Karthik Ranganathan, Founder & CTO of Yugabyte, discusses his journey from engineer to entrepreneur. He shares insights into the challenges of innovating transactional databases and the importance of customer feedback. Karthik highlights Yugabyte's unique position as a distributed SQL company, its strategic approach to open source, and how community engagement has shaped its success. He also dives into the impactful decisions like adopting the Apache 2.0 license and integrating PostgreSQL capabilities, providing valuable lessons for budding founders.

Karthik Ranganathan, Founder of Yugabyte, discusses why engineers choose databases based on intuition, not just features. They explore the importance of prioritizing simplicity vs flexibility for database users. The conversation covers the evolution of open source databases, shifting priorities in choosing databases based on workload, and the significance of open source and managed services in technology evolution.