Martin Mao is the founder of Chronosphere, a modern observability platform focused on cloud native architecture and fine grained control of observability data. Mao tried his hand at founding various startups during his college years, including an Australian facebook competitor, before joining big tech and working at companies like Microsoft, AWS, and Uber. At Uber, Mao was the manager of its in house observability team which developed M3, an open source prometheus compatible metrics backend. This is the same backend that powers Chronosphere.

In today's episode, we talk about:

* early years building an Australian facebook competitor

* skipping seed and raising a series A with an 80-page business plan

* the challenges of cloud native architectures: more data, more cost, more issues

* understanding actual market needs vs theoretical projections

* thoughts on AI in observability

Where to find Martin:

* LinkedIn

* Twitter

Closing Questions

* advice to current founders: Understand your motivations and leverage the founder community for support.

* when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: humble founders who recognize the role of luck and don’t claim their approach is the only way. Successful companies are those where former employees look back with pride and joy about their time there

* how do you recharge:

* any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact:

Ask or Offer

* ask: Introduction to talented individuals, especially those looking to join a tech company on the go-to-market side or technical side.

* offer: If you’re dealing with observability cost or effectiveness problems, Martin would love to chat, although no specific offers like a discount or coupon are provided.

Referenced

* Chronosphere

* M3