David “10x” is just statuplandia shorthand for substantial better than the competition.
These were not my critics of your startup, but my paraphrasing of the comments on your Apply HN application. You can choose to take them on board or not.
The reason investors care about 10x is that is what is required to convince customers to switch. Your product may well be 10x better (I am not an expert in this area so I can't answer this), but I do know that databases are an incredible crowded market with some very fierce competitors. To succeed you have to have a product that is at least 10x better and you have to be able to communicate this very clearly to your potential customers. It is great that you have customers already (hopefully paying ones), but if you want to grow rapidly you need to have a really compelling product and pitch. I wish you well.
My point was that HN comments of Page Rank would have been the same; some would have said it's not significantly better. And that's OK. Understanding what's 10x better conceptually can be difficult even for the experts.
It's all about customers: do they get the communication and do they respond to it? In our case, so far, they do.
My main point remains: you (and many HN commenters) would have scored an early Google in 'existing competition' and written it off also. And Larry and Sergey certainly wouldn't have "chosen to take that on board" because it's meaningless.
These were not my critics of your startup, but my paraphrasing of the comments on your Apply HN application. You can choose to take them on board or not.
The reason investors care about 10x is that is what is required to convince customers to switch. Your product may well be 10x better (I am not an expert in this area so I can't answer this), but I do know that databases are an incredible crowded market with some very fierce competitors. To succeed you have to have a product that is at least 10x better and you have to be able to communicate this very clearly to your potential customers. It is great that you have customers already (hopefully paying ones), but if you want to grow rapidly you need to have a really compelling product and pitch. I wish you well.