I have no experience with Riak, but I once went to a conference (a very short while ago) and saw a presentation by a higher up of Basho (I won't disrespect the person by naming them), in short: It was a very generic, bland and positively abstract presentation about big data. Other presentations were highly technical, so I was excited to get to know Basho as well - I came out of that thinking "wtf was this guy talking about?". It's obviously not a reflection of what Basho stood for, or even what the individual in question stood for, but that's the only memory Basho has left in me.