Founder Real Talk

In this episode of Founder Real Talk, host Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner at Notable Capital, sits down with LocalStack’s co-founders, Gerta Sheganaku and Waldemar Hummer, to discuss how LocalStack is revolutionizing the developer experience. LocalStack enables developers to emulate cloud environments on their local machines, drastically reducing testing times and costs while accelerating product development.Listen as Gerta and Waldemar share the journey behind LocalStack, from its humble beginnings as an open-source project to its growth into a full-fledged business with over 900 paying customers, including Fortune 100 companies. They dive into the unique challenges of cloud-based development, how LocalStack provides a faster alternative, and why speed in the development cycle—what they call “product velocity”—is crucial for innovation in tech.Glenn also explores why Notable Capital led LocalStack’s Series A funding and what makes LocalStack stand out in the crowded cloud development space.Key Topics Discussed:How LocalStack’s local cloud emulation tool saves time and cost for developersLocalStack’s journey from an open-source project to an enterprise-grade productGerta and Waldemar’s backgrounds and what led them to build LocalStackThe future of cloud development and how LocalStack plans to expand and innovateRESOURCESLearn more about Notable Capital: www.notablecap.comLearn more about LocalStack: www.localstack.cloudCONNECTConnect with Glenn Solomon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennsolomon/ Follow Glenn Solomon on X: https://x.com/glennsolomonConnect with Gerta Sheganaku on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerta-sheganaku/Follow Gerta Sheganaku on X: https://x.com/Sheg_GeConnect with Waldemar Hummer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whummer/Follow Waldemar Hummer on X: https://x.com/w_hummerProduced by Notable CapitalMusic by Gus Culpo

In this episode of Founder Real Talk, Glenn Solomon and Hans Tung welcome the Founder and CEO of Jam, Dani Grant. Jam is helping 150k builders fix bugs faster, trusted by 32 of the Fortune 100. The conversation explores Dani's journey from being a product manager at Cloudflare to founding Jam, the challenges of being a first-time CEO, and the role of AI in shaping the future of software development. They also discuss how to approach developers as a customer and the launch of Dev Starter Pack, a multi-company initiative aimed at supporting aspiring founders by making it easier to get started. KEY TAKEAWAYS: - Fostering Efficient Collaboration: Jam accelerates communication between product and engineering teams, drawing inspiration from Dani Grant's experience at Cloudflare, while AI integration is a focus for future tools. - Empathy and Community in Leadership: Dani emphasizes empathy in product development, highlights the importance of community in developer-focused companies, and leads by empowering her team while balancing control and trust. - How Users Inform the Product Roadmap: How patience and user feedback are critical to reaching product-market-fit and how users can inspire your next great product idea. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Jam and Its Impact 02:25 Dani Grant's Journey and the Birth of Jam 05:47 The Dev Starter Pack: A Collaborative Initiative 08:41 AI's Role in Shaping Software Development 10:18 Building a Developer Community 15:54 Challenges of Being a First-Time CEO 19:56 Finding Product-Market Fit 21:36 Leadership Style and Team Dynamics 33:45 Commercialization Plans and Future Directions RESOURCES Learn more about Notable Capital: www.notablecap.com Learn more about Jam: https://jam.dev/ CONNECT Connect with Glenn Solomon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennsolomon/ Follow Glenn Solomon on Twitter: https://x.com/glennsolomon Connect with Hans Tung on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hans-tung/ Follow Hans Tung on Twitter: https://x.com/hanstung Connect with Dani Grant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danigrant/ Follow Dani Grant on Twitter: https://x.com/thedanigrant Produced by Saschi Productions Music by Gus Culpo

In a world where enterprises are moving faster than ever to adopt generative AI solutions, Patronus AI offers solutions to scalably and reliably catch mistakes and evaluate the performance of large language models (LLMs). In this episode of Founder Real Talk, host Glenn Solomon and guest host Dan Cahana sit down with AI visionaries and Patronus AI co-founders Anand Kannappan and Rebecca Qian to explore their journey from CS students at the University of Chicago to AI leadership roles at Meta and the reasons they felt compelled to start Patronus after recognizing the need for robust evaluation tools following the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. Anand and Rebecca illuminate the challenges enterprises face in adopting AI and the ways they’ve built Patronus to mitigate challenges like hallucinations and brand alignment. Against the backdrop of rapid AI adoption at large companies, the founders share their vision for creating the enterprise standard for unbiased, independent evaluations. KEY TAKEAWAYS 1. AI Visionaries: Anand and Rebecca's extensive experience in AI and machine learning, including their time at Meta and the University of Chicago, laid the foundation for Patronus. 2. Day -1 for AI: The founders see AI adoption as still being in the very early stages, describing it as "Day -1." Large companies are moving faster than ever to adopt AI technologies but face challenges in navigating the rapidly evolving landscape. 3. Solving Critical AI Issues: Patronus addresses the challenges of LLMs, such as hallucinations, unexpected behavior, and brand misalignments, making AI deployment safer and more reliable for enterprises. 4. API-First Approach: Patronus's API-first solution allows for seamless integration into various parts of the tech stack, offering flexibility and scalability for real-time and offline use cases. 5. Enterprise Adoption: The rapid adoption of AI by enterprises, driven by the need for reliability and safety, highlights the importance and urgency of Patronus's solutions. 6. Future of AI: Patronus describes “Scalable oversight" and how humans will learn to supervise increasingly intelligent AI systems RESOURCES • Learn more about Notable Capital: www.notablecap.com • Learn more about Patronus AI: https://www.patronus.ai/ CONNECT • Connect with Glenn Solomon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennsolomon/ • Follow Glenn Solomon on Twitter: https://x.com/glennsolomon • Connect with Dan Cahana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dancahana/ • Follow Dan Cahana on Twitter: https://x.com/dan_cahana • Connect with Anand Kannappan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anandnkannappan/ • Follow Anand Kannappan on Twitter: https://x.com/anandnk24 • Connect with Rebecca Qian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaqian/ • Follow Rebecca Qian on Twitter: https://x.com/rebeccatqian Produced by Saschi Productions Music by Gus Culpo CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro and Introductions 5:00 What does Patronus do? 6:55 What’s been some of the surprises in AI? 10:00 The Patronus Product 12:15 How are customers using Patronus? 15:27 Why is an API-first approach important? 16:45 How did you know this was the right place to focus? 19:40 Large companies of the world are moving faster than ever 26:40 Into the Future: What will you look for to know that AI has been successful? 29:00 How do customers plan to deploy this type of technology? 32:00 AI Predictions 35:00 What motivates the Patronus founders? 36:40 What advice would you give to founders looking to start a company in the AI field?

In this episode of Founder Real Talk, Glenn Solomon welcomes the team from Coder, including CEO Rob Whiteley and technical co-founders Ammar Bandukwala and Kyle Carberry. They discuss Coder’s journey from its inception, the company’s product pivots, and its growth trajectory. Listeners will gain insights into how Coder enables developers to write code directly in the cloud, enhancing productivity and security. They’ll also learn about the strategic decisions behind Coder's open-source approach, the challenges faced, and the recent successful $35 million funding round. KEY TAKEAWAYS 1. Shift to Cloud Development: Coder allows developers to write code natively in the cloud, improving productivity and security. This shift is akin to moving from old-school word processors to modern office suites. 2. Open Source Evolution: The company pivoted from a consumer-focused SaaS application to an open-source project, resulting in the popular Code Server and later the Coder platform, which supports team-based remote development. 3. Product Market Fit and Customer Adoption: Coder has achieved significant traction with large enterprises and tech companies by providing a product that enhances developer productivity while maintaining security. 4. Strategic Leadership Changes: Bringing in Rob Whiteley as CEO and Josh Epstein as CRO helped Coder focus on large enterprises, leveraging their expertise in go-to-market strategies. 5. Future Growth and Vision: Coder's recent $35 million funding round will support further development and expansion. The company aims to capitalize on opportunities in both the VDI market and the emerging generative AI tools sector. Tune in to hear how Coder's innovative approach is reshaping software development and their plans for the future. RESOURCES • Learn more about Notable Capital: www.notablecap.com • Learn more about Coder: www.coder.com CONNECT • Connect with Glenn Solomon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glennsolomon/ • Follow Glenn Solomon on Twitter: https://x.com/glennsolomon Produced by Saschi Productions Music by Gus Culpo CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Coder and its Founders 02:54 Evolution of Coder's Product and Business Model 05:07 The Decision to Build Coder as an Open Source Company 08:14 Building Code Server and Transitioning to Coder 10:23 The Role of Open Source in Coder's Growth 13:16 Justification for Coder in Different Customer Segments 15:20 Bringing in a CEO and Building a Strong Culture 20:43 Building the Go-to-Market Team and Strategy 22:28 Future Opportunities in the Cloud Development Market 26:40 Recent Fundraise and Milestones for Coder 29:20 Critical Milestones and Innovations for Coder 31:30 Rob's Biggest Learning as a First-Time CEO

Adam Bain is a co-founder and managing partner at 01 Advisors, a venture and advisory firm helping founders go from building a product to building a company. In this episode, Adam highlights the similarities between his storytelling roots as a journalist and how he now backs founders as an investor. Drawing on lessons learned as Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer pre- and post-IPO, Adam also shares how those key traits—intellectual curiosity, hustle, and resilience—shape the way he supports startup founders today.

Arie Zilberstein is the CEO and co-founder of Gem, a startup that’s building a Cloud Detection and Response platform for security operations teams. In this episode, Arie recalls how his experience in the Israel Defense Forces not only shaped his outlook but also introduced him to his future co-founders: CTO Ron Konigsberg and VP of Product Ofir Brukner. Together, they’re changing the way that organizations identify and stop attacks in the cloud. Tune in for Arie’s thoughts on the technology (and psychology) of managing incident response, how Gem is leveraging generative artificial intelligence, why he believes in distributed teams, and more. This episode is co-hosted by Oren Yunger, Managing Partner at GGV Capital.

CEO Tony Holdstock-Brown and CTO Dan Farrelly are the co-founders of Inngest, a startup that’s building a serverless, event-driven workflow platform to help developers create better apps with simpler, more intuitive tools. The duo reflects on the engineering career paths that ultimately led them to meeting in a co-working space in New York City, plus hear what shifts in technology are setting the stage for Inngest, what surprising customer feedback is shaping the platform, and what opportunities lie ahead. This episode is co-hosted by GGV investor Dan Cahana.

Nicole Perlroth is an advisor to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the bestselling author of the 2021 book This is How They Tell Me The World Ends, a groundbreaking in-depth exploration of the global cyber arms race. Prior to that, she spent a decade as the lead cybersecurity, digital espionage and sabotage reporter at the New York Times. She’s now building her new early-stage venture fund, Silver Buckshot Ventures, which she describes as “a mission fund backing next-generation cybersecurity startups that, together, take out every tool in an attacker’s arsenal.” Fighting cyber crime requires collaboration and multiple approaches. Nicole shares stories of how she fell into the cybersecurity beat, her advisory work with the DOJ, some of the challenges with cybersecurity work, and her thoughts about how Silver Buckshot Ventures can help.

Dani Grant is the co-founder and CEO of Jam.dev, a developer tool that allows for faster communication between product and engineering about bugs and fixes. While working at Cloudflare as a product manager, Dani and her eventual co-founder Mohd Irtefa dealt with frustrating debugging experiences first-hand, and came up with a product solution to help developers, engineers, designers and product managers can capture screenshots and development blocks in one click. Today, Jam has captured the hearts of huge clients like Unilever, Staples, T-Mobile, and Dell. Dani shares the importance of tracking user retention, iterating your way to total product market fit, and more.

Idan Tendler is the Senior Vice President of Application Security at Palo Alto Networks, as well as the chairman and co-founder of Place-IL, a nonprofit tech initiative. Idan discusses his previous cybersecurity analytics startup, Fortscale (later acquired by RSA Security), and some key lessons he learned from his experience building the company. Before Fortscale, Idan founded Bridgecrew, a company that helps developers better secure their cloud environment. With the goal of to making developers love security—a seemingly impossible task—Bridgecrew built an open-source product called Checkov, which allowed the company to get millions of developers to use their product. Today, Idan is also busy building Place-IL, a non-profit initiative that helps connect immigrants to Israel with job opportunities in the country's tech industry.

Rich Waldron is the CEO and co-founder of Tray.io, a company he founded with his two best friends. This is the second time we're talking to Rich on Founder Real Talk, make sure to check out his episode from 2019! Software has been around for a long time, and in many different forms. On the waves of cloud adoption and digital transformation, it's more important than ever for companies to make technology accessible to their employees. Tray.io users in any department can use its automation platform to transform fragmented processes into powerful business outcomes. Rich talks about Tray's latest $40 million Series C extension, product and growth plans, and more.

Kishore Gopalakrishna, co-founder and CEO of StarTree, created a solution to a database problem with his co-worker and eventual co-founder Xiang Fu while working at LinkedIn. At the time, LinkedIn was debuting its now-popular feature called Who's Viewed Your Profile, which required the ability to slice and dice massive amounts of data in real time. Kishore and Xiang developed what they called Apache Pinot, a real-time distributed analytical processing data store used to deliver scalable real-time analytics with very low latency. The pair went on to found their open source company, StarTree, in 2019 to build a commercial version of Apache Pinot. The analytics provided by its technology are increasingly essential for all kinds of business decision makers, and the company's quickly emerged as a leader in serving up real-time user-facing analytics at very low latency—for millions. In this episode, Kishore talks about the solutions StarTree provides, its key relationship with the developer community and the roadmap for the company, which just announced a $47 million series B led by GGV, with participation from investor existing investors, Bain and CRV as well as new investor Sapphire Ventures.

Sid Sijbrandij is the CEO of GitLab Inc., the one DevOps platform that allows teams to collaborate, create, and deliver software in a single application. Before founding GitLab Inc. in 2012, he worked on recreational submarines and taught himself to code, going on to work at the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security, where he did version control software around lawmaking. GitLab Inc. was founded on Sid’s love of programming and a desire to create an open-core company. Fully remote from day one, GitLab Inc. is one of the largest companies to operate this way, with more than 1,700 employees across 65 countries. In this episode, Sid talks about open source, his community, and company transparency, along with the GitLab Inc.’s recent IPO—and what it means for the future.

Nikita Shamgunov is the CEO of Neon, a new company building the next generation serverless Postgres database. Nikita got his PhD in St. Petersburg and worked as an engineer at Microsoft and Facebook before going on to co-found SingleStore, an analytical database company. At SingleStore, Nikita realized the massive size of the transaction databases market and the ubiquity of Postgres, the popular open-source database, all of which led him to found Neon. Neon separates the storage and compute functions to create a truly affordable and compelling cloud native Postgres. In this episode, Nikita talks to us about working with his co-founders Stas and Heikki, incubating Neon at Khosla Ventures (where Nikita is a partner), and the implications of separating compute and storage.

Ryan Johson is the co-founder and CEO of Culdesac, which is working to build the first car-free city in the United States. After turning down M.I.T. and dropping out of Harvard, he chose to learn from the executives at Opendoor before co-founding Culdesac in 2018. Ryan has traveled to over 60 countries, but after visiting pedestrian and cyclist-friendly cities like Budapest and Amsterdam, Ryan was inspired to create a new city from scratch. Culdesac's first neighborhood, Culdesac Tempe, is currently being built in Arizona. The neighborhood opens later this year and will have 1000 residents on 17 acres. Residents receive a suite of mobility benefits, including free access to light rail, street cars, and buses. In this episode, Ryan talks to us about building infrastructure from the ground up and how Culdesac provides people with life at their front door.

Bruce Felt is the CFO of Domo and a long-time friend of GGV Capital with a history that predates SaaS since he founded Renaissance Software in the late 1980s. With a well-rounded experience in finance, Bruce became the CFO for six companies, taking them through IPOs or M&As before bringing his expertise to the Domo team in 2014. Bruce faced his biggest challenge during his time as the CFO of SuccessFactors in 2007 during the financial crisis, and the company’s non-stop growth came to a grinding halt, share prices dropped, and cuts were made at the highest levels. Although SaaS was still new, Bruce convinced investors and analysts that SuccessFactors was poised to grow exponentially whenever the market was ready. He was right, and the company saw 10X growth over the next few quarters. Since joining Domo, Bruce has been able to pull from his playbook to successfully navigate the recent financial crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and is well-prepared for whatever may come next. Check out the chart on what a world-class financial organization should look like: https://bit.ly/3xYCvPe

Steve Harvey is the CEO of BitSight, the cyber security platform used by nearly a quarter of the Fortune 500 companies and multiple government agencies around the world. With a background in risk assessment, Steve spent 13 years at the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and became the CEO of BitSight in 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic. Because so many businesses were forced to go digital and adopt the work-from-home model, cyber-attacks became more prevalent than ever. Steve certainly had his work cut out for him, but in two short years made multiple acquisitions and received a $250M investment from Moody’s. With over 2,400 customers, BitSight has quickly become the most widely used security ratings service in the world and is showing no signs of slowing down. GGV is an incredibly proud investor in BitSight, with our own Glenn Solomon sitting on the board since 2016. In this episode, Steve talks about removing disruption at the highest level and entering a well-established company at its tipping point.

Zeev Farbman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lightricks, which puts high-quality video and editing apps into the hands of average mobile phone users. Zeev immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union at the age of 12 and would go on to meet his future co-founders during his military service. He pursued a degree in computer science at the Hebrew University with the plan of becoming a tenured professor, but that quickly changed when Zeev and his new friends created their first app, Facetune, and founded Lightricks in 2013. While they set an initial goal of generating just $100,000 with their new app, Lightricks now has a $1.8B valuation. Facetune was released the same year the word “selfie” was added to the dictionary and became one of the most downloaded mobile apps almost overnight. Since then, Lightricks has pivoted to the content creator economy, building multiple app suites and toolkits, and recently found an equity partner in Tik Tok’s D’Amelio family. In this episode, Zeev walks us through his real-time decision-making and why we should all take “the shower test”.

Guillermo Rauch is the Founder and CEO of Vercel, a cloud platform provider used to develop, preview, and ship frontend websites and applications using their Next.js open-source framework. Originally from Argentina, Guillermo taught himself JavaScript at just eleven years old and has developed multiple open-source libraries since then. He would go on to co-found LearnBoost and Cloudup, both of which were acquired by Automattic in 2013. Since the founding of Vercel in 2015, the company has already achieved Unicorn status, with GGV being a proud investor and having led a very successful $150M Series D round. Vercel now services more than 25,000 customers worldwide, including major companies like Uber and Facebook. In this episode, Guillermo talks about using open-source software to build communities and the importance of maintaining a developer-oriented approach. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Investor, Oren Yunger.

Matan Bar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Melio, the B2B online payment service that allows small businesses to manage payments and receivables digitally. While consumers have been using peer-to-peer payment services for years, many small businesses were still sending checks in the mail, waiting days or even weeks for payments to go through. Now, Melio helps save precious time while increasing cash flow. The need for Melio exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the company raised $144M in just one year. Before founding Melio, Matan worked with PayPal and co-founded The Gifts Project, which was quickly acquired by eBay in 2011. Melio may be Matan’s first venture as a CEO, but the company was already given a $4B valuation after just three years and now has offices in Tel Aviv, New York, and Denver. With an incredibly promising future ahead of him, Matan continues to build both a winning service and a winning team.