This topic came up in a group of early stage investors I'm associated with and I know I'm not alone when I think: they couldn't raise more than 15M? And lost control of the company??
Sure, I get that it's a database, and databases are harder sells than a lot of other things, but christ on a bike they must've fucked something up if they couldn't draw the allure of any of the big funds currently throwing gobs of money around.
I know a few founders at smaller companies than dgraph, where similarly engineers are their target audience, who have complete control of their company despite raising in the ball park of 100M over two or three rounds in the last couple of years.
There's just no excuse. Either their fundamentals were so fucked, or they were too arrogant even for VCs which is almost impossible.
Sure, I get that it's a database, and databases are harder sells than a lot of other things, but christ on a bike they must've fucked something up if they couldn't draw the allure of any of the big funds currently throwing gobs of money around.
I know a few founders at smaller companies than dgraph, where similarly engineers are their target audience, who have complete control of their company despite raising in the ball park of 100M over two or three rounds in the last couple of years.
There's just no excuse. Either their fundamentals were so fucked, or they were too arrogant even for VCs which is almost impossible.
We'll probably never know the full story here.