
Gatsby raises $28M Series B led by Index Ventures - theunquietone
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/05/27/gatsby-website-building-startup-backed-by-index-ventures-raises-28-million/#18bc10047f3e
======
ritchiea
I just don't get Gatsby. It feels over-engineered for the small static site
use cases it is the best tool for and definitely not a good alternative to
dynamically generated pages from other frameworks like Next.js, Rails, Django,
etc. Maybe the engineers that preceded me on the Gatsby project I worked on
took a wrong turn but we ended up with long build times and ever growing
complexity around the create pages function. I just couldn't figure out what
value Gatsby was supposed to be delivering that was better than any of its
competitors.

Gatsby has slick looking docs and a lot of VC money and as far as I can tell a
painful development experience. For most use cases you'll still have to write
a backend API to handle form submissions, 3rd party calls and other Ajax. What
does Gatsby actually do other than package together a bunch of trendy web
technologies with Wieden Kennedy designed documentation?

~~~
chmac
AFAIK, the thing that sets Gatsby apart is the integration of the built static
site and React to do pre-fetching. The output from Gatsby is not just HTML,
it's HTML + React javascript, with data loaded from JSON files. That means
that once the site has loaded, Gatsby can pre-emptively fetch all the linked
pages, both React components and data, to give instantaneous second click page
loads. That's a pretty impressive feature in the wild, the second click is
neck snappingly fast. I'm not sure if this is an option in other things like
nuxtjs or not.

But, you're right that Gatsby requires a lot of code. To get a simple static
site setup, it's a lot of work. Plus it changes very fast. We stopped paying
attention for a few months, and things broke on the next upgrade.

But, if web performance is the goal, Gatsby is hard to beat. In addition to
pre-fetching, it also inlines every resource, images, CSS, the whole thing. So
a single HTML fetch should be enough for a full first paint. That's _a lot_
faster than a usual static site, which in turn loads all the additional
resources before it can show the site to the user.

~~~
crucialfelix
Nextjs does the same thing. That's not a business model.

Non tech people often know about Gatsby and compare it to WordPress.

I have to warn decision makers that it promises a lot but adds complexity that
wastes developer time.

~~~
nlarew
> Nextjs does the same thing. That's not a business model.

A business model doesn't need to be unique in order to be successful. Also
Gatsby is open source, so I wouldn't expect to find profits falling out of the
core library. They make their money through consulting and cloud ops.

> adds complexity that wastes developer time

Every framework comes with its own flavor of complexity. To blanket say that
Gatsby wastes time ignores the real benefits it provides and the opportunity
cost of getting those benefits through some other library (or even more
daunting, writing and maintaining a homegrown framework).

If web performance matters to you or your business then effort focused in that
direction is not a waste. The complexity of learning/developing with
Gatsby/Next is significantly lower than getting those benefits without them.

~~~
adriand
It's also just plain fun to use, IMO. I built a site using Gatsby for a
product I'm helping with ([https://greeter.ai/](https://greeter.ai/)) and it
was a really fun and enjoyable experience. The site is blazing fast. The ease
of React integration, Node modules, Gatsby plugins, etc., further add to
developer productivity and enjoyment.

I see a really bright future for slick, fast, well-documented solutions that
significantly depart from the Wordpress/massive CMS model and rely on highly-
modern technologies that developers enjoy working with. Couple something like
Gatsby with a framework that makes design a lot easier too (e.g. Tailwind +
Tailwind UI) and suddenly, as a developer, you're so much more capable than
previously.

I dunno. This old Rails programmer is loving it. And if I can learn to love
it, I think they've got a market.

~~~
milchek
It’s funny, because I did just as your post suggests and built my latest
personal site using Gatsby and Tailwind and it was an overall positive
experience. I loved that I didn't have to do any design (although, sure, you
could argue that might be a negative in terms of the result) and the
build/deploy process was really simple with Netlify.

My previous sites were built with Wordpress and before that I used AMFPHP and
Flash (over 10 years ago!). This was a breeze compared to those sites.

------
hn_reddit_human
Does the commercial offering from Gatsby offer hosting? I couldn't figure it
out from the [https://gatsbyjs.com](https://gatsbyjs.com) page.

Gatsby and NextJS (Vercel) are both backed by CRV[1,2]. It seems like a fairly
competitive overlap. Would love to hear takes from folks on HN about the
feasibility and comparison of Gatsby's and Vercel's business models and
competitive overlaps.

[1]
[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200527005268/en/Gat...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200527005268/en/Gatsby-
Raises-28M-Series-Funding-Web-Built) [2] [https://medium.com/crv-
insights/from-next-to-now-to-21m-for-...](https://medium.com/crv-
insights/from-next-to-now-to-21m-for-vercel-b32f7671d4f2)

~~~
fardeem
Haven't really used Gatsby but vercel is magical. Like once you link up your
GitHub repo, the fact that everything works so smoothly is delightful. A lot
of other platforms try to compete with vercel on ease of use (heroku) but
doesn't even come close. Next.js + vercel seems like cheating honestly

------
cocktailpeanuts
it's kind of ironic that the main value proposition of static site generators
like Gatsby is that it's just a file so it's portable and you can take them
anywhere, instead of getting locked into server/client based database systems,
yet here they are, trying to monetize by building the "the best way to build
and maintain Gatsby sites".

From my point of view, if they succeed in achieving that goal, that means
Gatsby the open source project has failed, because it contradicts its purpose.

I can understand them raising a few million dollars, but $28M? Not so sure, I
actually think the VC money will do more harm than good.

~~~
tiborsaas
That's just going with the WordPress model. You can install WP anywhere, but
for convenience you can pay a small fee and speed things up.

But I also think that 28mill is outrageously lot of money for what the service
is. True SV scale :)

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
it's different from wordpress, for the reason I mentioned above.

The main value proposition of static site generators COMPARED TO 1st
generation CMS like Wordpress is that they don't require a database and are
lightweight and portable.

It is common sense that not everyone will want to run their own database and a
server, so a wordpress.com makes sense.

But static sites can be deployed anywhere and there already is a huge
ecosystem of vendor independent and free static site hosting sites like Github
(which is subsidized by Microsoft), Gitlab, etc.

For Gatsby to survive and thrive in this ecosystem that is completely
different from the wordpress ecosystem, they will probably need to do a lot of
things to create a lockin, in which case there is no point in using Gatsby.
After all, all Gatsby does is just compile some files into static site.
Nothing magic in there.

~~~
tiborsaas
For you with a technical background, it's different. For Bob the marketing
guy, it's just another tool to create a website.

There's indeed little magic involved so Gatsby has to do a really good job to
keep customers both integration and speed wise.

~~~
moreaccountspls
> For Bob the marketing guy, it's just another tool to create a website.

To me this is the "emperor has no clothes" about the whole ecosystem. The
actual users don't care if it's a static file, a database CMS, or a herd of
cats running around frantically typing up HTTP responses. So it's odd to me
that the big selling point is "we did something neat in how we made our
product!". Right, but what does it do to make your users life better than
using ghost or wordpress, or whatever?

I know that some devs see it as a rails like thing to combine with graphql,
but if I was going that route I personally wouldn't start with something
that's ostensibly a static site generator.

------
webdelv
I Initially thought Gatsby was great. As someone who enjoys using React, being
able to use it for web sites in a way that’s well optimized and SEO friendly
was appealing.

However… after using Gatsby for a fairly simple site it didn’t take me long to
realise that this approach add’s a fair bit of complexity and limitations.
Prepare for long build times for simple changes, which becomes a bit silly
once you hook up a CMS that triggers builds for each change. As a content
editor having to wait 5 minutes for your change to be deployed kinda sucks.
GraphQL for loading data often felt overkill and a lot of hassle. If you want
to add something like a simple contact form you are encouraged to use external
services which just get’s out of hand for what I want to be a simple self-
contained site. The end result doesn't even feel that fast due to the React
re-hydration that takes place.

I ended up switching back to a traditional server-side solution which provided
a much faster experience (in both tests and perceived speed) and more
flexibility. It turn’s out the browser is pretty good at caching static assets
and you can achieve the same SSG benefits with Caching and a CDN without the
restrictions.

I’m sure there are cases where Gatsby performs well, and it’s the best tool
I’m aware of for bundling React pages in an SEO friendly, optimised way. But I
think for the kind of project’s it’s useful for, something like Jekyll or Hugo
may be more suitable. For more complex site’s that would actually benefit from
React, it seems like the SSR alternative (Next) would be easier to scale.

------
jariel
Yet again another company with mangled communications, please, please, would
be Engineers making products, make sure that you communicate 'what it is'
above all else.

The top-level marketing jargon is always the same: "Make your site in minutes,
not weeks! Deploy globally! Uses modern tech"

Sure, that's ok.

But the 'How it works' visual on the page explains nothing really, it's just a
pile of buzzwords.

The 'QuickStart' goes right into *command line installs of technology.

WTF DOES IT DO?

Are we point-and-click building hosted sites like Shopify? Do they even host?
Is it just a web framework? A cloud-based dev environment?

Some people are attracted to 'new tech' like candy and will love to dig into
this. I used to be this, but now after years of rabbit holes and a lot more
experience, I've realized that the onus is on the 'maker' to explain, and
frankly, my (your!) time is valuable.

Please take the time to make a small introductory section that uses a few
words as possible to get the meaning across to a 'technically minded business
person' or even a 'developer totally unfamiliar with the tech'.

~~~
alphachloride
I agree. The website is constricting its audience.

Gatsby is a static[1] site generator of sorts. It compiles your source
code/text into a HTML site at design time. So you don't have to rely on
setting up a database and server for your website. It is not quite like other
static site generators like Hugo or Jekyll. They use markdown files which are
compiled to HTML. Gatsby instead uses javascript files with functions that
return HTML that is rendered as a page. By using a programming language to
define web pages, the designer gets some flexibility when creating a static
site.

It is different from a dynamic[2] hosting application like Wordpress where you
have a database entry which is queried and rendered into a page at run time.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_web_page)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_web_page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_web_page)

~~~
jariel
So this is exactly it. Reading this 'I get it'.

A variation of what you wrote that should be on the landing page.

------
niklearnstodev
Gatsby's really fun to use developing small apps, and their docs make it easy
to get started with Gatsby, React AND front-end in general. They've created a
good overall experience for beginners, which could create a decent user base.

That being said, the path to monetization seems hairy (competitive market with
many free options, the previously mentioned fact that Gatsby's overall goal is
to generate portable files). Is there any way that this is some bizarre VC
effort to fund open source or do something nice? Or is that excessively
wishful thinking?

~~~
subpixel
Some of what Gatsby is doing is approaching a no-code way of building highly
performant sites.

[https://blocks-ui.com](https://blocks-ui.com)

So with that, Wix & Squarespace become comparable models. Hypothetically.

------
city17
Could someone explain what Gatsby's path is to eventually making a lot of
money? I'm always a bit wary of open source frameworks that claim to be all
about their community getting funded with lots of venture capital.

~~~
gk1
This is it: [https://www.gatsbyjs.com/](https://www.gatsbyjs.com/)

SaaS for deploying and running Gatsby sites, with add-ons, competitive with
Netlify and Vercel.

As more companies use Gatsby, they (and the VCs) are making a bet that some
meaningful percentage of them are willing to pay money if it means reducing
their development or maintenance burdens.

~~~
nogabebop23
It seems crazy to go with them when you can move further up the food chain to
someone like netlify and host your gatsby site with a lot of value-add

------
Deimorz
Official blog post: [https://www.gatsbyjs.org/blog/2020-05-27-announcing-
series-b...](https://www.gatsbyjs.org/blog/2020-05-27-announcing-series-b-
funding/)

------
save_ferris
> Gatsby says it aims to be the platform behind 1% of websites by 2024; it
> claims it currently supports 0.1%.

I find it really hard to believe that they're powering 0.1% of the web at this
point, that's gotta be millions of sites. The only way that figure is accurate
is if they're counting all of the people spinning up tutorial sites.

~~~
jariel
Yes, this is totally misleading.

My bet is that it's not .1% of web sites, rather .1% of web traffic.

Because web content is a 1/x curve with the top few taking up all the usage
... if they have even a couple 'semi big name clients' then they could be
behind 0.1% of traffic.

And maybe by 'web' they mean just USA.

And maybe by 'powered' they mean, the company 'uses gatsby somewhere' so they
claim all traffic from the company in their data.

Which is kind of like Simpsons episode logic, but hey.

We need the Simpsons writing team to get together with the 'Silicon Valley'
folks and make cartoons that mock startup stuff like this.

------
stevebmark
I don't think enough people are thinking about what will happen when these
companies do eventually run out of money (both Next.js and Gatsby). Not just
to their hosting services, but to the open source tech driving the platform
itself. Meteor never gained much traction but it sat in a similar parallel of
hoping to provide hosting services and just burnt money away. Next.js* however
has gained a lot of traction, but it's worrying to monetize these open source
style tools that a lot of companies are building fundamental infrastructure
on. I don't know if this kind of open source > paid hosting business model has
paid off in other similar spaces. Are there examples?

* Edit: Excuse me, _Vercel!_

~~~
TechBro8615
Next.js is used by enough big companies that I’m not too worried about it. If
Vercel the company were to close shop, there are plenty of large teams with a
vested interest in keeping the next.js project alive. Also, at some point,
improvements are nice but not strictly necessary. It would be fine if next.js
went into maintenance mode and just optimized speed or kept up with new react
/ browser features.

~~~
dmix
According to Next.js:

> Today, Next.js powers over 35,000 sites at companies like Uber, Nike, and
> Starbucks.

------
sunpazed
I’ve used Gatsby for generating my wife’s static blog. It’s as simple as
adding a new Markdown file, and building. The React workflow makes customising
layouts and interactions much easier for those familiar with the ecosystem.
For anything more than that, I’d stick to a dynamic framework.

------
dan_can_code
$28M seems like an awful lot for a static site generator. The issue I see
Gatsby facing is that the poor developer experience will catch up with them,
regardless as to whether they expand their ecosystem (plugins etc). If the
developer experience isn't improved, I doubt their money will convince '1%' of
all websites development teams to make the switch. Especially if this thread
is a good approximation of the mood towards developing with gatsby.

However, it's much too easy to join in with the typical HN cynicism to shiny
new things. Maybe Gatsby will surprise us and become a contender within the
CMS space before long.

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bithavoc
Gatsby.js raised money, Next.js raised money, and then Gatsby.js raised even
more money.

~~~
yodon
Thanks for pointer to the next.js raise, this significantly increases the odds
I'll use them - the last few times I'd checked the project's commit history,
it looked like the lion's share were from one guy who could disappear at any
time due to a better job, a girlfriend, or getting hit by a bus.

~~~
subpixel
I'm curious where Netlify (who has raised $95M) fits in the landscape when the
dust settles.

~~~
nogabebop23
I think their strategy is to commoditize the Next.js and Gatsby
differentiation; They host all JAM-stacks pretty equally. The add a lot of
paid dynamic add-ons that are hard to do statically (and that they told you
were BAD_THINGS at the start) like form processing and user management.

I think their model is more realistic as a superset of what Gatsby can offer,
but I'm not convinced it justifies 100 million dollars of VC investment. BUT -
I'm always off by a factor of 4x (projected costs, effort estimates) so if you
think it's worth 25 million, then you should go for it!

~~~
yodon
I like Netlify but I suspect it's much easier for Gatsby and Next to add
Netlify-like functionality to their offerings than the reverse. I suspect one
is unlikely to need both (Gatsby SaaS or Next SaaS) and (Netlify SaaS), which
doesn't bode well for Netlify.

~~~
armandososa
On the other hand, Netlify will support whatever next static framework is in
fashion from day one.

------
davidivadavid
Probably a dumb question: if the main benefit is speed, why wouldn't I just
want to use a plugin to make my Wordpress site static?

------
JSavageOne
I used Gatsby about a year ago for a personal blog, but ended up abandoning it
for the following reasons:

\- Very slow build times. It took me over a minute to build a personal blog.
\- Weird forced implementation of GraphQL. To display something as simple as
an image I was forced to use GraphQL. Also your GraphQL can't be dynamically
generated, meaning it's hard to make anything modular. And the GraphQL paths
has a ton of extraneous nested fields (eg. `data.file.childImageSharp.fixed`)
\- Version upgrades were a pain in the ass and would often break my site. \-
My site actually seemed slow. For example, links don't work until the entire
JS loads and executes, so if your internet isn't fast then your website
basically isn't functional for the first 2-5 seconds despite the page being
visible. \- Very few themes (maybe be better now, but at the time the
selection was awful, especially compared to Jekyll). No real concept of themes
in the first place, switching from one theme to another requires an entire
code rewrite. \- Limited functionality built-in. For example, want tagging?
You'll need to code that in.

Gatsby sits in an odd spot of not being simple enough to save you a lot of
time or empower a non-technical person to manage (eg. like WordPress), but not
flexible enough to do anything you want since it's an opinionated SSG
framework. It's like you're getting all the complexity of a React/GraphQL
application, without any of the flexibility of being able to pick your own
stack.

Sure it has a nice plugin system, but beyond that since you need a developer
to set up and maintain a Gatsby site anyways, I don't see any reason not to
just use Next.js (which can export to static) since all Gatsby really does
beyond that is converting markdown to HTML, which is just done through an npm
library anyways. If writing a Next.js website is overkill, then why do you
need to be devoting engineering resources to this in the first place? Why not
just use some no-code solution like WordPress? Or if you really want a
separate headless CMS, then Jekyll felt easier and faster to me with more
theme options (though again it's been a year since I touched these, so I
imagine things have improved).

Don't get me wrong I love SSGs as nothing beats the performance, ease of
deployment, and low cost of static sites. But if I'm going to use a SSG
framework, it better be dead simple and/or easy to customize, otherwise I
might as well just use some off-the-shelf "no-code" solution (eg. WordPress,
Wix, Squarespace), or use a framework like Next.js that let's me customize my
stack instead of being locked into Gatsby's. Gatsby's $200m valuation makes
absolutely no sense to me unless they're planning some drastic changes I'm not
aware of.

------
ao3p2
Wordpress > Gatsby, dev experience on gatsby is bad! Headless is a dead end,
need a fullstack solution, a next generation wordpress is what's needed.

------
karaokeyoga
Interesting data point in this discussion:
[https://reactjs.org](https://reactjs.org) (the official React site) was built
with Gatsby. They also promote it to some extent (e.g.,
[https://reactjs.org/docs/create-a-new-react-
app.html#gatsby](https://reactjs.org/docs/create-a-new-react-
app.html#gatsby)).

------
josefrichter
Gatsby is very interesting experiment. Pull stuff from all kinds of sources
via graphql. I like toying with it.

I just don't see practical use :-) Too complex for non-geeks, too limiting for
geeks.

------
bbutterworth
I initially got very frustrated with Gatsby. Most new web frameworks makes
things easier and faster. Gatsby is not about making a website easier to make.
Its about making really fast websites easier to make. Its complicated: you
need to use GraphQL to load an image, and you need to choose the right query
based on what component you're using.

Eventually, I embraced the complexity, and the plugin system really helps.

Oh, but I still hate the 'theme' feature. I prefer the old 'starter' way.

~~~
nobody0
Have you tried Nextjs? which does not force you to write GraphQL.

------
untilHellbanned
I get it. Funding saving life on earth isn't predictable like some $10/month
SAAS like this. Doesn't make the pain that humans choose money over earth
every time less painful.

