I agree with many of the other posters: JetBrains has succeeded because their products are generally awesome, and I am a happy personal subscriber. People should especially remember what the Java IDE landscape looked like when they first came out with IntelliJ: using IntelliJ after using NetBeans or Eclipse was like using Google for the first time after being familiar with AltaVista - it was just a night and day better product.
Still, I wonder if they could have been successful without funding if they were a US or Western European company. Especially in the early days, I'm sure the much lower salaries in Prague allowed them to be more competitive with a lower burn rate. My point is I think their VC-less success would have been much more difficult in a place with higher salaries and cost-of-living.
Still, I wonder if they could have been successful without funding if they were a US or Western European company. Especially in the early days, I'm sure the much lower salaries in Prague allowed them to be more competitive with a lower burn rate. My point is I think their VC-less success would have been much more difficult in a place with higher salaries and cost-of-living.