Congratulations on your launch!
Please take this constructively, but I can't help but think that the prevalence of GraphQL in your messaging is a huge distraction. It seems like the real value in Scaphold is letting people build applications faster, with less effort. In fact, in your post's description of the problem you're solving, you don't mention GraphQL at all (until you start talking about solutions). Right now, the (gorgeous) site feels similar to if Shopify had launched with messaging focused on its use of Rails on the backend.
It feels like you could also be targeting the type of less-sophisticated business programmers for whom VBA is often a weapon of choice. However, when I read your site, the fact that I don't use GraphQL makes me want to move on.
Anyhow, best wishes again on your launch!
As a developer, and the lead for our GraphQL efforts since the day the JS codebase was released, I applaud your efforts. To us, GraphQL offers a smarter way to frame API contracts and gives a significant competitive edge by increasing our dev agility. Spread the joy around!
As a businessman, I am concerned at the commercial realities of building persistence-level products for developers. There is a 'Death Valley' in pricing: you have to be very good at $0/mo (i.e. usable in production), and virtually infallible at $1,000/mo (and even then the first CTO's task will be to replace you). Being that good costs a lot of expensive engineering cycles. You guys a clearly smart, or you wouldn't get Scaphold to this impressive point so quickly nor get YC to support you. Yet other brilliant teams had crashed and burned in this 'Death Valley', with the most recent one being RethinkDB - also backed by YC, and among the most impressive ones for me. I wish you all the tailwinds in the industry, and encourage you to read the RethinkDB post-mortem to harness those winds better -> http://www.defstartup.org/2017/01/18/why-rethinkdb-failed.ht...
How did you find your first customers, and how did you get them to trust you enough to build their apps on your infrastructure?
My team and I have a medium sized dev shop from Southern California. We've been using Scaphold in production now for several months, and have been absolutely blown away by how much more efficient we've become. All projects in the pipeline will be using Scaphold going forward. Take my money.
Congrats! The website looks great!
Forgive me if I am simply uninitiated, but what are the general advantages of graphQL over a typical backend powered by a SQL database?
If you code while working for another company dont they own that IP? Unless specifically stated on your employment contract? Just curious! Thanks
The new website looks pretty cool but I wasn’t blown away by the product. The API feels very weird when actually building an app and unfortunately most integrations didn’t work for me.
We’ve tried all available GraphQL BaaS and now use Graphcool which doesn’t have all the features Scaphold provides but the ones they have are very stable and mature. Also their API seemed by far the best one we’ve tried yet (e.g. they are providing an extra endpoint for Apollo client).
I don't buy into the GraphQL hype. Actually it is a rehash of older technologies like RDF & SparQL, but marketed to a newer generation who didn't know that old things exist. I'd wager that the 20-something "engineers" who designed it didn't give a shit about prior art either.
I'm sure that Facebook employees think it solves a lot of problems for them. But I'm not convinced that a single vendor technology is going to be viable on the web. Web standards come about through standardization processes, with multiple stakeholders reviewing and revising drafts. Facebook one day puts up the GraphQL spec out of nowhere and defines the "standard" by themselves, based on their own implementation.
A little history: Facebook tried to subvert HTML with FBML, a proprietary markup language designed for use within the Facebook ecosystem. Long story short, it didn't work out. The various SDKs and APIs by Facebook have been notoriously unstable.
People tend to excel at short-term thinking, kudos to Facebook for that, and lack the foresight for long-term thinking, except for a few visionaries. The architecture of the web has lasted a few decades already, it will outlast a single vendor specification.
Congratulations on launching Scaphold. I tried my hand at founding a Node.js PaaS startup (NodeSocket)[1] in 2011, and while promising in terms of attention, silicon valley media, VC meetings, there was never a path to a sustainable PaaS business. Howerver, things have changed. Technology and mindsets have evolved, and Firebase, Parse, and Serverless.com have shown there is perhaps a future in BaaS.
My only words of advice are focus on the business and finances just as much as the coding. Unfortunately the best engineers and technology don't always win (see RethinkDB). I'll be tinkering around tomorrow with Scaphold, might work out well for a side project of mine. Best of luck!
How do you solve the problem of different clients needing different permissions (i.e. one user shouldnt be able to query for a different users data)? Took a quick look through the website and didnt see anything about that, sorry if I missed it. That aside, it looks pretty cool! Good job!
This is exactly what I've been looking for to backend some of my projects - awesome service guys!
Congrats on the launch, the new website looks really nice!
I think the focus on integrating with a variety of services really plays to the strengths of GraphQL, and addresses some of the concerns people usually have with backend as a service platforms!
I spent some time with the founders and they are really great. Without parse and google owning fire base they way has been paved for a new IAAS/PAAS. I hope Michael and Vince can lead the way.
This looks really interesting. Thanks for sharing! I checked out the Projects page, but they look mostly like tutorial or hackathon types - is anyone running scaffold.io in production?
Big fan of what you are doing! But can you elaborate a bit on TAM? Isn't the possible market too small? https://github.com/coffeemug/defstartup/blob/master/_posts/2...
Have been trying BaaS lately - few questions.
What databases are supported - like can I use oracle database with Scaphold.
Is there support for websockets.
Why Scaphold ? I see there are many companies in this space since last few years - what unique selling points will help a customer choose Scaphold.
Dont you think rise of PaaS will make BaaS redundant easily going ahead. Since BaaS is now a very small layer on top of PaaS.
Is the name pronounced "scaffold"?
Also, is this a special type of post to allow links in top level story description? Regular Ask/Show posts don't get http:// links auto formatted into links.
I initially parsed the name as 'scaphoid', one of the carpal bones. I thought they were making a joke about reducing typing...turns out I just can't read properly.
I was just looking for something like this, great timing!
I think the "Customer stories" section needs to be updated. The bio picture and link for the Nat Geo reference points to Bonnier.
If we were to build an app, how portable is this application if we were to self-host it later or move to a similar provider?
Nice work. Excited to give it a spin in prod
Have been following you guys for a while, really excited to see what's next for Scaphold
Congratulations on the new website and launch!
The new custom logic feature is looking great but what if I want to implement a custom query or mutation that isn't necessarily tied to a `Node`?
For example, what if I wanted to add a query that ran a ranking algorithm and returned a feed?
Do you fancy an intern this Summer?
when do you plan to start the referral program?
I've been using a similar service https://www.graph.cool for a while and it's been amazing. Good luck guys.
Edit: on reflection, I reversed this and put the original comment back (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13476120).
I don't think it's in very good taste to promote your thing in someone else's launch thread.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13474424 and marked it off-topic.
"Launch HN"? That's new.
I just don't believe in the 1 backend to rule them all approach. Services like Stripe, Algolia, Datadog, Pusher, Mapbox, Imgix etc all make a lot of sense. It's easy to plug them in to your existing backend and extend your app's functionality. Using someone else's backend for your app is a terrible decision though, the lock-in is just too large.
For this to succeed they'll need to add a lower level interface to the mix. Something like AWS' Lambda.
Question for the founders, will there be an extension platform, something like Parse cloud or the Heroku app store?