I recently began reading through the logfiles of a notable startup’s platform in the data science industry. This startup had taken 3 or 4 open source technologies, glued them together, added some branding, and created a multi-million dollar startup around this “amazing new” piece of technology. There is almost no new,  original content. They are a glorified glue-gun.

I can’t decide whether I like that or not.

Truth be told, the fact that they know what to glue to what makes them smart in some sense, but in others, they didn’t really create the value. They just lowered the barrier to entry from “semi-programmer” to “laymen”.

That’s profound I think. Maybe the most valuable thing we do as programmers is take a technology from “needs a little glue” to “a caveman can do it”. Maybe piecing together existing technology is more valuable than starting from scratch...

Time for some github searching.