Mr. Horowitz

Earlier this week, 10gen, the promising AlleyCorp startup launched by DoubleClick cofounder Dwight Merriman, announced a new partnership with an eye toward helping developers who work with big data and cloud technologies. The boost in market share probably doesn't hurt either.

10gen both develops and sponsors the open source NoSQL database MongoDB, which is used by companies as diverse as Foursquare, SecondMarket, and Bit.ly on up to MTV, Intuit, and Disney.

On Monday, 10gen revealed that Mongo will be partnering with Red Hat, a software provider focused on larger enterprise clients that crossed the billion dollar revenue mark—the first for an open source company—in March. As Seeking Alpha notes today, the Mongo connection puts Red Hat "on a collision course with the toughest guys in tech, Oracle."

Betabeat recently talked to 10gen CTO and cofounder Eliot Horowitz, who's been known to freestyle on tech topics for eager 10gen staffers, about the Red Hat partnership, how Mongo started attracting big name clients, and 10gen's plans to hire 100 people this year, announced shortly after the company picked up $20 million from Sequoia and Union Square Ventures.

If you're not familiar with MongoDB, Mr. Horowitz offered the following analogy: traditional relational databases like MySQL or Oracle (ahem!) function sort of like an Excel spreadsheet. "Let's say you're trying to store information about people," said Horowitz. In an Excel file, you might have one sheet with the person's first and last name, one sheet with their home address, one sheet with their work phone. If you want to access all the information about a person, you might end up having to pull 20 to 30 sheets.

Mongo, on the other hand, stores everything together. "So you say, 'Give me everything you know about Nitasha,' and it gives you one document," he said. "It’s better for user profiles and other things because it’s a much more natural data model for the types of data you’re storing. It pulls up faster because instead of loading up lots of things, you’re loading up one thing." On the performance side, he added, it helps with development time, scalability, and ease of use.

The new partnership with Red Hat will help optimize the process of running a MongoDB database on Red Hat's operating systems and middleware, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), by sharing blueprint and best practices. The announcement stressed the growing need for developers to be able to quickly and flexibly deploy apps that deal with large amounts of data in the cloud.

But the Red Hat deal also seems in line with a trend Mr. Horowitz noted of larger, enterprise clients adopting MongoDB, which started last year. (As an open source software, not all MongoDB users are 10gen clients.) From 2009 to 2010, he said, Mongo was getting traction from a lot of startups and small companies. "Shutterfly started using it very early. But it was really last year when a large companies started moving a lot of things over. Disney moved a massive amount of data on Mongo in December. MTV has moved a large portion of their website over, so Comedy Central and Spike are running on Mongo."

"The interesting thing about Mongo," he noted, "Is that the data model fits most types of applications pretty well so the use cases are actually very broad."

Those enterprise clients are likely to be better served with the Red Hat partnership. For example, although the core Mongo database has the same functionality, Mr. Horowitz noted that the addition of Redhat Enterprise Linux provides features like security, backup/restore, disk optimization, and monitoring.

In 2011, 10gen hired about 75 to 80 people. This year, as they've boldly stated, 10gen is trying to top that. Indeed, the bulk of the $20 million in financing is being used to build out the tech team and grow the product. In terms of recruiting, the fact that 10gen is one of New York's few pure tech companies in a sea of consumer-facing apps gives it an advantage. The company hit an inflection point around the end of 2010, he said. "Something changed where everyone really seemed to know about Mongo and it became easier to hire people," said Mr. Horowitz. "When you go to startup fair at MIT and 19 out of 20 startups are based in Mongo, that’s a pretty big deal."

10gen tends to hire from two groups of candidates: recent college graduates who know they want to work in a startup or those deciding between the financial sector and Startupland. Mr. Horowitz said he's seeing more and more of the first category coming to New York. It also helps that MongoDB is written in C++, a popular language at banks, high frequency trading companies and outfits like Bloomberg. "You have a large community of that in New York, so it’s stronger than it is in Silicon Valley," he said.

Because 10gen looks for systems engineers and not just application engineers, Mr. Horowitz added, "I think its bringing an entirely different type of engineer to New York, and its good for the overall ecosystem. Long-term it makes the engineering talent pool much wider and deeper."

That said, the competition is still fierce. "Most people that we hire end up having offers from a number of other startups in New York," he said. "It’s either Foursquare or Etsy or Tumblr or Google."

In fact, Foursquare isn't just a 10gen client and competitor, it's also their neighbor. 10gen's Soho offices are located at 568 Broadway, the same building inhabited by Foursquare and Zocdoc. (Tumblr was trying to move into the same spot as well.) Proximity allows for a communal atmosphere. MongoDB holds meetups in ZocDoc's public space, for example. "And I just ran into a Foursquare engineer in the kitchen," Mr. Horowitz said. "He popped over to ask a question."

Does that mean we'll see more of a startup exodus from Union Square to Soho? "It’s hard to imagine there could be any more," he said. "We have a ton of clients within a five-block radius of here. Actually getting some real density is good because you can go out to lunch and see a lot of startups you know, which is definitely a change from other neighborhoods in New York ten years ago."

Mr. Horowitz said he had seen a bunch of familiar faces during lunch hour at Lombardi's recently. Then, of course, there's the Tom & Jerry's crowd after work. But you're not likely to run into Mr. Horowitz there. "I have two small children," he said with a laugh.

MongoNYC is hosting an all day conference on May 23rd focusing on MongoDB. According to the site, "The conference will feature over 40 sessions from MongoDB developers at 10gen, MongoDB users from the community, and technology partners, with presentations for both the novice and expert."

Cheers, Mr. Systrom!

Things sure do happen fast when you're wicked popular. On Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg just announced that his social network has agreed to acquire the photo-sharing darling Instagram, adding that "their talented team will be joining Facebook." In a press release, Facebook says the deal was for a jaw-decimating $1 billion "in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook."

The news follows a whirlwind week for the clubby favorite. After launching on Android last Tuesday,  the startup picked up an additional million users (it already had 30 million iPhone users) in 12 hours. That kicked off rumors via AllThingsD on Friday that Sequoia was close to investing $50 million for a Series B round that valued the startup at $500 million, which TechCrunch just confirmed.

Just before the acquisition, TechCrunch reports, Instagram closed a $50 million Series B round from Sequoia, Thrive Capital*, Greylock and Benchmark at the expected $500 million valuation. "Investors, many of whom didn’t know about the Facebook acquisition, literally doubled their money (which was wired to Instagram on Thursday) overnight."

On the Instagram blog, CEO Kevin Systrom assured users that Instagram will remain in tact after the acquisition:

"It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We’ll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience.

The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. You’ll still have all the same people you follow and that follow you.You’ll still be able to share to other social networks. And you’ll still have all the other features that make the app so fun and unique."

Zuck reiterates the point in his post, adding:

"We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram's strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That's why we're committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook."

It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Facebook has tried to get Mr. Systrom on board. Both Mr. Zuckerberg and Adam D'Angelo approached Mr. Systrom, through connections with the Stanford frat Sigman Nu, when they first came out to Palo Alto. Mr. Systrom turned them down to stay in school, before joining Odeo, which eventually became Twitter. Hence his sweet first-name-only handle, @Kevin.

If the $50 million valuation wasn't enough to make you sing "Hey Jealousy," you're probably too blacked out in rage to read this post.

Someone put the Hipstamatic dudes on suicide watch.

— Lindsay Kaplan (@lindsaykap) April 9, 2012

*Disclosure.

I eat IPOs like yours for breakfast.

Betabeat has already noted the prevailing winds of venture capital class warfare--with equity in hot start-ups, access to dealflow, and ability to raise capital separates "the haves from the have nots." But as the IPO wave has started to crest, even fewer names have risen to the top. And if the Wall Street Journal's numbers are any indicator, it's given some VCs cause for a little reverse schadenfreude.

"Top venture-capital firms Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures have the biggest volume of initial public offerings and sales of start-ups so far this year, according to an analysis by VentureSource, with all three firms each notching at least nine such 'exits' in the first half of 2011. In contrast, more than 200 venture firms have had only one exit each so far this year, with scores of others having none."

What's more, returns at the very top have likewise "widened" over other reputable performers "by two to three times" this year, Mel Williams from TrueBridge Capital Partners, a firm that invests in VC funds, tells the Journal. "A handful of managers are clearly distancing themselves from the pack."

Impending IPOs from Kayak (backed by Sequoia and Accel), Zillow (backed by Benchmark), and Groupon (backed by Accel, among many others) all stand to make them even richer. Maybe they can use it to buy some stock in Zynga, the one company the top six VCs in terms of IPOs and M&As, missed out on, while Fred Wilson chuckles to himself.

Marc Andreessen

The current wave of IPOs that investors hope will extend from LinkedIn through Groupon and onto Facebook is making some venture capitalists very, very wealthy. But the bonkers bubble money isn't exactly getting spread around. Bloomberg reports that the success of firms like Sequoia, Greylock, Accel, and Andreessen Horowitz, all of whom have equity in the most valuable start-ups, is driving a massive wedge between "the venture-capital industry’s haves and have-nots."

LinkedIn's IPO, for example, has already yielded $2 billion in paper profits for backers like Sequoia and Greylock. Groupon hasn't gone public yet, but its top investors like Accel and New Enterprise could end up owning a $5 billion stake. These are accredited private investors we're talking about, so it's not as though the VC-equivalent of the top one percent is making paupers of their competitors. But it is creating vastly disproportionate access to deal flow and capital.

David Schwartz, co-chair of the emerging companies and venture-capital practice at Michelman & Robinson in New York tells Bloomberg:

“The rich are getting richer, and they’re finding the better products and better companies at better valuations. It’s making it very complicated for second-tier funds.”

The drought of IPOs through over the past few years lowered the number of active VC firms. But although the NVCA says fundraising has jumped 76 percent (year-over-year) in the first quarter to $7.1 billion, it might not get funneled toward the recession's "walking dead": firms that are only working with their existing portfolio and lacking cash to make new investments.

Nonetheless, their loss might clear the brush for newer firms like Mike Maple's Floodgate Fund and Boulder's Foundry Group, which was Zynga's first venture investor. These younger firms have the benefit of being on top of newer trends like mobile apps and social networking, entrepreneur Eric Ries tells Bloomberg. Plus, we imagine, they don't have the stench of dashed dreams from the last bubble.