zlacker

> They didn't have to join, which means they got a solid valuation.

Did they? I see a $7MM seed round in 2022. Now to be clear that's a great seed round and it looks like they had plenty of traction. But it's unclear to me how they were going to monetize enough to justify their $7MM investment. If they continued with the consultancy model, they would need to pay back investors from contracts they negotiate with other companies, but this is a fraught way to get early cashflow going.

Though if I'm not mistaken, Confluent did the same thing?

>>Karrot+(OP)
They had a second round that was $19m in late 2023. I don't doubt for a second that they had a long runway given the small team.

>>robert+a3
I don't like all of the decisions they made for the runtime, or some of the way they communicate over social media/company culture, but I do admire how well-run the operation seems to have been from the outside. They've done a lot with (relatively) little, which is refreshing in our industry. I don't doubt they had a long runway either.

>>robert+a3
Thanks I scrolled past that in the announcement page.

With more runway comes more investor expectations too though. Some of the concern with VC backed companies is whether the valuation remains worthwhile. $26mm in funding is plenty for 14 people, but again the question is whether they can justify their valuation.

Regardless happy for the Oven folks and Bun has been a great experience (especially for someone who got on the JS ecosystem quite late.) I'm curious what the structure of the acquisition deal was like.

>>Karrot+(OP)
Good thing they got acquired by a company that also has a snowballs chance in hell of ever paying back their investment

>>robert+a3
I really don't understand why investors poured so much money into Bun, I guess they saw another potential Vercel play? An acquisition doesn't sound like a very good outcome for these investors, even by Anthropic, I would imagine