While it is true that both SiSense and GoodData both try to do something different in the BI space, there aren’t many other similarities between them.

GoodData is a cloud BI vendor that hosts everything (including the organization’s data). They focus on business users (i.e. marketers) that want to report/analyze small data sets of data (CSV, Excel, other cloud sources, etc) by letting them upload to GoodData servers. GoodData implicitly assume the existence of a data warehouse or some other ETL process that generates these reduced data sets.

With SiSense the data remains on premises or on the company’s private cloud. We do not host the data (most company’s don’t like that, us included. We focus more on fast in-house BI solutions, involving lots of data and/or multiple operational data sources without a data warehouse or OLAP.

I personally am not a big fan of cloud BI and I would never use it for the real stuff. Maybe for very basic reporting. Check out the following post if you’re interested.

http://elasticube.blogspot.com/2010/07/would-i-use-cloud-business-intelligence.html

Elad
Founder
SiSense

One addition though: Too often is the bootstrapping somewhat misaligned with the main business objective. In software, for instance, ventures are tempted to provide software development services for products that are not similar enough to their own, or to develop products that are so dumbed-down that the work is thrown out when considering the main line of business. A wise bootstrapper, IMHO, is one who knows how to bootstrap with activities that are directly relevant to building their core competence.

My $0.02. Thanks again, Gil, for a well-thought-out post.

One thing I would add as a potential downside to bootstrapping when sitting in front of VC’s is that bootstrapped success can often be blinding regarding various components of the business that need a change in order to make the exponential growth needed in a VC backed company. Things that worked for initial customers and product development may not work for the next phase of the company’s lifecycle.

The analysis of the entrepreneur needs to be both reflective and forward looking.

Micha

Great post and so true. As a founder of a bootstrapped startup for 3 years I couldn’t agree more and it’s very hard to dream the dream while living day by day. On the other hand I will never trade the experience of bootstrapping to taking money early because if I ever do raise VC I will appreciate every $ that much more.

One more thing you may want to focus on is, how should a VC handle this tunnel vision? VC’s look at deals all day and meet companies, they don’t have the opp. strain of a founder and should also adjust accordingly. Maybe VC’s should have a different set of rules while evaluating a bootstrapped company?