Open Source Startup Podcast

Graham McNicoll & Jeremy Dorn are Co-founders of GrowthBook, the open source feature flagging and experimentation platform out of YC. Their feature flagging and A/B testing project, also called growthbook, has 4K stars on GitHub. In this episode, we discuss the importance of having an iterative culture, having a dynamic view on positioning, and the importance of content and market education.

Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz is Co-Founder & CEO of Penpot, the open-source design and prototyping platform. Their core open source project, also called penpot, has over 19K stars on GitHub. Penpot received a lot of attention from the spike in growth following the Figma / Adobe acquisition announcement. They've since announced an $8M fundraise led by Decibel Partners. In this episode, we discuss the importance of open standards in getting developers excited about design, why Figma users have been excited about Penpot,  building a community with design and developer personas & more!

Maayan Salom is Co-Founder of Elementary Data, the open source data observability platform which allows users to monitor their data warehouse directly from dbt. Their project, also called Elementary, is built for analytics engineers and today has almost 1K GitHub stars and a rapidly growing community of almost 600 users. The company has raised from leading Israel and US-based venture firms as well as a number of high-profile angel investors. In this episode, we discuss having a culture of experimentation, building a community alongside other communities (ie. dbt), using your community for product feedback, the hustle involved in early GTM, learnings from building for a fast-growing community & more!

Leland Takamine is Co-Founder & CEO of mobile.dev, the team behind open source mobile UI testing framework Maestro. The framework, which is a compelling new alternative to Appium or Espresso, has quickly grown to 2.6K stars and a community of >700 users. The company has raised $3M from investors including Cowboy Ventures, Essence VC, and a number of high-profile angel investors. In this episode, we discuss the importance of ease of use for getting open source adoption, how community feedback creates a product advantage, the challenges with timing open source adoption, learnings from growing a community, how to time a paid product & more!

Shanea Leven is Founder & CEO of CodeSee, the cloud-based data visualization platform that helps users master the understanding of their code. CodeSee has raised $10M from investors including Uncork, Boldstart, and Wellington. In this episode, we discuss how to test messaging, the importance of having a strong GTM strategy early-on, what a great onboarding experience looks like, and more!

Max Howell is CEO of Tea, the platform that enables developers to get compensated for their work. Max is also the creator of Homebrew, the popular package management system. Tea has raised $8M from investors including Binance Labs. In this episode, we discuss the founding story for Tea, learnings on building extremely large open source projects and communities, Tea's ties to Web3, and helping open source developers get compensated for their work.

Sam Lambert is CEO of PlanetScale, the serverless MySQL database platform for developers. PlanetScale is powered by the open source database clustering system Vitess which was originally built at Google to scale YouTube. The company has raised over $100M from investors including KPCB, Insight, SignalFire, and a16z. In this episode, we discuss PlanetScale's positioning as a database platform rather than a database, the importance of authenticity and showing off capabilities with every launch, transparency around pricing, proving the ability to scale, looking at the quality of companies and people in the community as a measure of success, thinking about GTM very early, and much more!

Alex Dean is Cofounder & CEO of Snowplow Analytics, the behavioral data platform that transforms data into actionable insights. Snowplow's open source behavioral data engine, also called snowplow, has over 6K stars and is a developer-first engine for collecting behavioral data. Snowplow has raised $55M from investors including NEA, MMC, and Atlantic Bridge after being bootstrapped for some time. In this episode, we discuss the flexibility you get from bootstrapping your company - especially if it's open source, the importance of GTM and user persona clarity when building in a competitive space, investing in product marketing early, the challenges of visibility when open source is a core part of your GTM funnel, and much more!

Ovais Tariq is Cofounder & CEO of Tigris Data, the open source developer data platform. Tigris has raised from investors including Basis Set and General Catalyst. In this episode, we discuss the importance of focusing on user problems rather than your solution, hiring for your specific company needs (ie Tigris needed engineers who had operated at scale), learnings for other open source data-focused founders, and more!

Dan Lorenc is Founder & CEO of Chainguard, the platform to secure your software supply chain. Chainguard supports many popular open source projects such as Sigstore, SLSA, and Tekton. Chainguard has raised $55M from investors including Sequoia and Amplify Partners. In this episode, we discuss the importance of market education when creating a new category of software, assessing market timing when launching your company, some of Chainguard's unique content strategies, and more!