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Thomas Hansen
Thomas Hansen

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Replacing 1 billion dollars in 10 minutes

SupaBase have 116 million in funding, and they're worth 1 billion dollars. According to their landing page, their primary feature is being able to access a PostgreSQL database with authentication, using a JWT token, that you can create through an authenticate endpoint. Below are their primary features summed up.

  • Hosting PostgREST and PostgreSQL
  • Allowing you to securely access your PostgreSQL database (through PostgREST for the most parts)
  • An authentication endpoint returning a JWT token allowing you to access your API

In the following video I demonstrate how you can do all of the above in 10 minutes using Magic, which begs the question ...

What are your VC guys smoking?

When SupaBase were evaluated as a unicorn, the above was literally their only value proposition. Since then they've added a couple of additional plugins to their PostgreSQL database, such as embeddings and vector plugins - However, there's absolutely nothing in their value proposition you can't download for free from GitHub - Without even having to register. So they're basically a new version of DigitalOcean, selling hosting, in a market where anyone can replace their entire value proposition in 10 minutes - Without even breaking a sweat ...

I created Magic 100% completely alone. The above YouTube video is roughly 1% of the value proposition in Magic. In addition there is ...

Plus of course, we support 3 additional databases, in addition to PostgreSQL ...

  • MySQL
  • SQL Server
  • SQLite

Magic is obviously light years ahead of SupaBase - Still for weird socionomical reasons I'm not smart enough to understand, SupaBase is apparently worth one billion dollars, while I'm driving a 22 year old wreck of a car.

Where is my billion dollars?

About SupaBase

SupaBase was founded in 2020. I started working on Magic in mid 2019. SupaBase have at the point of this writing roughly 50 employees, and they're funded by some of the most successful venture capitalists on earth. They've got software developers from some of the richest companies on earth, and they claim to be one of the fastest growing open source communities on the planet. 30+ developers having been working on their platform for the same amount of time as I have been working on Magic. They've got 63,000 stars on GitHub, and 90,000+ followers on Twitter ...

... and I replaced their entire value proposition with a software project I have created alone, in my spare time - And I replaced them in 10 minutes, in real time, on YouTube, without editing.

Can you make sense of it? Because I cannot!

I started working with software development because it was based upon logic and facts. This is no longer true. Today software development is based upon emotions, feelings, and socionomic and psychological trickery of the mind. As an entrepreneur in the software platform space, I feel the same way a serious investment banker feels about NFTs - As in ...

WTF ...?

Purely logically, Magic should be worth 100 times whatever SupaBase is worth. Let me ask one question to its founders and its investors ...

Have you no shame or integrity? What happened to "building great stuff"? Did it get lost during some micro dozing sessions in one of your after parties ...?

And more importantly, if it takes 30 software developers 4 years to build 1% of the value proposition I was able to single handedly build alone in the same time frame, does that mean I'm worth 100 billion dollars?

And what are your software developers doing with their time? Partying? Because they sure as hell ain't coding. If they were, they'd have 3,000 times as much value at this point in time ...

An honest assessment of SupaBase's value is that they've got 90,000 Twitter followers and 63,000 star gazers on GitHub, and that's it. I'm no finance or social media expert, but there's no way in hell that can be worth one billion dollars ...

... and after having spent 110 million dollars the last 4 years, they've proven that you can throw another 100 trillion dollars at them, without them being able to actually deliver anything of real value ...

So what's the trick here? Can somebody smarter than me explain it please ...?

For the record, installing PostgreSQL on DigitalOcean, using Kubernetes, took me 5 minutes. And it'll take you 20 minutes setting up Kubernetes on DigitalOcean - At which point you'll have the same scalability features SupaBase have. Adding CloudFlare as a CDN, gives you additional scalability features, that combined with Magic, outperforms SupaBase entire value proposition!

30 minutes of work in total, and you've got your own personal SupaBase, which apparently is worth 1 billion dollars ...

Top comments (1)

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spekkiodancer profile image
spekkiodancer

For funding, it seems like it is all about appearances and presentations than showing intrinsic value. Often times, people in VC aren't tech savvy so they aren't going to know about open source projects if it is not presented in front of them. Pitching is a big part of whether something gets funding or not. Often times it isn't the best that gets the funding, it is the ones that show up.