "compute" nodes while the "storage" cluster remain the same

to me, this is similar to what the usual microservice where you have a API service and DB. the difference is Neon is purposely running DB on top of that structure

Marketing speech.

You shouldn't be getting downvoted. Serverless is nothing more than a hype which is meant to overcharge you instead of running it on a server owned by you

I don't think being cheaper is the main value sell of serverless. When I hear "serverless" I think "ease of deployment and automatic scaling".

Right but ultimately that's a cost thing, right? Because you can solve those problems through other means and by hiring internally.

Serverless is meant to obviate some of that. But it is less compelling when the vendor tries to gobble up that margin for themselves.

You will all forced to go serverless because new grads can't use the command line. Running a database is about the hardest thing you can do. If it is serverless, you don't need special skills, preventing employees from becoming valuable lowers costs across the board.

Have you tried being less jaded? Running a database is NOT about the hardest thing you can do.

Looks like the acquihire of Bit.io in 2023 wasn't enough to be able to deliver their own OLTP offering

https://blog.bit.io/whats-next-for-bit-io-joining-databricks... https://www.databricks.com/blog/welcoming-bit-io-databricks-...

Or it's just a business decision to corner the market, as someone else said

Okay now I am concerned. We're using Neon. We can move easily at this point, but I'm sure they have huge customers storing many terabytes of data where this may be genuinely hard to do.

I went to Archive.org and figured out that in 2023, they announced they were shutting down on May 30th, all databases shutdown on June 30th, only available for downloads after that, and deleted on July 30th.

They aren’t exactly hiding it. I kept my eye on bit.io because they looked very promising. Next day, gone. Shut down immediately. Something is fucky with the investment pipeline because it’s not ”worth” that much on its own, it’s a market dominance play, bad for innovation..

> Or it's just a business decision to corner the market, as someone else said

Given how lax antitrust enforcement is, probably this

I'm confused. I saw users left Databricks left and right. Two companies I worked for previously got out of it due to cost.

Do they still have a lot of $$$?

https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/d...

Thanks. OK they still have a lot of money.

A tangential question here, will Databricks ever go public? At this point it's a large company making billion dollar acquisitions.

For someone looking to join the company, I cannot imagine IPO to be a motivation anymore.

Later stage things are , the potential IPO is a benefit not deterrent. Recruiters and hiring managers will hint at potential IPO being not far off as an incentive to join. It minimizes risk, they do same for potential target’s founders like Neon here .

This is better than earlier stage startups , while you get far better multiples , it is also quite possible that you are let go somewhere into the cycle without the money to vest the options for tax reasons and there is short vesting period on exit.

For this reason companies these days offer 5/10 yr post leaving as a more favorable offer

——

For founders it is gives them a shorter window to a exit than on their own, and in revenue light and tech heavy startup like neon (compared to databricks) the value risk is reduced because stock they get in acquisition is based on real revenue and growth not early stage product traction as neon would be today .

They also have some cash component which is usually enough to buy core things in most founders look at like buying a house in few million range or closing mortgages or invest in few early stage projects directly or through funds

If they are making money, there is no pressure to raise money from IPO.

they can do employee liquidity event

That is not the same as an IPO right?

No, basically it is a buy back of employee options and stock .

Many companies raise money only to give liquidity to founders / employees and some early investors even if they don’t money for operations at all.

While Databricks is large , there are much bigger companies which would have IPOed at smaller sizes in the past which are delaying (may never do) today. Stripe and SpaceX are the biggest examples both have healthy positive cash flows but don’t feel the value of going public . Buying back shares and options is the only route if you don’t have IPO plans if you want to keep early stage employees happy

Company offers to purchase employee pre-ipo shares.

Why does it matter if you get liquidity events 2-4x per year

If I'm guessing this either:

1. An acquihire (if your a Neon customer this would probably be a bad outcome for you).

2. A growth play. Neon will be positioned as an 'application layer' product offered cheap to bring SaaS startups into the ecosystem. As those growth startups grow and need more services sell them everything else.

Who pays $1b for an acquihire?

Well this isn't great news. I quite enjoy using Neon but I doubt it's going to continue to cater to people like me if it's bought by Databricks (from the little I know about them and from looking at their website).

Thankfully, I just need "Postgres", I wasn't depending on any other features so I can migrate easily if things start going south.

I've been seriously considering neon for a new application. This definitely gives me pause... maybe plain ol' Postgres is going to be the winner for me again.

Lucky you, you still can as it's Apache 2 https://github.com/neondatabase/neon/blob/release-8516/LICEN...

I haven't studied the CLA situation in order to know if a rug pull is on the table but Tofu and Valkey have shown that where there's a will there's a way

Why would this give you pause? You just don't want the data to be where Databricks is?

Either way, there are plenty of other serverless Postgres options out there, Supabase being one of the most popular.

Can’t speak for anyone but myself and my experience anecdotally, having used Databricks: I consider them to be the Oracle of the modern era. Under no circumstances would I let them get their hooks into any company I have the power from preventing it.

Why do think so? Databricks notebook product I have used in couple of companies is pretty solid. I have done any google research but they are generally known to be very high talent dense kind of place to work.

You and the parent are not talking about the same things.

This is exactly how I feel. I do not want to be in the Databricks ecosystem.

> Why would this give you pause?

After a funding round the value extraction from customers is just over the horizon

Supabase, while a great product, does not offer serverless Postgress.

What would you say they offer then if not serverless Postgres?

You set up a database, you connect to it, they take care of the rest. It even scales to $0 if you don't use it.

Is that not serverless Postgres?

Serverless in the context of Postgres means to decouple storage and compute, so you could scale compute "infinitely" without setting up replica servers. This is what Neon offers, where you can just keep hitting their endpoints with your pg client and it should just take whatever load (in principle) and bill you per request.

Supabase gives you a server that runs classic Postgres in a process. Scaling in this scenario means you increase your server's capacity, with a potential downtime while the upgrade is happening.

You are confusing _managed_ Postgres for _serverless_.

Others in the serverless Postgres space:

- https://www.orioledb.com/ (pg extension)

- https://www.thenile.dev/ (pg "distribution")

- https://www.yugabyte.com/ (not emphasizing serverless but their architecture would allow for it)

https://supabase.com/blog/supabase-acquires-oriole

That's postgre on their server.

Yes, serverless doesn’t mean no servers.

How is what Supabase offers different from what Neon offers from a user perspective?

Exactly how EC2 is different from Lambda from a user's perspective.

Try Supabase!

Supabase just raised 200 million.

What’s with all these Postgres hosting services being worth so much now?

Someone at AWS probably thought about this, easy to provision serverless Postgres, and they just didn’t build it.

I’m still looking for something that can generate types and spit it out in a solid sdk.

It’s amazing this isn’t a solved problem. A long long time ago, I was apart of a team trying to sort this out. I’m tempted to hit up my old CEO and ask him what he thinks.

The company is long gone…

If anything we tried to do way too much with a fraction of the funding.

In a hypothetical almost movie like situation I wouldn’t hesitate to rejoin my old colleagues.

The issue then, as is today is applications need backends. But building backends is boring, tedious and difficult.

Maybe a NoSql DB that “understands” the Postgres API?

Building backends is easy. It is sort of weird. In 2003 no one would bat an eyelid at building an entire app and chucking it on a server. I guess front-end complexity had made that a specialism so with all that dev energy drained they have no time for the backend. The backend is substantial easier though!

These high value startups timed well to capture the vibe coding (was known as builidng an MVP before), front end culture and sheer volume of internet use and developers.

It’s harder than signing up for Firebase.

You have to understand a separate set of concerns. Spin something up on ec2, hook it into a db, configure https , figure out why it went down, etc.

You’re right though, once I build a complex front end I want someone else to do the backend.

You need all that stuff when you need to scale. For an MVP you can get away with very little.

"Easy to provision" is mostly a strategic feature for acquiring new users/customers. The more difficult parts of building a database platform are reliability and performance, and it can take a long time to establish a reputation for having these qualities. There's a reason why most large enterprises stick to the hyperscalers for their mission-critical workloads.

That reason also includes SOC2, FedRAMP, data at rest jurisdiction, availability zones etc. And if large enough you can negotiate the standard pricing.

For sure. And oftentimes these less sexy features or certifications are much more cumbersome to implement/acquire than the flashy stuff these startups lead with

> Maybe a NoSql DB that “understands” the Postgres API?

I believe there are several of these already, like Cockroach DB.

Supabase is particularly valuable for its users. Or right now “vibecoders”

Congrats to the Neon team - they make an awesome product. That’s about all the good I can say here. I don’t blame them for selling out. It’s always felt like a “when” not an “if”. I would be surprised if you can make money selling cloud databases - especially when funded by VCs.

Great.As someone using Neon, how might this impact me? Price bumps?

I am fairly new to all this data pipeline services (Databricks, Snowflakes etc).

Say right now I have an e-commerce site with 20K MAU. All metrics are going to Amplitude and we can use that to see DAU, retention, and purchase volume. At what point in my startup lifecycle do we need to enlist the services?

A non-trivial portion of my consulting work over the past 10 years has been working on data pipelines at various big corporations that move absurdly small amounts of data around using big data tools like spark. I would not worry about purchasing services from Databricks, but I would definitely try to poach their sales people if you can.

Just curious, what would you consider, "absurdly small amounts of data around using big data tools like spark" and what do you recommend instead?

I recently worked on some data pipelines with Databricks notebooks ala Azure Fabric. I'm currently using ~30% of our capacity and starting to get pushback to run things less frequently to reduce the load.

I'm not convinced I actually need Fabric here, but the value for me has been its the first time the company has been able to provision a platform that can handle the data at all. I have a small portion of it running into a datbase as well which has been constant complaints about volume.

At this point I can't tell if we just have unrealistic expectations about the costs of having this data that everyone wants, or if our data engineers are just completely out of touch with the current state of the industry, so Fabric is just the cost we have to pay to keep up.

I'm aware of a govt agency with a few hundred gb of data using Mongo, Databricks and were being pushed towards Snowflake as well. Boggles the mind.

Which is also a reason to not use Databricks, as they will cost your company money by selling gullible users things they don’t need.

Hope they don't increase the price!!

I'd be more worried that they'd shut it down...

Meanwhile here I am wondering why everyone isn’t using SQLite.

If you can serve all your traffic by a single instance running Sqlite in same process as your application, have at it.

If you need to serve your dats across a network to many clients, managing that with SQLite is much trickier.

I thought SQLite's use case was for a single-user local database.

More like "single process application's database".

There are interesting use cases for DB-per-user which can be server or client side, or litestream's continuous backup/sync that can extend it beyond this use case a bit too.

You _can_ use SQLite as your service's sole database, if you vertically scale it up and the load isn't too much. It'll handle a reasonable amount of traffic. Once you hit that ceiling though, you'll have to rethink your architecture, and undergo some kind of migration.

The common argument for SQLite is deferring complexity of hosting until you've actually reached the type of load you have to use a more complex stack for.

Ok, can we just. How is Databricks an AI unicorn exactly?

Enterprises have lots of data. They store it somewhere, and there are multiple vendors that provide such "credible" infrastructure for this type of storage. Think of it like, your dad says he's willing to get a dog, but only trusts these-five-animal-shelters and nothing else. That doesn't mean that's correct (that those are the only places to get a dog), it just means that's what he trusts. Databricks is most likely a unicorn because they have successfully sold the idea that they are one of those trusted vendors, like Snowflake.

The truth of the 2010s up until now is that every startup was a massive sales con job. The wealth of this industry is not truly built on incredible tech, but on the audacity of salesmanship. It's a billion-dollar con job. That's one of the reasons I take every ridiculous startup that launches quite seriously, because you have no idea just how audacious their sales people are. They can sell anything.

Your question is very fundamental, and the answer is just as raw and fundamental too. I would love it if some of these sales people actually reform and write tell-alls about how they conned so many large companies in their years of working. This content has got to be out there somewhere.

So, I'm not sure if this is less cynical or more cynical, but.. have you ever talked to the decision-makers who buy something like databricks?

They can't build it themselves, and it's highly dubious that they'd be able to hire and supervise someone to build it. Databricks may be selling "nothing special", but it's needed, and the buyers can't build it themselves.

My mental model is that there are few big money printing industries, and the major players and it will pay just about anything for a slight advantage. It's really about additive revenue, it's about protecting market share.