CouchDb Incorporated?
I’ve spent the past few weeks doing legwork to find investment funding for CouchDb in order to turn it into a business. Business plans, investors, revenue streams, timelines, ROI, burn rate, blah, blah, blah.
And I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to turn CouchDb into a business. I decided I’d rather continue developing it free of business demands.
Information technologies are the tools that help us organize, understand and share information. And I’m not just talking about computers. The spoken word, the written word, books, the moveable type press, telephone, radio, TV and the Internet are all tools that have helped us express, collect and share information. They allow us to stand on the shoulders of giants, to communicate ideas across space and time and unleash human creativity. Each wave of tools has added new potential to what we can collectively do to improve our world, our environment, our lives. But our tools could be so much better.
CouchDb isn’t just a way to store data. It's a method of communication, a way to think about collecting, organizing and sharing information. The current tools aren’t enough, human beings need more intuitive models and systems that more closely map to our real world problems.
So CouchDb means very much to me, at a very deep level. And because of that, I’d rather not risk ruining it though commercialization. I’d rather keep it free of business constraints and allow it to develop to its full potential in the open.
This work is truly a labor of love. Designing and developing CouchDb was very challenging, and often not in a fun way. I could never have gotten this far part time. To get up and running something big and complex as an ACID compliant, distributed database system with integrated query language is a no small task. It took many many months of careful design, planning and uninterrupted development, not to mention attacking every single problem that cropped up like it’s the only problem in the world.
And now CouchDb development is far enough along that I can continue part time. The biggest and most complex parts are in place and working, most of the remaining work is adding smaller features to the already working code base. Development will now continue in small steps that weren’t possible early in the project.
So in related news, the non-commercialization of CouchDb also means I will now looking for a real job! I’ve decided against remote contract work, I want to be back working with real people on real teams, which means I’ll certainly need to relocate from Charlotte, NC. I’ll be posting more about all that soon.
Posted January 15, 2007 11:14 PM
Comments
I followed CouchDb from a distance (and got interested in Erlang by this project, btw, thanks a lot for this) and your decision commands my admiration. I wish you luck and chances to earn money with your invention !
Norbert Klamann, January 16, 2007 2:31 AM
Congratulations, a wise descision.
Have a look at "The Business of Software" by Michael A. Cusumano. I have set up several successfull businesses by myself and I can truly say it is the best book on the issue I have ever seen.
He strongly recommends to grow step by step, starting in one niche of the market where the application really provides benefit to the users and then move on to the next use case.
By the way, Cusumano, who is professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management calls the moment VCs embark a software company "the kiss of death".
So again: Well done !
Lucius B., January 16, 2007 3:28 AM
Damien,
Sorry to hear that :(
Now i think you made one cardinal mistake with Ycombinator & Graham, you should have made a final product of CouchDB, i.e. like 37signals do, and many others...
Now for incorporation, incorporate in Delaware. Second while you'r working on "day job", develop a service that will surround CouchDB, and hey don't invest thousands of $$, work on what you have! Set up a server at home, use ZoneEdit and develop...develop...develop..
I started to develop in Erlang too, but being an newbie in programming i can't use it because of lack of proper web framework with weblogs, forums and other OTS tools... :(
Now i have to develop in RoR, and after i get some customer traction, i.e. over 10,000 registered users and learn PatternMatching properly :) switch over to Erlang/OTP :)
I for sure won't get back to "day job", now that i like MY "night job"!!! :)
Mayo, January 16, 2007 9:14 AM
Oh, forgot to mention about Steve Pavlina, he has free content all along, but he commands now 40K$US every month, guess how much he made in beginning: 50$US in his third month of website, then 12 months later 3K$US, then 24 months later 40K$US... and all that on free content, and no advertising!
I bet most of us would give it's left kidney for 40K$ a month...
Now imagine using CouchDB for some useful service for your users, give them free (read a bit Steve's articles) and watch traffic growing organically...
Later like 37Signals you can write books on CDB (look how Seth Godin is doing on books, most are free),and charge big for consulting services and training....
Mayo, January 16, 2007 12:31 PM
Mayo: Steve Pavlina makes all his money from ads. Maybe you're running an ad blocker?
Damien: For what it's worth, I'm glad to hear this. I've been playing with an idea for a big personal project for a while now (likely using erlang) and CouchDB looks like it will be a fantastic storage system for it. Thanks for taking so much work off my hands ;-). My project will be free software as well, for a lot of the same reasons you mention.
Nathan, January 19, 2007 7:12 PM
Nathan,
well exactly, at first i thought because of script blocker that he made money on affiliate stuff, later unblocked it and found how he makes money.. (^_^)
now i think giving a free service in the beginning, and adding upgraded subscription accounts is the way to go, give unique free content to masses with incorporated adsense and make advanced pro version without adsense, or much less of it and if you have a great service live like a king, but of course first you need to know how to market your product, unfortunately Damien failed here miserably :(
but it's never too late! (^_^)
Mayo, January 23, 2007 5:43 PM
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