RethinkDB
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
RethinkDB was a US startup founded in 2009 (Y Combinator Summer 2009) that built an open-source, distributed NoSQL document database designed for the realtime web. Loved by developers for its realtime push architecture and elegant query language, it raised about $12.2 million and was used by hundreds of startups and companies, but the company never turned the popular project into a sustainable business.
02 / RethinkDB FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
RethinkDB's community embraced the open-source project, but that never translated into a scalable business: the AGPLv3 copyleft license limited commercial adoption, and it could not win against MongoDB and the rise of cloud-managed databases. On October 5, 2016 the company announced it was shutting down, open-sourcing its products entirely and winding down commercial support, with much of the engineering team moving to Stripe.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
RethinkDB is founded and seed-funded by Y Combinator to build a realtime, distributed document database.
- Closure announced
On October 5, 2016, the company announces it is shutting down, unable to build a sustainable business; products are fully open-sourced and commercial support ends.
- Acquisition
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation purchases the RethinkDB source code for $25,000 in February 2017, relicenses it under Apache 2.0, and contributes it to the Linux Foundation, where the community continues development.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Open-source realtime NoSQL DB loved by developers
- 02
AGPL license limits commercial adoption
- 03
Can't beat MongoDB and cloud-managed databases
- 04
Shut down Oct 2016; CNCF buys code for $25K, Feb 2017