André Eriksson is Founder & CEO of Encore, the backend development platform for startups building event-driven and distributed systems. This is Andre's second time on the Open Source Startup Podcast (first episode here) and, in this episode, we dig into their GTM strategy, why it was important for them to add Typescript support (in addition to Go),…

Avery Pennarun is Co-Founder & CEO of Tailscale, the Wireguard-based VPN that reimagines secure, private networks. Tailscale has raised $115M from investors including Heavybit, Accel, CRV, and Insight. In this episode, we dig into what caused the team to reimagine zero trust security at the networking level, why they focus both on individual develo…

Yingjun Wu is Founder of RisingWave, a new open source stream processing database. RisingWave has raised $40M from investors including Yunqi Partners. In this episode, we discuss RisingWave's approach versus Apache Flink and other stream processing frameworks, why stream processing is important for real-time monitoring use cases, why they initially…

Andrew Hoh is Co-Founder of LastMile AI, the AI developer platform for engineering teams to productionize LLM applications. They take an "open periphery" stance on open source with projects like AIConfig to help developers build AI applications. LastMile AI has raised $10M from investors including Gradient, AME, Exceptional Capital, and Firsthand A…

Loris Degioanni is Founder & CTO of Sysdig, the observability and container security company behind the Falco and Sysdig open source projects. Both projects are widely adopted, with 7K GitHub Stars each. Sysdig is a $2.5B company that has raised over $700M from investors including Insight, Accel, Bain, DFJ, Goldman Sachs, Third Point & Permira. In …

Russ d'Sa is Founder of LiveKit, the real-time streaming audio, video, and data infrastructure platform for developers. Their open source project, also called livekit, provides the end-to-end stack for WebRTC and has over 6K stars on GitHub. In this episode, we dig into LiveKit's unique founding story with the idea coming from the founders' experie…

Jeu George is Co-Founder & CEO of Orkes, the orchestration engine based on the Conductor project. Conductor was originally created at Netflix but they have since discontinued support of the project. The team at Orkes has forked the project and is building a company around it. In this episode, we talk through the Conductor journey - from creating th…

Kyle Carberry is Founder & CTO of Coder, the self-hosted remote development platform. Their project, also called coder, enables users to provision remote development environments via Terraform and has over 6K Github Stars. In this episode, we dig into the evolution of the browser-based coding movement, how Coder massively improved developer experie…

Charlie Marsh is Founder & CEO of Astral, builders of next-gen python tooling. Their first project, ruff, is an extremely fast Python linter and code formatter written in Rust and has 22K GitHub Stars. In this episode, we dig into why they started with a linter, getting to 8.5M monthly downloads, the impact of building with Rust, how they developed…

Jeff Cross is Co-Founder & CEO of Nx, the build system for maintaining and scaling monorepos, both locally and on CI. Their project, also called nx, has over 20K stars on GitHub. Nx has raised $25M from investors including a16z & Nexus. In this episode, we discuss the benefits of using monorepos and the types of teams and codebases it works well fo…

Kyle Mathews is Co-Founder & CTO of Gatsby, the front-end web development platform. Their open source framework, GatsbyJS, is widely adopted with 55K GitHub Stars. In Feb 2023, Gatsby was acquired by Netlify. In this episode, we discuss how GatsbyJS was able to grow incredibly fast, what features matter most for front-end development frameworks (sp…

Pranay Prateek is Co-Founder of Signoz, the open source observability platform with OpenTelemetry-native traces, metrics, and logs. Their open source project, also called Signoz, has over 15K GitHub Stars and helps developers monitor their applications and troubleshoot problems. Signoz has raised $7M from investors including SignalFire and Uncorrel…

Mars Lan is Co-Founder and CTO of Metaphor, the modern data catalog that is described as the "Social Platform for Data." Metaphor was created by the founders of ⁠DataHub⁠ which is known as the leading open source metadata platform. Metaphor has raised over $10M from investors including Amplify, a16z, and Point72 Ventures. In this episode, we dig in…

Moses Guttmann is Co-Founder and CEO of ClearML, the end-to-end AI lifecycle platform for deep learning, machine learning, and Gen AI models. The company's project, also called clearml, provides experiment management, MLOps and data management capabilities and has 5K stars on GitHub. In this episode, we dig into the process of spinning out a projec…

Tianqi Chen is Co-Founder and Chief Technologist of OctoML, the compute infrastructure platform for tuning and running generative models in the cloud. OctoML was founded by the creators of Apache TVM, the machine learning compiler framework for CPUs, GPUs, and accelerators. OctoML has raised $132M from investors including Amplify, Addition, Madrona…

Toni de la Fuente is Founder of ProwlerPro, the cloud security platform built on top of Prowler, the open source security tool that helps companies implement security best practices including assessments, audits, and scanning. In this episode, we dig into the importance of good documentation, the industry events that helped Prowler gain momentum, s…

Fredrik Björk is Founder & CEO of Grafbase, the API platform for developers to deploy high performance, scaleable GraphQL APIs. Grafbase has raised $7M+ from investors including Next47 and Uncorrelated Ventures. In this episode, we dig into what a “unified data layer” is and why it’s needed, how they found their early adopters in industries like e-…

Adam Jacob is CEO of DevOps platform System Initiative and Co-Founder of infrastructure automation platform Chef. This is Adam's second time on the Open Source Startup Podcast, and this episode is packed with learnings. We discuss the distribution benefits of open source and why some products should be open source and others should not, challenges …

Soren Martius is Co-Founder & CEO of Terramate, the infrastructure-as-code management platform that sits on top of Terraform. Their open source project, also called Terramate, has 3K GitHub stars and adds capabilities such as code generation, stacks, orchestration, change detection, and data sharing to Terraform. In this episode, we discuss buildin…

Linda Lian is Co-founder & CEO of Common Room, the community-led growth platform. Common Room has raised $53M from investors including Greylock and Index. In this episode, we discuss the DevRel role and Common Room's journey from being a DevRel tool to a GTM tool, how Common Room solves a top 3 problem for their users, and much more!…

Amr Awadallah is CEO of Vectara, the LLM search engine that's powered by users' own data. Amr was previously the Founder & CTO of Cloudera and brings many learnings from that experience to Vectara, including what to open source vs. keep proprietary. Vectara has raised $29M from investors including Race Capital. In this episode, we dig into the impo…

Yury Selivanov is the Co-founder & CEO of EdgeDB, the open-source database designed as a successor to SQL and the relational paradigm. Their open source graph-relational database, edgeDB, has a built-in migration system and a next-generation query language. EdgeDB has raised $19M from investors including Accel, Nava Ventures, and Pear VC. In this e…

Graham Neray is Co-founder & CEO of Oso, the authorization-as-a-service platform that created open source oso - a batteries-included framework for building authorization into applications. Oso has raised $26M from investors including Felicis and Sequoia. In this episode, we dig into the first thing Oso founders built (a programming language created…

Nick Schrock is Founder of Dagster Labs & Creator of Dagster - the open source orchestration platform for the development, production, and observation of data assets. Dagster Labs has raised just under $50M from investors including Sequoia, Index, and Georgian Partners. In this episode, we discuss how Dagster is bringing software engineering princi…

Paul Butler is the Founder of Drifting in Space, the company focused on making browser-based applications accessible to everyone. They've created Jamsocket, a platform for building applications with session backends, and Plane, the open-source server that powers it. In this episode, we dig into the future of browser-based tech and how industrial co…

Varun Mohan is Co-founder & CEO of Codeium, the AI-powered coding platform for developers. In this episode, we dig into competing with a behemoth like GitHub Copilot, how developing their own infrastructure has enabled incredible scale, building a 30K person community, and much more!

Pierre Burgy is Co-Founder & CEO of Strapi, the open source Node.js headless CMS. Their open source project has over 55K stars on GitHub and is 100% JavaScript, fully customizable, and built developer-first. Strapi has raised $45M from investors including CRV, Index, and Accel. In this episode, we discuss the project's origins and impressive growth…

Samuel Colvin is Founder of Pydantic, the wildly popular data validation framework and cloud services platform. Their open source Python library has over 15K GitHub Stars and millions of downloads per day. Pydantic has raised $4M from investors including Sequoia Capital and Partech. In this episode, we dig into Pydantic's growth curve (linear follo…

Hassy Veldstra is Founder of Artillery, the cloud-scale serverless load testing platform. The company's project, also called artillery, has almost 7K stars on GitHub. Artillery has raised over $2M from investors including YC. In this episode, we discuss building a company around your own pain point, early signals that there was strong company poten…

Kanjun Qiu is Cofounder & CEO of Generally Intelligent, the platform to develop general-purpose AI agents that can be safely deployed in the real world. Generally Intelligent has raised $20M from investors including the Astera Institute & YC. In this episode, we dig into the future for AI agents and where they fall short today, why they open source…

Paul Dix is Cofounder & CTO of open source time series data company InfluxData. The company's open source datastore, InfluxDB, has 26K stars on GitHub. InfluxData has raised over $200M from investors including Norwest, Battery, and Sapphire Ventures. In this episode, we dig into building the category of time series data, how an open source company'…

Shivansh Vij is Founder & CEO of Loophole Labs, the modern application delivery platform. They have a number of open source projects that provide primitives for modern development. In this episode, we dig into Loophole's projects around WASM and networking, their unique hiring process, learnings for ambitious open source founders & much more!…

Eliot 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 p…

Ben 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 w…

Quentin 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…

Robert 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 fo…

Hong 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…

Or 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 th…

Abby 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 ec…

Clément 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…

Dan 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 t…

Ry 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 …

Kyle 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 Insi…

Harjot 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 Ape…

Amjad 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 cod…

Guy 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 produ…

Ryan 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…

Douwe 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-c…

Shauli 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 d…

Ramiro 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…