Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders S11 E28: Hojjat Jafarpour, DeltaStream
Dec 9, 2025
Hojjat Jafarpour, Founder and CEO of DeltaStream with a PhD in databases and an early engineer at Confluent, shares insights on simplifying cloud-based stream processing. He discusses his journey from building kSQL to creating DeltaStream's serverless platform. Hojjat emphasizes the importance of solutions over mere technology and highlights features like real-time materialized views. He also reflects on recruitment challenges, scalability decisions, and the importance of early market feedback. Exciting plans for integrating real-time data with AI agents are also on the horizon!
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From ksql To A Serverless Vision
- Hojjat describes building ksql at Confluent as the seed for DeltaStream and how early design choices taught him lessons.
- Those lessons motivated him to remove infrastructure complexity by starting a serverless streaming platform.
Favor Cloud-Only For Simplicity
- Build cloud-only products to avoid least-common-denominator compromises between cloud and on-prem.
- Use proven engines like Apache Flink under the hood and hide operational complexity from users.
Expose Simple APIs, Hide Infra
- DeltaStream modeled itself after S3 and Snowflake by exposing a simple usage API and hiding infra details.
- This separation lets users focus on queries while the platform handles scaling and provisioning.
