Shows
Open Source Startup PodcastE181: Why Multimodal Is the Future of AI Data WorkloadsChang She is Co-Founder & CEO of LanceDB, the multimodal lakehouse platform. Their open source data format lance has over 5K stars on GitHub and is a modern columnar data format for ML and LLMs implemented in Rust.LanceDB has raised $41M from investors including Theory Ventures, CRV, and Essence VC. In this episode, we dig into:Early focus: autonomous vehicles; solved real-time analysis limits with Lance format → 9,000% performance gain.Multi-modal AI taking off (vision, audio, text); Midjourney & Runway as pioneers; audio now a major category.How they built trust th...
2025-09-1036 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE147: The Over-complication of API Management - What Went Wrong?James Perkins is Co-Founder & CEO of Unkey, the open source API management platform that helps developers secure, manage, and scale their APIs. Their project, also called unkey, has almost 3K stars on GitHub.
Unkey has raised from investors including Essence VC, Sunflower, and The New Normal Fund.
In this episode, we dig into the complicated API tooling landscape, getting their early start with crypto and AI companies, what great DevEx means to them (simplicity is key), their scalable pricing model, splitting work between Co-Founders, their expansion plan and how they plan on grow capabilities without...
2024-08-2739 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE143: Bringing Software Engineering Best Practices to DataTim Delisle and Nico Joseph are Co-Founders of FiveOneFour, the company attempting to bring a software developer-like experience to data and analytics stacks. Together, they're second-time founders who previously founded data integration company Datalogue, which Nike acquired in 2021.
In this episode, we break down the software engineering practices that would benefit data teams, their approach to market education (ie. things like templates to get users started), why open source is a requirement for a product like this, where we are on the journey to democratize access to data, their approach to monetization & more!
2024-07-2239 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE134: Making Complex Data RAG-Ready with UnstructuredBrian Raymond is Founder & CEO of Unstructured, the platform to extract and transform complex data for use with every major vector database and LLM framework. Their open source project has 7K stars on GitHub and includes libraries and APIs that let users build custom preprocessing pipelines for labeling, training, and production machine learning pipelines. Today, they have over 6M downloads and 50K companies using their tools.
Unstructured has raised $65M from investors including Bain, Essence VC, and Menlo Ventures.
In this episode, we dig into Brian's process of talking to 100 data scientists before launching Unstructured...
2024-05-2037 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE96: Disrupting Massive Industries, From MongoDB to ViamEliot Horowitz is Founder & CEO of robot developer platform Viam and the previous Founder & CTO of developer data platform MongoDB.
In this episode, we discuss Eliot's many learnings from being a multi-time founder including the importance of extremely fast response time to user questions, the benefits (and challenges) of building general purpose platforms, democratizing access to robots & hardware engineering through better developer tools, and much more!
2023-07-2440 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE95: Why Feature Flagging Should Be Open Source With FlagsmithBen Rometsch is Co-Founder & CEO of Flagsmith, the commercial open source real-time feature flagging platform. The Flagsmith project has almost 3K stars on GitHub and provides feature flagging and remote configuration services that can be hosted on prem or using their hosted software.
In this episode, we discuss building a startup in a profitable way, why open source matters for feature flagging, finding direction with little signal early-on & much more!
2023-07-1737 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE94: Creating Amazing Search Experiences with MeilisearchQuentin de Quelen is Co-Founder & CEO of Meilisearch, the open source search engine platform. The Meilisearch project has 38K stars on GitHub and allows companies to quickly create amazing search experiences with features that work out-of-the-box.
Meilisearch has raised $22M from investors including Felicis and CRV.
In this episode, we dig into the massive TAM for search, working with the Rust community, what an amazing developer experience means for a search product, Meilisearch's roadmap (hint: it involves LLMs and AI-enabled search), Quentin's journey from developer to company leader, the company's focus on diversity & much more!
2023-07-1039 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE93: Making Open Source Foundation Models a Reality with LambdaRobert Brooks IV & Mitesh Agrawal are part of Lambda's founding team which is making GPUs for deep learning more accessible.
Lambda has an initiative to make GPUs available for training an open source foundation model in support of the broader ML community.
In this episode, we dig into the GPUs for open source initiative, why open source matters for foundation models, the Lambda journey from the early days (well before generative AI!) & much more!
2023-06-2341 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE92: Application Delivery for Kubernetes with AkuityHong Wang is Founder & CEO of Akuity, the application delivery platform for companies building with kubernetes. Akuity works alongside the Argo Project which provides a suite of open source tools for deploying and running applications and workloads on Kubernetes.
Akuity has raised $25M from investors including Decibel Partners and Lead Edge Capital.
In this episode, we discuss the creation of the Argo open source project while the team was at Applatix, the decision to create a commercial company - Akuity - around Argo after Applatix was acquired by Intuit, what it means to have a...
2023-06-1641 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE91: Plug & Play Permissions with Permit.ioOr Weis is Co-founder & CEO of Permit.io, the open source fullstack permissions as a service platform. The company's project, opal, is an admin layer for policy engines such as Open Policy Agent (OPA) and AWS' Cedar Agent and brings open-policy up to the speed needed by live applications.
Permit.io has raised $6M from investors including NFX.
In this episode, we discuss positioning in a competitive market, product market fit vs. GTM fit & much more!
2023-06-1241 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE90: Building Open Source Startups with Abby KearnsAbby Kearns has a long history in the open source ecosystem as the previous CTO of infrastructure automation platform Puppet, previous CEO of Cloud Foundry Foundation, and an active investor and advisor to many open source startups.
In this episode, we dig into the Puppet journey, the role organizations like Cloud Foundry play in the open source ecosystem, her views on open source projects versus products, her advice to open source startups & much more!
Video episode here
2023-06-0840 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE89: Building the Open Source Financial Cloud with FormanceClément Salaün is Founder of Formance, the open source ledger for money-moving platforms. Their ledger is highly programmable and has over 600 stars on GitHub.
Formance is a YC company and has raised over $3M from investors including Hoxton Ventures and Frst.
In this episode, we discuss using open source to build user trust, creating a new category of open source software, the importance of building in a modular way, Clément's framework for monetization & much more!
2023-06-0540 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE88: Open Source Foundation Models for Generative AIDan Jeffries is the previous Chief Intelligence Officer at open source foundation model company Stability AI and Managing Director at the AI Infrastructure Alliance.
Stability AI has raised almost $100M from investors including Lightspeed and Coatue.
In this episode, we dig into the role of open source in generative AI, the benefits and drawbacks to open source foundation models, copyright issues that can come up when training data is visible, the capital it takes to start a foundation model, and opportunities to build that founders should be looking at today.
Full video episode...
2023-05-3048 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE87: Commercializing Open Source Data Systems with Astronomer & CoreDBRy Walker is Founder of open source data companies Astronomer and CoreDB. Astronomer is the commercial company tied to the popular open source data workflow management system Apache Airflow, and CoreDB is a database company based on the popular open source database Postgres.
CoreDB has raised $7M from investors including Venrock and CincyTech, and Astronomer has raised $283M from investors including Venrock, Insight, and Sierra Ventures.
In this episode, we dig into the Astronomer journey and when things really started to work, what a great UI means in the data space, where the idea for...
2023-05-2238 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE86: Building Secure Containers Faster with Slim AIKyle Quest is Founder & CTO of Slim AI, the platform to help application developers build secure containers faster. The company's open source project, Slim (previously known as Docker Slim), shrinks container images by up to 30x and makes them secure. It currently has 17K stars on GitHub.
Slim AI has raised almost $60M from investors including Insight & Boldstart.
In this episode, we dig into where the idea for Slim came from (Kyle was trying to solve his own pain), building for multiple personas (in this case, security and developer teams), the shift left movement in...
2023-05-1537 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE85: Learn How FluxNinja Gives Reliability Engineers SuperpowersHarjot Gill is Co-founder & CEO of FluxNinja, the intelligent load management platform for reliability engineers. The company's open source project, Aperture, provides capabilities such as concurrency limiting, rate limiting, and auto-scaling.
This episode also features Matt Ranney, a principal engineer from Doordash, who is an early adopter of Aperture.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of having strong evangelists of new technology (in this case, Matt at Doordash), the right north star metrics to track as an open source company (production usage is key), lighting many GTM fires & more!
2023-05-0844 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE84: How Replit Is Supercharging The Coding ExperienceAmjad Masad is Founder & CEO of Replit, the browser-based development environment giving developers the power to build collaboratively with the power of AI on any device.
Replit has raised over $200M from investors including a16z, Coatue, and YC.
In this episode, we dig into Replit's evolution from an education-focused company to a broadly used coding platform, the role of AI in coding (and Replit's AI engine Ghostwriter), why it's much harder to build a horizontal platform & much more! This episode is a must-listen.
2023-05-0136 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE83: Developer-First Security with SnykGuy Podjarny is the Founder of Snyk, the developer-first security platform that helps companies find and fix vulnerabilities in their code, open source dependencies, containers, and infrastructure as code.
Snyk has raised $1.2B from investors including Boldstart, Accel, Tiger Global, and Addition.
In this episode, we dig into selling security products to developers, the pros and cons of being open source (Snyk is not!), Snyk's fundraising journey and challenges early on, how Snyk has evolved over the years, the decision to bring in an outside CEO & more!
2023-04-2445 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE82: Creating Apache Iceberg & Headless Data Warehouse TabularRyan Blue is Co-Founder of data automation platform Tabular and Co-Creator of Apache Iceberg, the open source high-performance format for huge analytic tables.
Tabular most recently raised a Series A from a16z.
In this episode, we discuss the concept of a "headless data warehouse", being a problem-centric rather than solution-centric founder & more!
2023-04-1738 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE81: Open Source DataOps with MeltanoDouwe Maan is Founder & CEO of DataOps platform Meltano, the extract and load company behind the open source CLI & version control project meltano.
Meltano has raised $12M from investors including Venrock & Google Ventures.
In this episode, we dig into spinning a company out of GitLab, Meltano's cloud launch, making technical data engineers first-class citizens & more!
2023-04-1048 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE80: Securing Kubernetes With ARMO & KubescapeShauli Rozen is Founder & CEO of ARMO, the company behind Kubernetes open source security platform kubescape. The project has over 8K stars on GitHub and includes tools for risk analysis, security, compliance, and misconfiguration scanning.
ARMO has raised $35M from investors including Tiger Global and Pitango VC.
In this episode, we dig into the differences in building product for DevOps vs. security teams, how to use signals from discord / slack channels to drive product roadmap, bringing on a VP of Open Source & more!
2023-04-0338 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE79: Spin Up Production-Like Dev Environments With OktetoRamiro Berrelleza is Founder & CEO of Okteto, the Kubernetes development platform that allows developers to spin up production-like dev environments in the cloud. Okteto's open source project, also called Okteto, allows users to spin up a development container, which is configured like the user's production Kubernetes deployment. Today, it has 2.8K start on GitHub.
Okteto has raised $18M from investors including Root VC and Two Sigma.
In this episode, we discuss the challenges of building with kubernetes, figuring out market timing, how to position for your specific users & more!
2023-03-2839 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE78: The Fastest Path From Data To Insight With StarburstJustin Borgman is CEO of Starburst, the “Analytics Everywhere” company based on the sequel query engine Trino (previously called Presto). Trino is a distributed SQL query engine for big data and is used by companies such as Salesforce, Robinhood, Lyft, LinkedIn, Goldman Sachs, and Netflix. Trino currently has 7.5K GitHub Stars.
Starburst has raised over $400M from investors including Index, Coatue, A16z, and Alkeon.
In this episode, we dig into the Presto to Trino transition, recruiting the Trino founders to Starburst, waiting to raise venture capital until there are strong signs of PMF, what PMF...
2023-03-2042 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE77: Simplify Your ML Infrastructure With AqueductVikram Sreekanti & Joey Gonzalez are Co-Founders of Aqueduct, the open-source orchestration layer for machine learning infrastructure. Aqueduct's open source project, also called aqueduct, has over 400 stars on GitHub.
In this episode, we discuss what Vikram & Joey learned from interviewing 100s of data teams, building in the competitive MLOps space, how and why they invest in content & much more!
2023-03-1541 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE76: How Cleanlab Can Help GPT-3, Bard, and Claude with Data QualityCurtis Northcutt is Co-Founder & CEO of Cleanlab, the company that helps AI & ML teams automatically find and fix errors in their datasets. They have over 5K stars on GitHub and are already working with companies such as Wells Fargo and Google on ML data quality.
In this episode, we discuss the difference between data noise and model noise, the growing importance of ML data quality with the momentum around generative AI models and applications, how Curtis' focus as CEO has shifted over time & much more!
2023-03-0737 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE75: Payload, the React & TypeScript Headless CMSJames Mikrut is Founder of Payload CMS, the React & TypeScript headless CMS. Their open source project, payload, has over 9K stars on Github and provides a Headless CMS and Application Framework built with TypeScript, Node.js, React, and MongoDB.
Payload has raised over $5M from investors including Gradient Ventures and YC.
In this episode, we discuss Payload's early guerilla marketing tactics, listening to your community to inform your monetization model, what developer-first really means & more!
2023-02-2334 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE74: Dev-First Testing with AtomicJar & TestcontainersSergei Egorov is Co-Founder & CEO of AtomicJar, the developer-first testing platform built on top of open source testing framework Testcontainers. AtomicJar provides Testcontainers Cloud which allows users to run tests in the cloud with anything that can be containerized.
AtomicJar has raised almost $30M from investors including Insight Partners and Boldstart.
In this episode, we discuss user demand driving the creation of a company alongside an open source project, using a different name for the company to have the ability to work with other projects, learnings from early scaling & more!
2023-02-2141 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE73: Building Scalable Postgres with Serverless Database Platform NeonNikita Shamgunov is Co-Founder & CEO of Neon, the open-source serverless postgres database platform. Neon separates storage and compute to offer autoscaling, branching, and bottomless storage. Their open source project, also called Neon, has 6.5K stars on Github.
Neon has raised $30M from investors including GGV and Khosla.
In this episode, we dig into the Neon founding story of starting a scalable alternative to AWS Aurora, why it's important to separate storage and compute, Neon's partner strategy, Nikita's thoughts on the "DevCloud" movement & much more!
2023-02-1637 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE72: Open Source Usage-Based Billing with LagoAnh-Tho Chuong is Co-Founder & CEO of Lago, the open source metering and usage-based billing platform. Lago's underlying project, also called Lago, has 2K stars on GitHub and a Slack community with hundreds of members.
Lago is a YC company from the S21 batch.
In this episode, we discuss the state of billing today and why a hybrid and open approach makes sense for many companies, positioning as an "open source alternative to...", deciding what content is worth creating (ie. if your users ask the same question 5x, then blog about it), going through YC as...
2023-01-3035 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE71: Mage & Replacing AirflowTommy Dang is Co-founder & CEO of Mage, the data plumbing platform that's the modern replacement for Airflow. Mage's open source project, mage-ai, has over 3K stars and lets companies run, monitor, and orchestrate thousands of data pipelines.
Mage has raised over $6M from investors including Gradient Ventures.
In this episode, we discuss pivots, testing product ideas with hundreds of potential users (and asking questions like, "what is the most boring part of your data work?"), why company content should be informative and entertaining, and how to approach selling in a customer-centric way.
2023-01-2537 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE70: Making Distributed Systems More Accessible With DiagridMark Fussell & Yaron Schneider are Co-founders of Diagrid, the platform that simplifies and provides access to the power of distributed systems. Diagrid's founders co-created open source Dapr which Diagrid provides a fully managed service on top of. Dapr has over 20K stars and works on any language or framework.
Diagrid has raised over $24M from investors including Norwest Venture Partners and Amplify.
In this episode, we discuss contributors rather than stars as a strong engagement metric, why Open Core wasn't the right business model for Diagrid, learnings for other open source founders & more!
2023-01-1839 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE69: Train, Deploy, and Ship AI Products with Lightning AIWill Falcon is CEO of Lightning AI, the platform to build ML models and create Lightning Apps that “glue” together many leading ML lifecycle tools. The company's project, also called lightning, has over 21K stars on GitHub.
Lightning AI has raised almost $60M from investors including Index Ventures, Coatue, and Bain.
In this episode, we discuss the difference between open source traction and company potential, how to hire - especially early on, the importance of learning speed, Will's personal journey as a CEO, and more!
2023-01-0336 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE68: Managing Open Source Data Services with AivenOskari Saarenmaa is Founder & CEO of Aiven, the fully managed, open source cloud data platform. Their platform combines all the tools needed to connect and manage open source data services such as Apache Kafka, Grafana, MySQL, Redis, InfluxDB along with many others. They have also open sourced a number of projects themselves (see here on GitHub).
Aiven has raised $420M from investors including IVP and Atomico.
In this episode, we discuss automation as a core value, finding a role in the open source ecosystem across multiple projects, the importance of 24/7 support when you have global...
2022-12-1238 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE67: Automated Certificate Management with SmallstepMike Malone is Founder of Smallstep, the automated certificate management platform for DevOps teams. Their certificate management project, also called smallstep, has 5K stars on GitHub and provides a private certificate authority and ACME server for secure automated certificate management.
Smallstep has raised $26M from investors including Boldstart and StepStone Group.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of staying lean before achieving PMF, where to draw the line on free open source vs. paid product, his learnings as an engineer-turned-founder & more!
YouTube version of the episode here
2022-12-0933 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE66: Open Source Feature Flagging & Experimentation with GrowthBookGraham McNicoll & Jeremy Dorn are Co-founders of GrowthBook, the open source feature flagging and experimentation platform out of YC. Their feature flagging and A/B testing project, also called growthbook, has 4K stars on GitHub.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of having an iterative culture, having a dynamic view on positioning, and the importance of content and market education.
2022-12-0534 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE65: Bringing Designers & Developers Together with Open Source PenpotPablo Ruiz-Múzquiz is Co-Founder & CEO of Penpot, the open-source design and prototyping platform. Their core open source project, also called penpot, has over 19K stars on GitHub.
Penpot received a lot of attention from the spike in growth following the Figma / Adobe acquisition announcement. They've since announced an $8M fundraise led by Decibel Partners.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of open standards in getting developers excited about design, why Figma users have been excited about Penpot, building a community with design and developer personas & more!
2022-12-0144 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE64: Open Source Data Observability with Elementary DataMaayan Salom is Co-Founder of Elementary Data, the open source data observability platform which allows users to monitor their data warehouse directly from dbt. Their project, also called Elementary, is built for analytics engineers and today has almost 1K GitHub stars and a rapidly growing community of almost 600 users.
The company has raised from leading Israel and US-based venture firms as well as a number of high-profile angel investors.
In this episode, we discuss having a culture of experimentation, building a community alongside other communities (ie. dbt), using your community for product feedback, the hustle...
2022-11-2838 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE63: Mobile.dev's New Mobile Testing Framework MaestroLeland Takamine is Co-Founder & CEO of mobile.dev, the team behind open source mobile UI testing framework Maestro. The framework, which is a compelling new alternative to Appium or Espresso, has quickly grown to 2.6K stars and a community of >700 users.
The company has raised $3M from investors including Cowboy Ventures, Essence VC, and a number of high-profile angel investors.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of ease of use for getting open source adoption, how community feedback creates a product advantage, the challenges with timing open source adoption, learnings from growing a community...
2022-11-1431 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE62: Bring Visibility to Your Codebase With CodeSeeShanea Leven is Founder & CEO of CodeSee, the cloud-based data visualization platform that helps users master the understanding of their code.
CodeSee has raised $10M from investors including Uncork, Boldstart, and Wellington.
In this episode, we discuss how to test messaging, the importance of having a strong GTM strategy early-on, what a great onboarding experience looks like, and more!
2022-11-0733 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE61: Compensating Open Source Developers with TeaMax Howell is CEO of Tea, the platform that enables developers to get compensated for their work. Max is also the creator of Homebrew, the popular package management system.
Tea has raised $8M from investors including Binance Labs.
In this episode, we discuss the founding story for Tea, learnings on building extremely large open source projects and communities, Tea's ties to Web3, and helping open source developers get compensated for their work.
2022-10-3134 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE60: Building Highly Scalable Databases with PlanetScaleSam Lambert is CEO of PlanetScale, the serverless MySQL database platform for developers.
PlanetScale is powered by the open source database clustering system Vitess which was originally built at Google to scale YouTube.
The company has raised over $100M from investors including KPCB, Insight, SignalFire, and a16z.
In this episode, we discuss PlanetScale's positioning as a database platform rather than a database, the importance of authenticity and showing off capabilities with every launch, transparency around pricing, proving the ability to scale, looking at the quality of companies and people in the community...
2022-10-2041 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE59: Harness Your Behavioral Data With Snowplow AnalyticsAlex Dean is Cofounder & CEO of Snowplow Analytics, the behavioral data platform that transforms data into actionable insights.
Snowplow's open source behavioral data engine, also called snowplow, has over 6K stars and is a developer-first engine for collecting behavioral data.
Snowplow has raised $55M from investors including NEA, MMC, and Atlantic Bridge after being bootstrapped for some time.
In this episode, we discuss the flexibility you get from bootstrapping your company - especially if it's open source, the importance of GTM and user persona clarity when building in a competitive space, investing in...
2022-10-1735 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE58: Open Source Developer Data Platform TigrisOvais Tariq is Cofounder & CEO of Tigris Data, the open source developer data platform.
Tigris has raised from investors including Basis Set and General Catalyst.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of focusing on user problems rather than your solution, hiring for your specific company needs (ie Tigris needed engineers who had operated at scale), learnings for other open source data-focused founders, and more!
2022-10-1333 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE57: Secure your Software Supply Chain with ChainguardDan Lorenc is Founder & CEO of Chainguard, the platform to secure your software supply chain. Chainguard supports many popular open source projects such as Sigstore, SLSA, and Tekton.
Chainguard has raised $55M from investors including Sequoia and Amplify Partners.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of market education when creating a new category of software, assessing market timing when launching your company, some of Chainguard's unique content strategies, and more!
2022-10-1238 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE56: Add GraphQL APIs to Your Data with HasuraRajoshi Ghosh & Tanmai Gopal are the Co-founders of Hasura, the platform to create GraphQL APIs with your data. Hasura's open source graph-QL engine has over 28K stars.
Hasura has raised $140M from investors including Lightspeed, Vertex, and Greenoaks Capital.
In this episode, we discuss how open source builds trust, the difference between project-market fit and product-market fit, hiring for values, and much more!
2022-10-0642 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE55: Backend-as-a-Service with ChiselStrikeGlauber Costa is Founder & CEO of ChiselStrike, the backend-as-a-service platform. Their core technology is open source - and also called ChiselStrike.
In this episode, we discuss knowing the right entry point for your user persona, figuring out the best open source business model for your community, having a customer-centric approach to building product, learning fundraising as a technical founder, and more!
2022-10-0336 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE54: Learn Open Source Tools & Frameworks on CoRiseSourabh Bajaj is Cofounder & CTO of CoRise, the technical up-skilling platform with courses taught by industry experts. They have courses focused on open source projects such as DBT that use real-world projects to teach industry skills.
In this episode, we discuss how technical learners are different, the opportunity for education to be a third-party tool, why industry professionals can make the best teachers, assessing your own founder-market fit, and more!
2022-09-2938 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE53: Bringing Data Science Projects to Production with LineaDoris Xin is Cofounder & CEO of Linea, the platform to bring data science projects to production. The company's open source project, LineaPy, helps remove engineering bottlenecks for data science teams.
In this episode, we discuss positioning in a competitive and technical market, using an open source strategy to help with integrations, Doris' journey from PhD to founder, and much more!
2022-09-2738 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE52: Learnings from Chef & the Future of Open SourceAdam Jacob is the Cofounder & CTO of Chef, the infrastructure automation platform, and CEO of System Initiative.
In this episode, we discuss the Chef journey, where open source shines (and where it can be problematic), and predictions on the future of open source.
2022-09-2147 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE51: Enhance Your Coding Skills by Playing BattlesnakeBrad Van Vugt is Cofounder & CEO of Battlesnake, a competitive multiplayer game for web developers. The rules and game docs for Battlesnake are all open source.
This episode's discussion is heavily focused on community. We discuss the community's influence on the initial product scope, roadmap, and much more!
2022-09-1636 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE50: HashiCorp - Building An Open Source Company at ScaleArmon Dadgar is Cofounder & CTO of HashiCorp, the software infrastructure & security automation company that works with open source projects such as Terraform, Vault, Consul, Vagrant, Packer, and Nomad.
HashiCorp went public in late 2021 and currently has a market capitalization of $6B.
In this episode, we discuss the timeline from project release to mass adoption, the importance of focusing on user problems rather than a specific technical solution, incorporating the right user feedback, the hard decisions he had to make as a leader, and learnings from 9+ years at HashiCorp.
2022-09-1442 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE49: Momento, the World's Fastest CacheDaniela Miao is Cofounder of Momento, the serverless cache that automatically optimizes, scales, and manages your cache for you. Momento works with open source caching engine Pelikan which was created at Twitter.
Daniela is joined in this episode by Yao Yue, a Principal Software Engineer at Twitter who is a core part of Twitter's Pelikan Caching team. Today, Momento provides a SaaS service on top of Pelikan in an Open Core model.
In this episode, we discuss launching a company on top of an open source project started by a team outside of the founders...
2022-09-0639 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE48: Open Source Laravel Ecommerce Platform BagistoSaurav Pathak is Cofounder & Chief Product Officer of Bagisto, the open source e-commerce platform based in India that has bootstrapped to 60k+ downloads and 200K users.
In this episode, we discuss community contributions to product (Bagisto's extensions are 30% community-built!), building the foundation for an open source community before focusing on monetization, what "great support" really looks like for an open source company, lessons from building without VC money, and more!
2022-08-2635 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE47: Open Source Device Management with FleetMike McNeil is Cofounder & CEO of Fleet, a device management platform based on the open source endpoint visibility project osquery.
Fleet has raised $25M from investors including CRV.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of understanding your user profile(s), the nuances of company positioning, the difference between building a product vs. building tools, community management (particularly when your users are part of multiple communities) and much more.
2022-08-1841 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE46: Flexible Open Source Data Labeling at Scale with HeartexMichael Malyuk is Cofounder & CEO of Heartex, the open source data labeling platform for building models at scale with flexibility.
The company's open source project, Label Studio, has 10K stars and a community of almost 6K users.
Heartex has raised $25M from investors including Redpoint and Unusual Ventures.
In this episode, we discuss flexibility as a differentiator, being customer obsessed in the short-term and vision obsessed in the long-term, the importance of strong documentation, and top challenges that open source founders face.
2022-08-1534 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE45: Creating Resilient Applications with Temporal (pt 2)Maxim Fateev is Co-Founder & CEO and Dominik Tornow is Principal Engineer at Temporal, the workflow platform for building resilient applications.
Temporal is the company centered on the open source orchestration engine Temporal which is a fork of the project Cadence first created at Uber. The Temporal project and company have seen tremendous interest and the cloud service for Temporal will be GA later this year.
The company is valued at $1.5B and raised from investors including Sequoia, Index, and Amplify.
In this episode, we discuss the origins of Temporal at Uber, use cases...
2022-08-0541 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE44: Open Source Auth-as-a-Service by AsertoOmri Gazitt is Co-Founder & CEO of Aserto, the open source enterprise-grade authorization-as-a-service platform. Their open source toolchain includes projects such as Open Policy Agent and their platform was built to be enterprise-ready incredibly fast.
Aserto has raised over $5M from investors including Heavybit and Costanoa Ventures.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of market education on a new capability (ie when would a user look for you in their journey), category creation, tracking success, and learnings for other open source founders!
2022-07-2143 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE43: Building Supabase, the Open Source Firebase AlternativePaul Copplestone is Co-Founder & CEO of Supabase the open source Backend-as-a-Service company that provides storage, authentication, edge functions, and a postgres database to users.
Supabase's project, also called supabase, has 36K stars on GitHub and is positioned as the "open source Firebase alternative".
Supabase has raised $116M from investors including Coatue, Felicis, and YC.
In this episode, we discuss positioning as an open source alternative to "x", the benefits of going through YC as an open source company, how to judge open source momentum, learnings for other early open source founders, and more!
2022-07-1940 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE42: Earthly, a CI/CD Framework that Can Run AnywhereVlad Ionescu is Founder & CEO of Earthly, the CI/CD framework that can run anywhere. Earthly's open source project, also called earthly, has over 7K GitHub stars and a slack channel with over 500 community members. Earthly has raised $3M from investors including 468 Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, Hack VC, and Bessemer.
In this episode, we discuss the distinction between source available and open source (and why source available works better for databases), company inspiration from the build process at Google, scoring an open source launch, positioning and messaging in a new category, and much more!
2022-07-1141 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE41: Real-time Analytics Powered by Startree & Apache PinotKishore Gopalakrishna is Co-Founder & CEO of Startree, the real-time analytics platform that provides a managed service on top of the open-source distributed data store Apache Pinot.
Kishore is also the co-creator of Apache Pinot, which was started while he was at LinkedIn. Since leaving to build Startree, Kishore and his team have raised $28M from investors including GGV, Bain Capital Ventures, and CRV.
In this episode, we discuss the right time to launch a managed service on top of an open source project, the importance of relentless focus on customer needs and use cases early-on...
2022-07-0644 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE40: Speeding Up Internal App Development with Open Source AppsmithAbhishek Nayak is Co-Founder & CEO of Appsmith, the open source platform for building internal tools. The company's open source project, also called appsmith, has 19K stars and is a low code project to build admin panels, internal tools, and dashboards.
Appsmith has raised over $50M from investors including Insight, Canaan, OSS Capital, and Accel.
2022-06-2337 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE39: Coiled & Open Source Dask - Use Python for Ambitious ProblemsMatthew Rocklin is Founder & CEO of Coiled, a company that sits on top of open-source Dask which makes Python highly scalable for data scientists. Coiled makes Dask enterprise-ready and gives users access to faster cluster startup times, savings on cloud costs, and allows them to run their Python workloads faster.
Coiled has raised $26M from investors including Bessemer and Costanoa.
In this episode, we discuss the creation of Dask, the decision to start a company around it, the challenges that come with company building, and much more!
2022-06-2133 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE38: Application Monitoring with Open Source Unicorn SentryDavid Cramer is the Co-Founder & CTO of Sentry, the open source error tracking and performance monitoring unicorn company used by over 3.5M developers and 85K organizations.
The company's most popular open source project, also called sentry, has over 31K stars and lets users monitor and fix crashes in real-time. The server is in Python, but it contains a full API for sending events from any language, in any app.
Sentry has raised $217M from investors including Accel, NEA, and Bond.
In this episode, we talk with David about starting Sentry before open source...
2022-06-1343 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE37: SeMI & Open-Source AI-Based Database TechnologyBob van Luijt is the Co-Founder & CEO of SeMI Technologies, the company behind the open-source project Weaviate which is a vector search engine for ML models.
Weaviate uses machine learning to vectorize (ie represent) and store data in order to more easily find answers to natural language queries.
The project has 2.5K stars on GitHub and an almost 1K person Slack community of data scientists, data engineers, and software engineers.
The company has raised over $17M from investors including NEA, Zetta, and Cortical Ventures.
2022-06-0835 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE36: Open Source Origins & Predictions (& GitHub's Role in the Ecosystem)Erica Brescia is the previous COO of GitHub and is currently an MD at Redpoint Ventures. Jono Bacon is a renowned Community Consultant who also has roots at GitHub.
In this lively episode, Erica and Jono discuss their unique backgrounds in open source, how the ecosystem has evolved, open source business models & licenses, and advice for open source founders.
2022-06-0245 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE35: Open Source Backend Engine EncoreAndré Eriksson is the Founder of Stockholm-based Encore, the open-source backend development engine.
Encore's core open source project, also called encore, has almost 3K stars and helps developers escape the complexity that historically comes with setting up and managing distributed backend infrastructure.
The company has raised $3M from the Open Source Startup Podcast's very own Tim Chen of Essence VC as well as Crane Venture Partners and Third Kind VC.
2022-05-1942 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE34: Open-Source WebAssembly Tools with FermyonMatt Butcher is Co-Founder & CEO of Fermyon, the company building open source, WebAssembly-powered cloud tools.
The company's most popular open source project, spin, has over 1K stars and is a framework for building and running fast, secure, and composable cloud microservices with WebAssembly.
2022-05-1243 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE33: Evidently AI and Open Source Machine Learning MonitoringElena Samuylova is Co-Founder & CEO of Evidently AI, the open source ML monitoring platform. The company's open source project, also called evidently, has over 2K stars on GitHub and is used to evaluate and monitor ML models - from validation to production. The project's Discord channel has over 500 participants.
Evidently AI is a YC company from the S21 batch and is HQ'd in San Francisco.
2022-05-0537 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE32: The Fastest Open Source Time-Series Database QuestDBNicolas Hourcard is Co-Founder & CEO of QuestDB, creators of the fastest open source time-series database questdb. Their database project has over 8K stars on GitHub and their Slack community has over 1.2K individuals.
QuestDB has raised over $14M from investors including 468 Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, and Episode 1.
2022-05-0437 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE31: Understanding Your Open Source Usage with ScarfAvi Press is Founder & CEO of Scarf, the platform that helps open-source companies understand how their code is being used.
Scarf has raised over $7M from investors including Race Capital and Freestyle Capital.
2022-04-2737 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE30: Open Source Time-Series Data (simplified) with TimescaleDBAjay Kulkarni is Co-Founder & CEO of TimescaleDB, the simplest SQL time-series database. The company's open-source project, timescaledb, has 13K stars and their slack community has over 8K participants.
TimescaleDB has raised over $180M from investors including Tiger, Redpoint, Icon, NEA and Benchmark.
2022-04-2234 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE29: Building Data Intensive Applications Fast with Source-Available MaterializeArjun Narayan is Co-Founder & CEO of Materialize, the platform for building data-intensive applications with materialized views. The company's source-available project, also called materialize, has 3.9K stars and their slack channel has over 1.4K participants.
Materialize has raised over $100M from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, and Lightspeed.
YouTube version of the episode here.
2022-04-1934 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE28: Rudderstack & Open Source Data PipelinesSoumyadeb Mitra is Founder & CEO of Rudderstack, the open-source bidirectional data pipeline platform. Their primary open source project rudder-server provides an open source alternative to SaaS platform Segment and has over 3K stars with a community of over 1.7K on Slack.
Rudderstack has raised $82M from investors including Insight Partners and Kleiner Perkins.
2022-04-1337 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE27: Security Operations at Scale with Panther (And, from Open to Closed Source)Jack Naglieri is Founder & CEO of Panther, the platform to run security operations at scale. It includes detection-as-code, a robust security data lake, and huge scalability with zero-ops. The company started as open-source but closed sourced in 2021.
Panther is a unicorn company having raised $140M+ from Coatue, ICONIQ, Lightspeed, and 645 Ventures.
2022-04-1143 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE26: Cube.dev - Open Source Headless BI for Building Data AppsArtyom Keydunov is Co-founder & CEO of Cube.dev, the headless BI platform for building data apps. Cube.dev's open-source project, cube-js, has almost 13K stars on GitHub and helps data engineers and application developers access data from modern data stores, organize it into consistent definitions, and deliver it to every application.
Cube.dev has raised over $20M from investors including Bain Capital, Decibel Partners, Eniac VC, 645 Ventures, Slack Fund, and Betaworks.
2022-04-0738 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE25: Real-time Open Source Data Pipelines with MeroxaDeVaris Brown & Ali Hamidi are Co-founders of Meroxa, the platform for building real-time data pipelines. The company's open-source project Conduit lets users build and run their data pipelines.
Meroxa has raised almost $20M from investors including Drive Capital, Root VC, and Amplify Partners.
2022-04-0543 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE24: Open-Source Messaging & Collaboration with MattermostIan Tien is Co-founder & CEO of Mattermost, the open-source messaging and collaboration platform with customers including Fastly, Samsung, Bosch, NASA, AIG, Wealthfront, and the US Air Force. The company has multiple open-source projects focused on collaboration and 34K+ stars across them all.
Mattermost has raised $70M from investors such as YC and Redpoint.
2022-03-3037 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE23: The Fastest Way to Build Data Apps with Open-Source App Framework StreamlitAdrien Treuille is Co-founder & CEO of Streamlit, the open-source app framework for Machine Learning and Data Science teams to build data apps. The company's underlying open-source project, also named Streamlit, has over 18K stars and a community of 1.4K+ on Discord.
Streamlit raised $60M+ from Sequoia, GGV, and Gradient Ventures and since the recording of this podcast was acquired by Snowflake for a reported $800M.
2022-03-2836 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE22: Open-Source Collaboration with LiveblocksSteven Fabre is Co-founder & CEO of Liveblocks which provides open-source APIs and tools to create collaborative experiences. The company has a repo (also called Liveblocks) that contains open-source packages for building performant and reliable multiplayer experiences.
2022-03-2435 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE21: Airbyte & Open-Source Data IntegrationMichel Tricot is Co-founder & CEO of Airbyte, the open-source data integration platform. Airbyte was launched in 2020 and since then the company's open-source project (also called Airbyte) has picked up 6K stars and their Slack community has 6K+ data engineers actively participating in it.
Airbyte is a unicorn company, having raised $180M+ from investors such as Benchmark, Altimeter, and Accel.
2022-03-2142 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE20: Building Programming Language & Infrastructure Company DarkEllen Chisa is Cofounder & CEO of Dark, a programming language, editor, and infrastructure that makes it easy to build backends. Dark is source-available (open-source "adjacent") and raised $4M from investors such as Cervin Ventures, Boldstart (where Ellen now works as a Founder-in-Residence), Data Collective, Harrison Metal, and Xfactor.
2022-03-1629 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE19: Hugging Face & the Open-Source AI CommunityJulien Chaumond is Cofounder & CTO of Hugging Face, the AI community with deep roots in open source. Hugging Face has many open source projects including transformers (59K stars), datasets (13K stars), tokenizers (5K stars), among others. The company has raised $60M+ from investors such as Addition, Lux Capital, and Betaworks.
2022-03-1429 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE18: The Open-Source Serverless CMS WebinySven Al Hamad is Founder & CEO of Webiny, the open-source serverless CMS. Founded in London, England, the company's open-source project has 5K+ stars and their Slack community has 1K+ members.
In this episode, we talk about open-source and serverless as differentiators, understanding your open-source users (telemetry, being plugged into the community, etc.), the importance of strong documentation, content strategies, and advice for other open-source project owners looking to turn their project into a company.
2022-03-0344 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE17: Posthog - the Open-Source Product Analytics AlternativeJames Hawkins, Co-founder & CEO, PostHog
James is the Co-founder & CEO of PostHog, the product analytics company that started as an open-source alternative to SaaS products such as Amplitude. They've raised up to a Series B from investors including YC Continuity and GV.
In this episode, we discuss the early days of PostHog, GTM benefits of open-source business models (particularly at larger enterprises that have infosec requirements), open-source alternatives to SaaS products, and advice to other open-source founders at the earliest part of their journey.
2022-02-0142 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE16: Open-Source Observability with ChronosphereMartin Mao, Co-founder & CEO, Chronosphere
Martin is the Co-founder & CEO of Chronosphere, the open source-based observability platform that started with the open source metrics engine M3. M3 has almost a 1K person Slack community and was started at Uber where the Chronosphere team initially worked on it. Chronosphere is a unicorn company and has raised $255M from Greylock, General Atlantic, Lux Capital, Addition, Founders Fund, Spark Capital, and Glynn Capital.
In this episode, we discuss open source as an industry shift for observability, the early days of M3 at Uber, the opportunity for Chronosphere as a...
2022-01-2446 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE15: Vercel & the Frontend Movement Around Next.jsGuillermo Rauch, Founder & CEO, Vercel
Guillermo is the Founder & CEO of Vercel, the company behind the open-source project Next.js. Next.js is a React framework used by frontend developers to build websites in a Jamstack format. Next.js has 79K stars on GitHub and a Discord community with over 33K members. Vercel has raised over $300M from GGV, Accel, Google Ventures, and Bedrock Capital.
In this episode, we discuss Guillermo’s extensive experience in open-source, early architectural decisions to set up for scale, what a great “developer experience” really means, creating a complex distributed system...
2022-01-0748 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE14: Great Expectations for Your Data (Or, Building Superconductive)Abe Gong, Co-founder & CEO, Superconductive & Kyle Eaton, Growth Lead, Superconductive
Abe and Kyle are from Superconductive, the company behind the open-source project Great Expectations which has almost 6K stars on GitHub and a 5K+ person Slack community. Great Expectations is an open-source library for data quality, allowing users to always know what to expect from their data. It helps data teams eliminate pipeline debt, through data testing, documentation, and profiling bringing the best processes from software development to data teams.
In this episode, we learn how they were able to shift from building a healthcare data...
2021-12-1640 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE13: Open-Source Data Streaming with Vectorized & RedpandaAlex Gallego, Founder & CEO, Vectorized
Alex is Founder & CEO of Vectorized, the data streaming platform that released the open-source real-time streaming project Redpanda. Redpanda has 3.1K GitHub stars and a 1.2K person Slack community. Objectives for Vectorized are providing a faster version of Kafka and an amazing developer experience.
In this episode, we discuss Alex’s journey from technical architect to CEO, why experimentation is important for open-source companies, what a great developer experience means, the tradeoffs between monetization and happy open-source users, coming up with a pricing model (Vectorized had Confluent as a benchmark), and...
2021-12-0748 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE12: Open-Source Feature Management with UnleashEgil Østhus & Ivar Østhus, Co-founders, Unleash
Egil & Ivar are Co-founders of Unleash, the open-source feature management platform. The underlying project, unleash, has 4.5K GitHub stars and the company's enterprise product is run in an open-core model.
In this episode, we discuss the origin story for Unleash (solving a problem the founders had themselves), how the open-source project spread, the Unleash paid product journey, why open-source works for regulated industries, new tooling areas for the open-source model, and advice for early-stage founders.
2021-11-1956 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE11: From Open-Source Project at Uber to Mobile.devLeland Takamine, CEO & Co-founder, mobile.dev
Leland Co-founder & CEO of mobile.dev, the first "shift left" mobile development platform for high-quality mobile experiences. Their software finds bugs and performance issues before a new mobile release goes out.
The origins of mobile.dev are in the project nanoscope, which Leland open-sourced while at Uber. The number and quality of companies using nanoscope signaled the need for better mobile development tooling.
Since launching, mobile.dev has signed enterprise customers such as Reddit and raised funding from Cowboy Ventures along with strategic funds and angels such...
2021-11-0933 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE10: Prefect - Open-Source Data Flow AutomationJeremiah Lowin, CEO & Founder, Prefect
Jeremiah is the founder of Prefect, the data flow company that sits on top of the open-source workflow project Prefect Core as well as the recently released orchestration engine project Prefect Orion. Unlike many open-source companies, Prefect didn't start out as open-source. Two years into the company-building journey, Prefect Core launched and the traction from there has been very strong.
Today, Prefect has a Slack community of over 10K members and has raised from VCs including Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Tiger Global, and Positive Sum.
In this episode, we discuss th...
2021-11-0550 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE9: Tristan & dbt (or, Becoming the Industry Standard for Data Transformation)Tristan Handy, CEO & Founder, dbt Labs
Tristan is co-founder & CEO of dbt Labs (previously Fishtown Analytics), the company that sits on top of the open-source data transformation tool dbt.
dbt has quickly become the industry standard with more than 5K companies using it in production supported by a Slack community of over 15K members. The company recently reached unicorn status raising their $150M Series C round at a $1.5B post-money valuation with investors including Sequoia, a16z, Altimeter, and Amplify.
In this episode, we discuss the origin story behind dbt, why timing for op...
2021-10-0741 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE8: Open-Sourcing Business Applications; Calendso's StoryPeer Richelsen, Co-Founder, Calendso
Peer is co-founder of Calendso, a company launched earlier this year. Calendso is an open-source calendar application ('open-source Calendly alternative’) that has 6K+ GitHub stars, 500+ forks, and a 700+ person Slack group. After an incredible launch, they rocketed to #1 Product of the Month in April 2021 on Product Hunt.
In this episode, we discuss Peer’s unique founder journey and how he found Calendso’s CEO, the company's launch, prioritizing objectives at an open-source company, building community, and open-source eating business applications.
2021-09-0850 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE7: From Open-Source Project at Uber to Temporal.ioMaxim Fateev, Co-Founder & CEO, Temporal.io
1:17: Maxim digs into his extensive experience with distributed systems and how it led him to build Cadence, the open-source project behind his company Temporal
5:10: We discuss why open-source is important and how it helps projects last vs. keeping them within a company where they will most likely die
9:30: Maxim talks about finding product-market fit through open-source before raising venture capital; one signal was the quality of engineers from top companies in their 1K person slack channel
14:35: We discuss the importance of building trust with users, e...
2021-08-0541 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE6: Product Positioning for OSS StartupsEmily Omier, Positioning Consultant for Commercial Open-Source Companies
2:53: Emily discusses the positioning of the 2 products OSS companies have: the OSS product & the paid product
5:30: Emily talks about her process & how she interacts with ‘super users’ to understand what they use the project for (hint: it’s often not what the project owner had in mind)
8:02: Emily digs into competition and how most OSS startups are competing with a manual process vs. other companies
10:09: The hard parts about positioning an OSS startup are discussed: resource challenges, focus, and engineers as challenging buyers
1...
2021-07-1642 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE5: Open-Sourcing Kubernetes & Building a Company (Heptio) Around ItJoe Beda, Founder & CTO, Heptio
2:00: Developing the Kubernetes project at Google & deciding to open-source it
4:48: The origins of Heptio & building a company around Kubernetes
13:29: Open-source business models & 'open extensibility' as the new model
24:36: Scaling open-source businesses: metrics to track & interacting with the community
31:55: Good areas for successful open-source products & advice for founders
2021-06-2438 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE4: How Pulumi Launched an OS Project & Company at the Same TimeJoe Duffy, Founder & CEO, Pulumi
1:17 - Background on Joe & Pulumi - the company was started to give infra engineers tools to help them innovate faster.
3:05 - Why OS as a core part of Pulumi’s strategy - getting community buy-in was important as it created trust and authenticity. Joe also saw the power of open source when he was at Microsoft and they started exploring an OS strategy.
5:29 - Pulumi launched as a company and OS project at the same time. The benefit of this was they could be thoughtful about the business mo...
2021-04-1436 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE3: Building & Scaling MongoDBMax Schireson, prev. CEO, MongoDB
1:20: Max started his career at Oracle where he became frustrated with the limitations of relational databases. He then moved to MarkLogic where he discovered XML databases and the flexibility of that format got him excited about the potential for new databases. From there, he moved to MongoDB as CEO just as NoSQL started to take off. There, he was exposed to the distribution potential of open-source. With an open-source business, people used your product well before you sold it to them. The company was very early when he joined. There were 20 employees and $...
2021-03-1843 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE2: The Kong StoryMarco Palladino, Co-founder & CTO, Kong
0:50: Kong's origin story
5:48: How Kong’s underlying open source project generated early adoption
9:37: Shifting from open source adoption to commercialization
16:09: What enterprise features Kong prioritized building first
21:37: Hiring the early team balancing open-source and commercialization expertise
24:48: How to think about protecting your open-source IP
30:00: Marco's advice for open-source project owners who want to start a company
2021-02-0330 min
Open Source Startup PodcastE1: From Open Source at InfluxData to Closed Source at EraDBTodd Persen, Co-founder & CEO, Era Software (prev. Co-founder & CTO, InfluxData)
In this episode, we'll dig into the InfluxData founding story as well as Todd's decision to make his new company, EraDB, closed source. We'll also discuss the metrics to determine if an open-source project is a success, what features users will pay for, and the benefits (and drawbacks) of having an open-source component at a startup.
2021-01-1243 min