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.

Andrew Firestone is CEO and Knut Sveidqvist is CTO of Mermaid Chart, the open source text-based diagraming software platform. The mermaid project has over 70K stars on GitHub and is an open source diagramming and charting tool. Mermaid Chart has raised $7.5M from investors including Open Core Ventures. In this episode, we dig into the mermaid project's 8 year journey, going from side project to company, working with GitLab founder Sid Sijbrandij to bring Andrew in as CEO & more!

Atai Barkai is Co-Founder & CEO of Copilotkit, the platform to build production-grade AI Copilots 10x faster. Their open source project, also called copilotkit, has almost 13K stars on GitHub and provides React UI + elegant infrastructure for AI Copilots, in-app AI agents, AI chatbots, and AI-powered Textareas. In this episode, we dig into Copilotkit's incredible open source growth trajectory, the importance of tutorials and templates to grow community in a new product area, understanding all of the user types and use cases people were using their open source for, competing with vertical copilots, the future of copilots and when AI becomes more autonomous & more!

Lauren Long, Co-founder and CTO of Ampersand, discusses her journey in creating a developer platform for native product integrations. She shares insights on why a code-first approach enhances the developer experience and how their first integration with Salesforce shaped their go-to-market strategy. Lauren explains the balance between open-source CLI tools and a closed-source orchestration layer, emphasizing transparency in pricing as a key differentiator. She also offers valuable advice for aspiring founders about pursuing passion and aligning with long-term goals.

Philippe Noël, Co-founder and CEO of ParadeDB, shares insights on building a modern alternative to Elasticsearch using Postgres. He discusses the seamless integration of search directly with databases and the benefits for e-commerce and FinTech users. Philippe highlights his learnings as a second-time founder, emphasizing the role of user feedback and community engagement in product development. He also addresses the unique challenges of serving enterprise needs and the importance of strategic messaging in competing with established technologies.

Eric Futoran, Co-founder and CEO of Embrace, shares insights on revolutionizing mobile observability. He discusses the unique challenges in mobile engineering and why the industry needed specific tools. Eric explains the benefits of open-sourcing their SDKs, enhancing community engagement and code quality. He also delves into the importance of aligning product-market fit with GTM-market fit and how embracing OpenTelemetry transformed their approach. The conversation covers navigating marketing strategies and the evolution of user personas in the ever-changing SaaS landscape.

Ivan Burazin, Co-founder and CEO of Daytona, discusses revolutionizing developer environments with his open-source platform. He dives into how Daytona's growth strategy leverages consistent content and the importance of understanding user motivations. Ivan shares insights on building credibility through successful DevTool founders acting as angel investors. He also tackles the complexities of open-source licensing, emphasizing MIT and Apache as the gold standards, while exploring how community engagement fuels innovation in the tech landscape.

Steven Tey, Founder & CEO of Dub.co, discusses his open-source link management platform that has garnered almost 18K stars on GitHub. He shares the journey of turning Dub.co from a side project into a company and positioning it as a Bitly alternative. The conversation dives into the importance of great design in product development, how analytics improve customer value, and the impact of a top Hackernews post on their growth. Tey also emphasizes the need for entrepreneurs to follow their passion and take actionable steps despite uncertainties.