Scaling DevTools “I met my cofounder while gaming” - CEO of Northflank, Will Stewart
Dec 10, 2025
Will Stewart, co-founder and CEO of Northflank, shares his journey from gaming to creating a developer platform that seamlessly runs complex workloads on Kubernetes. He recounts meeting his co-founder online through gaming and their unique approach to fundraising remotely. Stewart emphasizes the importance of production readiness over speed, and discusses how customer feedback shapes product development. He also dives into the balance of shipping features quickly while managing bugs, ensuring a consistent developer experience across all platforms.
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Post‑Commit Platform That Speaks Kubernetes
- Northflank targets post‑commit lifecycle: build, deploy, release, autoscale and disaster recovery inside customers' VPCs.
- It runs on any Kubernetes cluster and also offers a hosted PaaS to let teams self‑serve then graduate to their own VPC.
Cofounder Bond Born In Gaming
- Will Stewart met his co‑founder Fred playing multiplayer games and they collaborated online for over a decade before meeting in person.
- They transitioned from gaming servers to building developer infrastructure together, which evolved into Northflank.
First In‑Person Meeting Fueled The Startup
- Will used his overdraft to take the Eurostar to Paris to meet Fred for the first time after years of remote collaboration.
- They joined an accelerator, raised angel funding, and formally started working full time on Northflank.