You're building the next big thing. It will attract hundreds of thousands of users and make so much cash, Gordon Gecko would blush. You just know that if you build it, they will come. But what happens when all those users do show up? Will you spend your time adding the new features they're clamoring for, or will you be scrambling to make sure your relational database doesn't die hard? In this talk, we'll take a look at some of the risky business we undertake to try and scale our relational databases and the problems we run into. Then we'll talk about how Cassandra is different and some of the knobs you control to turn things up to 11. If you're new to Cassandra and are looking for an introduction, come from a relational database background, or you just want to see how many 80s movie references we can cover in 40 minutes, then don your favorite fedora and come for an excellent adventure.