Smalltalk and Seaside usage in Startups

In 2008 there were some interesting news that a Vancouver-based startup using the Seaside Smalltalk web framework, has been bought by Live Current Media for $5 million. The Smalltalk web application "auctomatic.com" they had built was helping sellers with eBay. I also reported about this in my blog.

According to press the founders of the startup John and Patrick Collision becoming overnight millionaires (as you can also read on the wikipedia page of one of them). Here is a screenshot of the application:



Another nice Smalltalk application that was written in Seaside by a startup was dabbledb.com. It was co-developed by Avy Bryant - original creator of Seaside itself. In 2011 the company was acquired by Twitter and Avy worked for Twitter then. The website of dabbledb.com is meanwhile shut down - but there are some nice videos left on youtube showing the application in action:



Why do I tell you this - as it's nothing new that startups grow up and get successful. A big part of this are always the people behind the scenes - but often key to success is also the technology in use that enables them to meet their goals. And it is not a secret that Seaside and Smalltalk are innovation driving technologies.

Meanwhile the brothers Patrick and John Collison co-founded another company called "stripe.com". The company provides an online payment solution that allow developers to accept credit card payments online using an API. Guess who is working with them: Avy Bryant is also part of the stripe.com team.

What I found interesting is that this week I stumbled upon a Twitter post from John Collision, showing Patrick Collission demoing Pharo Smalltalk (and Seaside) to their stripe engineers.

So it looks like again there is a place for Seaside and Smalltalk (here Pharo) in this new startup. I dont know if it is used for prototyping or directly within their technology stack. But I'm sure both will drive their new business forward as they did in the past...