Rockset, developed by two former Facebook engineers, could soon take the datasphere by storm.
Amid the ever-evolving state of Facebook and its privacy issues, new rivals arise.
One alternative, Minds, uses blockchain technology to enhance security. It also decentralizes social networks with a commitment to open source technology. But a new competitor appeared earlier this month in the form of Rockset.
Who are the two former Facebook engineers behind it and what is this startup?
Rockset Founders and the Role Facebook Played
Venkat Venkataramani worked for Facebook for about eight years. While there, he spent time managing online search infrastructure and data. That means that he helped navigate Facebook’s user explosion from 40 million to 1.5 billion users.
Despite that growth, Venkataramani said he felt like he wasn’t “learning as much as he used to”. He wanted to make himself “feel uncomfortable again” which, as even scientific studies suggest, often leads to evolution.
He left Facebook in 2015 — a decision he admits felt risky. But with his fellow cofounder Dhruba Borthakur, he moved on to found Rockset.
Essentially, the idea that sparked the startup revolves around data infrastructure.
Venkataramani felt it was complex and not very available for everyone. That need created what Rockset would become: a simple product/platform with a straightforward purpose.
The data platform soon drew attention from high-level Silicon Valley venture capital firms.
Data Infrastructure That Doesn’t Bottleneck Productivity
The search and analytics engine delivers SQL on raw data quickly. This, in turn, helps data scientists and developers build apps to test their hypotheses without using data preparation or relying on data pipelines.
Consider how teams from companies such as Oracle function. They have to prepare data in order for it to be read by various software. Rockset enables the process of data and apps to begin “talking to each other” by eliminating this step.
The most surprising thing about this new platform is perhaps the fact that is it serverless.
It functions entirely in the cloud as a managed service. This strips the operational or infrastructure concerns of many other data management platforms. You also don’t have to set aside instances or machines ahead of time.
Cloud elasticity helps you manage scaling issues automatically.
They also feature even more tools like:
- Time-based retention
- Schemaless ingestion of data
- Easy-to-use APIs in Java, Python, JavaScript, REST, and Go
- Smart schemas
- Encrypted data at rest and in transit
- Role-based access control
You can even download their whitepaper and other guides right on their website.
The company plans to further build out its team with their new multi-million dollar funding round. Both Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners provided funding.
But, most encouraging, is how Venkataramani viewed Rockset’s mission as said in Business Insider.
“Product engineers should be bottlenecked by their creativity, not what the data infrastructure can do for me…We take complex, hard things and make them as easy as possible.”
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