Grit The Central Nervous System for Modern Business | Confluent CEO Jay Kreps
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Sep 15, 2025 Jay Kreps, Co-founder and CEO of Confluent and a key creator of Apache Kafka, discusses the pivotal role of real-time data in modern business. He shares insights on how companies like Expedia and eBay leverage this technology as their 'central nervous system.' Kreps also addresses the reality behind the myth of AI-driven efficiency, highlighting the long journey to building transformative businesses. The conversation includes personal anecdotes about navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship, balancing work and life, and the evolving dynamics of tech leadership.
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Big Moves Take Time
- Big transformative companies take much longer to build than hype suggests and the world will change around you multiple times.
- Stay relevant by adapting across waves rather than expecting instant scale from trends like AI.
Speed Favors Frictionless Growth
- Rapid product-led growth favours frictionless sign-ups and apps that scale without heavy sales motion.
- Enterprise sales and large human teams inherently limit how fast revenue can scale.
Kafka Born As A Passion Project
- Jay built Kafka inside LinkedIn as a passion project that became an internal system and then open source.
- He left LinkedIn to start Confluent after seeing external demand and thousands of users on the open source project.