

Show HN: You guys could save tons of money, get moving faster with ClearDB - cash_coleman
http://www.cleardb.com

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cperciva
This is your third submission about your startup in the past 24 hours, and
your sixth in the past week. I think we get the message already.

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cash_coleman
I appreciate your response, but you know how it goes with startups. The moment
it's not pushed as hard as it can go is the moment that the company begins its
downward spiral. We are way too dedicated to let that happen with ClearDB.

As a compromise, I'll only post when we have new features from now on, but
don't expect that to reduce the frequency of news coming from ClearDB. :-)

~~~
Skywing
Perhaps start a blog, and link to posts on that. Not only will your public
statements be more concrete but they'll be centralized so that it doesn't take
HN to find them.

I have something to mention, too. We take our databases seriously. Our data
_is_ our service. I would feel very insecure about using a database backend
that I did not fully understand (hosted or not). We choose our database engine
based on the problems we are tackling. I'm able to read up on the actual
internals of the databases we use. There are studies and research done on
which one performs better in certain scenarios. I know exactly why I'd use one
and not the other. I can physically download the database software, itself,
and try it out. I can research the people that are making the database
software and I can see that they're all very passionate about making a quality
product. All of this comes together and allows me to choose the database
engine that's right for my scenario, as well as makes me feel safe choosing
the one that I do.

With that said, I have absolutely no clue what CloudDB _actually_ is. Your
site makes it sound like a service similar to MongoHQ. Or, is CloudDB an in-
house database engine that you guys have written and it is also the name of
your service in which the only option is to have you guys host it for me? How
can I tell whether or not the actual database engine you guys use is any good?
How can anyone be sure of this? Where is the science and statistics behind
this? What philosophies do you guys follow? What was CloudDB's inspiration?
What other databases is it similar to?

You claim that "ClearDB makes your website, blog and app run faster by making
it easier and less expensive for you to manage your data" - how does that make
my software actually run any faster? Your website is not very reassuring to
me. It doesn't shout "hey we're all about creating databases", instead its
more about money which doesn't turn me off, it just doesn't make me think that
your database has the right motivation behind it. How can I save money using
CloudDB? How can I be sure I'm not throwing my money away by trusting it?

So, what is CloudDB? What does it solve? Do you guys use MongoDB, MySQL, etc
behind the scenes or is this your own database engine? For a database named
ClearDB, I find it ironic that it's not very clear as to what that actually
is. If you are in fact dedicated to making a good database, then I want to see
it do well and I'd enjoy checking it out. But, I won't be doing any of that
until I can figure out whether or not it's worth my time.

~~~
cash_coleman
Thanks for your response - we're always about good feedback!

First, a correction - it's ClearDB, not CloudDB.

We use a combination of MySQL and our specialized service platform to provide
users with an instant means of getting up and running without having to deal
with setting up and managing their own database solution.

Your software will run faster because, as your user-base grows, your data
solution (us) automatically scales with that growth. No more need to find ways
to scale your data solution. Less money, less fuss.

Saying that "we're all about money" is interesting, especially when you
compare us to other cloud database providers, such as database.com, we are
actually less expensive - by far - than they are. Further, you can sign up for
free, get four times as much usage as they provide (just as an example) for
free, and you get a staff of highly experienced database engineers behind you,
100%.

So, we solve the problem of scalability, cost, and time lost to trying to
solve that problem yourself. In short, we save you money - lots of money.

Hopefully that addresses your questions :-)

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Skywing
Ok. You never mention MySQL anywhere on your website. If anything, it sounded
to me like ClearDB was an actual new database. Perhaps you should make it much
more clear that you're providing a service and that it's based on a well known
database platform. Good luck!

~~~
cash_coleman
Messaging updated. See <http://www.cleardb.com/whatis.html> for details.

------
Skywing
Now that it's clear that this is a hosted MySQL service, how can we be sure
it's reliable? You claim to be very scalable and reliable - well, what makes
you that way? For example, we know MongoHQ runs on Amazon's infrastructure.

These are mostly all just questions related to how your site portrays the
service you have obviously put some serious work into. I think it does a
pretty bad job of selling your service to somebody that knows about databases
that is shopping around for a hosted solution. I think it currently seems to
try to hide all of the backend specifics and cater to people that may or may
not care about the actual backend questions. These are just my thoughts trying
to help you out! Not trying to be negative or degrading.

~~~
cash_coleman
Great questions - first, we also run on Amazon's infrastructure. Our systems
automatically scale based on our service configuration, and we (and Amazon)
automatically back up your data in a redundant fashion so that you don't have
to worry about it.

I think that's our messaging strategy overall, in fact. We're really trying to
make it very easy for users to not have to think quite so much about which
database we're using on the backend, and more about ClearDB as a product,
because that's really what matters in this case.

Obviously with a startup, questions like these are going to be asked, and it
makes perfect sense to ask them. We're still working out how best to convey
trustworthiness in the eyes of more knowledgeable customers such as yourself.
If you have any suggestions in that regard, we would love to hear them - in
fact, if you would like to take this offline, feel free to email me any and
all feedback that you may have to cash@cleardb.com :-)

