To hear Peter Levine tell it, the first meeting between Andreessen Horowitz and Meteor was middling during introductions and a presentation, until, that is, the team gave a live demo of the framework that would eventually lead to a generous funding round. “In all of 30 seconds, he hacked up a rich-client and back-end server application,” he wrote of the encounter. “The client was running locally yet synchronizing all of its data to a backend server. Fast, secure and in real-time. What I saw in front of my eyes was magic!” According to Levine — who previously served as CEO of XenSource, another open source endeavor — the problem with JavaScript is that it was designed for client-side use, leaving back-end server uses to other languages. The San Francisco-based Meteor rolls client and server-side code into the same language and API, which speeds up development of applications that require both, and decreases the quantity of training required. Levine wasn’t the only one at that meeting who walked away impressed with the open source web app platform. This week, Andreessen Horowitz led an impressive round of funding that garnered $11.2 million for the project. The investment is a “lot of money,” Meteor CEO Geoff Schmidt conceded. With it, he said the project is assured greater staying power, and the team won’t be forced to consult or develop a commercial application based on Meteor. Schmidt also promised that Meteor will remain free and open source following the funding, though future plans involve developing a parallel product, tentatively known as Galaxy, that will serve as an enterprise-oriented hosting environment for Meteor apps. And though he holds it was the successful demonstration that piqued Andreessen Horowitz’ interest in the project, Levine lauded the quality of the team as well. “While they’ve graciously described the board and investors as a dream team, the real dream team is the Meteor founders,” he said. “Passionate, committed and appropriately eccentric make them the best team in the universe to be working on this project. We are honored to be partnering with Meteor in their mission to build a new platform for cloud computing applications.”
Image: Meteor
