Paul Copplestone is the co-founder and CEO at Supabase, the “open source Firebase alternative for building web and mobile apps.” If you were wondering what that means or why you should prioritise a listen— in Paul’s words: “if you’re going to build your next startup, you’d probably choose us … and we’ll provide all the tools you need to get started: a Postgres database, authentication system, file storage… the works.”
Today, Supabase is prolific. One of the most commonly called out products by makers on Product Hunt; one of the most redeemed Y Combinator “perks” with nearly a third of the most recent YC batch using it; they've secured a place as back-end infrastructure of choice for many founders setting out to build AI-centric applications.
Paul has come a long way from his family farm near Kaikoura. Before Supabase, he co-founded South East Asian-based home-services startups ServisHero and Nimbus For Work, and participated in Entrepreneur First, Singapore. Today, he & co-founder Ant have raised $116M and lead a globally distributed company with 80 employees over 30+ countries. With their ambition and vision, it’s clear they’re just getting started.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
* Paul’s journey from NZ to Malaysia and now Singapore.
* Building and scaling Supabase as a globally distributed team.
* The impact of AI on software development, and what to use if you’re getting started today.
* Underrated benefits of open source for recruiting, growth, and how to think about product development.
Links:
Supabase:
* Supabase website: https://supabase.com/
* Supabase on Twitter/X (great follow) https://x.com/supabase
* $80M Series B announcement: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/10/supabase-raises-80m-series-b-for-its-open-source-firebase-alternative/
Paul:
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcopplestone/
* Twitter/X: https://x.com/kiwicopple
* Blog: https://paul.copplest.one/blog/ (so much good stuff in here)
* GitHub: https://github.com/kiwicopple
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(01:18) Paul’s origin story
(04:05) Founding ServisHero in Malaysia
(06:23) Joining the Entrepreneur First program
(08:58) Why founders should think about setting up their HQ in Singapore
(09:57) Founding Supabase
(11:36) The benefits of open source
(13:43) Insight into Supabase customers and how AI is changing the game
(15:33) How open source helps with recruiting
(18:18) Taking a “product led growth” approach to enterprise customers.
(21:12) When/how Supabase will “cross the chasm” as it matures into a enterprise customer base.
(22:19) How AI is changing devtools
(24:09) Paul’s angel investing thesis
(26:33) Thinking about companies like countries
(28:59) Paul’s favourite blog posts from his personal archive
(31:06) How we can be helpful to Paul!
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