Open Source Startup Podcast

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' experience building a Clubhouse competitor...

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 the original project at Netflix to forking the...

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 experience & productivity, their early focus on...

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 deep 1:1 relationships with their community...

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 for, crucible moments for the company (ie....

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 (speed, approachability, etc.), learnings from...

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 Uncorrelated Ventures. In this episode, we discuss why ob...

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 into the story behind Metaphor's crea...

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 project, the pros & cons of starting with a br...

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, and Tiger. In this episode, we discuss the imp...

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, shifting focus from AWS only to all major cloud p...

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-commerce and IoT, Grafbase "Launch Weeks...

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 with the Open Core business model, HashiCorp&...

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 building the Terramate community alongside the Terr...

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 importance of ease of use and building fo...

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 episode, we discuss how they took a first pri...

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 for authorization called Polar ), how they d...

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 principles to the data space, what a great developer...

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 companies will be likely early adopters, the...

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 trajectory, their community-based approa...

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 followed by explosive adoption), what a great deve...

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 potential with the project, finding growing commu...

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 sourced their research environment, the importa...