In this installment, Apurva Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Responsive, shares insights from his journey in stream processing at LinkedIn and Confluent. He breaks down the evolution of stream processing from simple tasks to powering complex applications. Apurva clarifies the concept of 'real time,' emphasizing low latency over instant responses. He discusses the pitfalls of traditional databases in handling high-update rates and explains how Responsive innovates by decoupling state from compute to enhance efficiency and operational simplicity.