Samuel Colvin - the creator of Pydantic - the most popular data validation library for Python. Used by literally everyone (Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, NVIDIA, even the NSA). He shares the story behind his startup Logfire which just raised $12.5m from Sequoia.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

Key takeaways:
- You can just build a different product to your open source project and leverage your brand
- Quality of product matters a LOT (if you can build a popular open source project, can probably build a quality paid product)
- Really helps to be part of a movement. Hard to predict but Pydantic benefited from two (types and LLMs)
- GitHub stars are a vanity metric compared to download numbers

Links:
- Pydantic
- Logfire
- Samuel Colvin

Chapters
00:00 The Genesis of Pydantic
02:46 The Evolution of Software Development
06:02 Building a Successful Open Source Library
08:52 The Impact of Community and Adoption
11:51 Metrics of Success in Open Source
15:08 Transitioning from Pydantic to LogFire
17:59 The Vision Behind LogFire
20:50 The Connection Between Pydantic and LogFire
24:05 Navigating the Challenges of Building a Startup
26:56 The Future of Observability and Databases

P.s. thanks to my friend Abeed for making the episode happen!

#159 : What is Functional Patterns? with Brandon Podmore