Open Source Startup Podcast

Nikita 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 s...

Anh-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...

Tommy 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 potenti...

Mark 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 an...

Will 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 comp...

Oskari 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 includin...

Mike 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 discu...

Graham 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.

Pablo 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 i...

Maayan 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 w...

Leland 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 e...

Shanea 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!

Max 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 op...

Sam 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 rathe...

Alex 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 t...

Ovais 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-f...

Dan 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...

Rajoshi 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...

Glauber 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...

Sourabh 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...

Doris 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!

Adam 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.

Brad 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!

Armon 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...

Daniela 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 to...