The Marketing Behind MongoDB – nemil
This is part three. You can read Hacker News comments on part 3 or read the first two parts of this series. You can also see the notes from my interview with MongoDB’s founding CTO, Eliot Horowitz (interview notes part 1, interview notes part 2).
The transfer into the former New York Times building capped off a tremendous period of growth: the database boasted 4 million downloads, the MongoDB User Groups already attracted 15,000 members, and ~10,000 people had attended a global event in 2012. Their offices were truly global from London to Sydney to Dublin and Barcelona — and a requisite west coast headquarters in Palo Alto.
Despite the traction, many startups using MongoDB faced their own challenges. One part of MongoDB’s success among startups was because some didn’t critically assess 10gen’s marketing message.
As engineers, we often discuss technical attacks (e.g., DDoS, Sybil attacks, security vulnerabilities), but need to spend time debating how to protect ourselves from marketing “attacks”.1 Today, developer marketing is subtle — third party blog posts, content marketing disguised as engineering lessons, biased talks, and sponsored hackathons — not clearly marked content from vendors. As such, startup engineering decisions can hinge on sources that are not impartial.
