I originally thought funding would play a big role, but the early, 2-3 year period of funding for both is comparable:
RethinkDB, 2009-11 = $4.2MM
MongoDB, 2008-2009 = $4.9MM
It's true that MongoDB quickly closed on a $6.5MM Series C in Dec of 2010, one year after their Series B. For Rethink, it took them another 2 years to get the last $8MM. There's no question that MongoDB was "better" at raising more money, faster.
I'm just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if MongoDB made a conscious tradeoff to sacrifice good tech to have better marketing & sales early on.
No, still diff league: if 50% went to dev, 10 devs << 20. For example, 1-2 parallel teams could focus purely on monetization: managed hosting, weird enterprise features, sales engineering, etc. Compounding returns on that turn into more funding, and history unfolds.
RethinkDB, 2009-11 = $4.2MM
MongoDB, 2008-2009 = $4.9MM
It's true that MongoDB quickly closed on a $6.5MM Series C in Dec of 2010, one year after their Series B. For Rethink, it took them another 2 years to get the last $8MM. There's no question that MongoDB was "better" at raising more money, faster.
I'm just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if MongoDB made a conscious tradeoff to sacrifice good tech to have better marketing & sales early on.
Crunchbase links here:
- https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mongodb-inc/funding-...
- https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rethinkdb/funding-ro...