Claim OwnershipOpen Source Startup Podcast
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The leading podcast on how to build a successful open source company.
Learn from the founders of HashiCorp, Chronosphere, Vercel, MongoDB, DBT, mobile.dev and more!
Learn from the founders of HashiCorp, Chronosphere, Vercel, MongoDB, DBT, mobile.dev and more!
168 Episodes
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Tobie Morgan Hitchcock is the Co-Founder & CEO of SurrealDB, the next generation serverless cloud database for modern applications. Their open source database, also called surrealdb, has 30K stars on GitHub. SurrealDB has raised $26M from investors including FirstMark and Georgian. In this episode, we dig into:Taking a broad vs. niche approach to building a new databaseHow coming from a non-traditional DB background helped Tobie take a new, first principles approachHow graph databases best reflect how humans think The importance of design for infra products How enterprises vs. SMBs / individual users view their value How open source helped them develop trust with large companiesPlanning out their cloud offering
Misha Bragin is the Founder & CEO of NetBird, the open source zero trust networking platform that allows companies and individuals to create secure private networks without the hassle of corporate networks. Their open source, also called netbird, has over 12K stars on GitHub and connects devices into a secure WireGuard-based overlay network. NetBird has raised $4M from investors including InReach Ventures. In this episode, we discuss: Pivoting away from their initial hardware-based approach How the growth in remote employees has driven demand Why VPNs needed to be reinvented Why they use the WireGuard protocol What's different about their approach vs. Tailscale Managing big and small users at the same time Why most technical founders should hire a technical marketer early
Kevin Wang is Founder & CEO of Fossa, the product security platform that automates compliance & security across open source third party code, suppliers, and tools. In this episode, we discuss: Where Kevin's interest in open source started Learning to work with big enterprises The shift from scanning to fixing Repositioning from an engineering to security platform Resisting the market pressure to push hard into AI
Max Stoiber is Co-Founder & CEO of Stellate, the GraphQL edge platformrecently acquired by Shopify.In this episode, we discuss:The Stellate journey from idea to initial traction to acquisitionThe market size (and limitations) for GraphQL, APIs, and DevToolsHow he ran a top-notch acquisition process for StellateWhy startups fail
Florian Forster is Co-Founder & CEO of Zitadel, the cloud security platform aiming to build the future of identity and access management. Their open source project, also called zitadel, provides identity infrastructure and has 10K stars on GitHub.
In this episode, we dig into:
The benefits of having an open source auth vendor
Authentication vs. authorization
Building the "GitLab for identity"
Why customization matters for an auth product
Demand for self-hosting options for auth
Appealing to developers and security teams
Viraj Mehta is the Co-Founder & CTO of TensorZero which is an open-source infrastructure platform that creates a feedback loop for optimizing LLM applications. Their open source project helps users turn production data into smarter, faster, and cheaper models.
In this episode, we dig into:
The benefits of feedback loops for LLMs
Helping their users choose the best underlying models for their applications
"Recipes" as a potential monetization path
The most common optimizations for LLM-based apps
Educating users on what's possible with LLMs
Nathan Sobo is the Founder of Zed, the next-gen code editor that enables high-performance collaboration - powered by AI. Open source zed has 53K Stars on GitHub and is used by engineers at Vercel, Apple, Anthropic, and GitLab. Prior to founding Zed, Nathan created the editor Atom at GitHub which reached 1M+ active users.
Zed has raised from investors including Redpoint and Root Ventures.
In this episode, we dive into Nathan's deep history with code editors including the widely adopted GitHub editor Atom, the decision to make Zed open source (and the massive 10x growth that came from it), how AI changed their trajectory, why collaboration is core to becoming the defacto editor, anchoring on performance and responsiveness, how they're thinking about the commercial side of Zed & more!
Akshay Agrawal is the Founder & CEO of Marimo, the next generation Python notebook. Their open source reactive notebook for Python, also called marimo, has almost 9K stars on GitHub.
Marimo has raised $5M from investors including AIX Ventures.
In this episode, we dig into Akshay's love of building developer tools for data teams, his journey from PhD to founder, what a great developer experience means for data teams, why reproducibility was a key problem for them to solve, how he thinks about monetization when other notebooks like Jupyter don't focus on making money & more!
Vlad Matsiiako is CEO & Co-Founder of Infisical, the open source secrets management platform. Their open source project, also called infisical, has 16K stars on GitHub and helps users sync secrets across their teams and infrastructure.
Infisical has raised $3M from investors including Gradient and YC.
In this episode, we dig into their path from closed to open source, their big user wins (including government users), the importance of reliability for products in and around this category, the organic growth that came from their community, their AI strategy & more!
Karthik Ranganathan is Founder & CTO of Yugabyte, the PostgreSQL-compatible distributed database for cloud native applications. Their open source database, also called yugabyte, has almost 10K stars on GitHub.
Yugabyte has raised almost $300M and sits at a $1.3B valuation. They've raised from investors including Sapphire Ventures, Lightspeed, and 8VC.
In this episode, we dig into the enormous interest Yugabyte had at the onset as transactional databases were due for innovation, the key architecture choices they made, the initial launch, key early customer wins, the importance of positioning as a distributed SQL company, their evolving open source strategy, building alongside the Postgres community, the decision to bring on an outside CEO & much more!
Andrew Firestone is CEO and Knut Sveidqvist is CTO of Mermaid Chart, the open source text-based diagraming software platform.
The mermaid project has over 70K stars on GitHub and is an open source diagramming and charting tool.
Mermaid Chart has raised $7.5M from investors including Open Core Ventures.
In this episode, we dig into the mermaid project's 8 year journey, going from side project to company, working with GitLab founder Sid Sijbrandij to bring Andrew in as CEO & more!
Atai Barkai is Co-Founder & CEO of Copilotkit, the platform to build production-grade AI Copilots 10x faster. Their open source project, also called copilotkit, has almost 13K stars on GitHub and provides React UI + elegant infrastructure for AI Copilots, in-app AI agents, AI chatbots, and AI-powered Textareas.
In this episode, we dig into Copilotkit's incredible open source growth trajectory, the importance of tutorials and templates to grow community in a new product area, understanding all of the user types and use cases people were using their open source for, competing with vertical copilots, the future of copilots and when AI becomes more autonomous & more!
Lauren Long is Co-Founder & CTO of Ampersand, the developer platform for native product integrations.
Ampersand has raised $5M from investors including Matrix, Base Case Capital, Flex Capital, and 2.12 Angels.
In this episode, we dig into their differentiation as a "code-first" product, why they focused on the GTM vertical to start (Salesforce was the first integration), why their CLI is open source but their orchestration layer is closed source, how being transparent on pricing has been a differentiator for them & much more!
Philippe Noël is Co-Founder & CEO of ParadeDB, the modern Elasticsearch alternative built on Postgres. They're purpose-built for heavy, real-time workloads and their open source project, also called paradedb, has over 6K stars on GitHub.
ParadeDB has raised $2M from investors including General Catalyst & YC.
In this episode, we dig into the benefits of connecting search directly to the database (ie. no ETL), the types of users / use cases that really benefit from ParadeDB (e-commerce, FinTech, etc.), the decision to focus on Postgres, making adoption super easy, Philippe's learnings as a second-time founder & more!
Eric Futoran is Co-Founder & CEO of Embrace, the mobile observability platform built on OpenTelemetry.
Embrace has raised almost $80M from investors including NEA, Greycroft & Eniac.
In this episode, we dig into the creation of mobile observability as a category and how Embrace helped evangelize it, what makes mobile observability unique, why they open sourced their SDKs, how aligning with OpenTelemetry changed their trajectory, the difference between having product-market-fit and GTM-market-fit, shifting from just focusing on mobile teams to mobile + DevOps teams & more!
Ivan Burazin is Co-Founder & CEO of Daytona, the open source developer environment management platform. Their open source manager, also called daytona, has 9K stars on GitHub.
Daytona has raised $5M from investors including Upfront Ventures.
In this episode, we dig into Daytona's plan to be the fastest growing cloud development environment, how consistent and frequent content has become a huge driver of their growth, how bringing successful DevTool founders as angels helped with initial credibility and growth, thinking about the user and buyer's motivations, open source license decisions and the future of open source licenses (MIT + Apache are the only true open source licenses in their perspective) & more!
Steven Tey is Founder & CEO of Dub.co, the open source link management infrastructure platform for modern marketing teams. Their open source project, also called dub, has almost 18K stars on GitHub and is used by teams at companies like Vercel, Raycast, and Perplexity.
In this episode, we dig into starting Dub.co as a side project and how it ultimately turned into a company, their initial positioning as a Bitly alternative, their focus on great design and how that shows up in all parts of their product and marketing, how analytics unlocked much higher ACVs and value for customers, how getting a top Hackernews post helped drive early momentum, their vision to become an end-to-end attribution platform & more!
Lukas Schulte is Co-Founder and CEO of SDF Labs (Semantic Data Fabric), the data transformation layer and query engine platform. They're an open core company powered by the Apache Data Fusion query engine.
SDF Labs has raised $9M from investors including RTP Global and Two Sigma Ventures.
In this episode, we dig into the complications and pain points with the Modern Data Stack, shifting left with data (ie. moving more over to the client), competing with DBT by adding a query engine, why building in Rust was important, why their CLI is closed source, the importance of a strong partner strategy as a data company & more!
Sameer Al-Sakran is CEO of Metabase, the open-source analytics and business intelligence platform. Their open source project, also called metabase, has over 38K stars on GitHub.
Metabase has raised $51M from investors including NEA, Insight and Expa.
In this episode, we dig into the company's 10 year journey, what it means to have a "developer friendly analytics platform", eliminating the friction with BI by making Metabase super fast to get started with, keeping the product simple, juggling short-term execution with their long-term vision & more!
Stanislas Polu is Co-Founder of Dust, the platform for companies to create and operate custom AI assistants for a range of use cases.
Dust has raised $20M from investors including Sequoia.
In this episode, we dig into the diverse set of users and use cases for Dust, how Dust spreads within an organization, their unique approach to open source, competing with vertical AI agents, augmenting humans instead of replacing them, predictions on the future of the agent space & more!
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