Tobie Morgan Hitchcock, Co-founder and CEO of SurrealDB, discusses his innovative serverless cloud database that has gained 30K stars on GitHub. He highlights how his non-traditional background helped him redefine database creation from first principles. Tobie delves into the significance of open-source for building trust, the necessity of design in infrastructure products, and how integrating diverse database types can enhance user experience. He also balances customer feedback with strategic vision while navigating the challenges of startup marketing.

Misha Bragin, Founder & CEO of NetBird, shares his journey in creating a zero trust networking platform that simplifies secure access for remote users. He discusses the shift from hardware to software, driven by the surge in remote work. Misha explains why traditional VPNs are outdated and highlights the advantages of the WireGuard protocol. He also delves into the unique features of NetBird compared to Tailscale, and the importance of hiring a technical marketer early for technical founders. Insightful and engaging!

Kevin Wang, Founder and CEO of Fossa, shares his journey in the open source realm, emphasizing the need for tools that enhance compliance and security. He discusses the transformation from a scanning to a fixing approach in product security. Kevin highlights the challenges of fostering trust in enterprise sales and his resistance to push into AI despite market pressure. The conversation also addresses effective growth strategies for startups and the personal challenges of transitioning from founder to CEO, focusing on leadership alignment with core values.

Max Stoiber is Co-Founder & CEO of Stellate, the GraphQL edge platformrecently acquired by Shopify.In this episode, we discuss:The Stellate journey from idea to initial traction to acquisitionThe market size (and limitations) for GraphQL, APIs, and DevToolsHow he ran a top-notch acquisition process for StellateWhy startups fail

Florian Forster is Co-Founder & CEO of Zitadel, the cloud security platform aiming to build the future of identity and access management. Their open source project, also called zitadel, provides identity infrastructure and has 10K stars on GitHub. In this episode, we dig into: The benefits of having an open source auth vendor Authentication vs. authorization Building the "GitLab for identity" Why customization matters for an auth product Demand for self-hosting options for auth Appealing to developers and security teams

Viraj Mehta, Co-founder and CTO of TensorZero, discusses optimizing LLM applications through innovative feedback loops. He explains how these loops lead to smarter and faster models, showcasing practical applications like AI sales bots. The conversation delves into selecting suitable models and the potential monetization of 'recipes.' Viraj emphasizes the importance of community engagement and feedback in open-source projects, enhancing user education on LLM capabilities and optimizing technologies for better results.

Nathan Sobo is the Founder of Zed, the next-gen code editor that enables high-performance collaboration - powered by AI. Open source zed has 53K Stars on GitHub and is used by engineers at Vercel, Apple, Anthropic, and GitLab. Prior to founding Zed, Nathan created the editor Atom at GitHub which reached 1M+ active users. Zed has raised from investors including Redpoint and Root Ventures. In this episode, we dive into Nathan's deep history with code editors including the widely adopted GitHub editor Atom, the decision to make Zed open source (and the massive 10x growth that came from it), how AI changed their trajectory, why collaboration is core to becoming the defacto editor, anchoring on performance and responsiveness, how they're thinking about the commercial side of Zed & more!

Akshay Agrawal is the Founder & CEO of Marimo, the next generation Python notebook. Their open source reactive notebook for Python, also called marimo, has almost 9K stars on GitHub. Marimo has raised $5M from investors including AIX Ventures. In this episode, we dig into Akshay's love of building developer tools for data teams, his journey from PhD to founder, what a great developer experience means for data teams, why reproducibility was a key problem for them to solve, how he thinks about monetization when other notebooks like Jupyter don't focus on making money & more!

Vlad Matsiiako is CEO & Co-Founder of Infisical, the open source secrets management platform. Their open source project, also called infisical, has 16K stars on GitHub and helps users sync secrets across their teams and infrastructure. Infisical has raised $3M from investors including Gradient and YC. In this episode, we dig into their path from closed to open source, their big user wins (including government users), the importance of reliability for products in and around this category, the organic growth that came from their community, their AI strategy & more!

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.