Open Source Startup Podcast

Anh-Tho Chuong is Co-Founder & CEO of Lago, the open source metering and usage-based billing platform. Lago's underlying project, also called Lago, has 2K stars on GitHub and a Slack community with hundreds of members. Lago is a YC company from the S21 batch. In this episode, we discuss the state of billing today and why a hybrid and open approach makes sense for many companies, positioning as an "open source alternative to...", deciding what content is worth creating (ie. if your users ask the same question 5x, then blog about it), going through YC as an open source company & more!

Tommy Dang is Co-founder & CEO of Mage, the data plumbing platform that's the modern replacement for Airflow. Mage's open source project, mage-ai, has over 3K stars and lets companies run, monitor, and orchestrate thousands of data pipelines. Mage has raised over $6M from investors including Gradient Ventures. In this episode, we discuss pivots, testing product ideas with hundreds of potential users (and asking questions like, "what is the most boring part of your data work?"), why company content should be informative and entertaining, and how to approach selling in a customer-centric way.

Mark Fussell & Yaron Schneider are Co-founders of Diagrid, the platform that simplifies and provides access to the power of distributed systems. Diagrid's founders co-created open source Dapr which Diagrid provides a fully managed service on top of. Dapr has over 20K stars and works on any language or framework. Diagrid has raised over $24M from investors including Norwest Venture Partners and Amplify. In this episode, we discuss contributors rather than stars as a strong engagement metric, why Open Core wasn't the right business model for Diagrid, learnings for other open source founders & more!

Will Falcon is CEO of Lightning AI, the platform to build ML models and create Lightning Apps that “glue” together many leading ML lifecycle tools. The company's project, also called lightning, has over 21K stars on GitHub. Lightning AI has raised almost $60M from investors including Index Ventures, Coatue, and Bain. In this episode, we discuss the difference between open source traction and company potential, how to hire - especially early on, the importance of learning speed, Will's personal journey as a CEO, and more!

Founder & CEO of Aiven, Oskari Saarenmaa, talks about managing open source data services. Topics include automation, role in the open source ecosystem, importance of 24/7 support for global customers, and learning GTM as a technical team.

Mike Malone is Founder of Smallstep, the automated certificate management platform for DevOps teams. Their certificate management project, also called smallstep, has 5K stars on GitHub and provides a private certificate authority and ACME server for secure automated certificate management. Smallstep has raised $26M from investors including Boldstart and StepStone Group. In this episode, we discuss the importance of staying lean before achieving PMF, where to draw the line on free open source vs. paid product, his learnings as an engineer-turned-founder & more! YouTube version of the episode here

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!