Open Source Startup Podcast

Tim Delisle and Nico Joseph, founders of FiveOneFour, discuss bringing software engineering practices to data teams, market education, open source requirements, democratizing data access, and monetization strategies. Topics include evolving data schemas, separate APIs, fast iteration, user feedback, and the benefits of embracing open source practices.

Tomer Shiran is Founder of Dremio, the data lakehouse platform for self-service analytics and AI based on open source frameworks Apache Arrow, which the Dremio team created, and Apache Iceberg. Dremio has raised over $400M from investors including Norwest, Redpoint, Adams Street, Sapphire, Insight, and Lightspeed. They are currently valued at $2B. In this episode, we dig into Tomer's journey from MapR to Dremio, his initial vision for making the data stack more accessible, their first breakthrough with Apache Arrow and a columnar-format approach, focusing first on project-market fit before monetization, adding support for Apache Iceberg, how they're using AI to improve user experiences & more!

Ari Zilka, former CTO of Hortonworks and current CEO of mydecisive.ai, discusses the shift towards OpenTelemetry in large enterprises, the cost benefits of open source, and the importance of building a community before monetizing. He emphasizes the value of 'ops' in 'devops' for revenue and shares insights on strategy merging, hypothesis testing, and ecosystem building in company growth.

Mark Huang, Co-Founder of Gradient AI, discusses enterprise readiness for LLM-backed applications, open sourcing their Llama-3 finetune model, focus on healthcare and finance, and navigating GenAI infra space.

Umur Cubukcu, Co-Founder of Ubicloud, discusses building an open-source cloud alternative to AWS, emphasizing cost savings, simplicity, and freedom. They explore navigating the AWS ecosystem, delivering personalized services, and overcoming challenges in building a compound product.

Legendary database pioneer Michael Stonebraker discusses the history of database systems, creation of Ingres and Postgres, focus on industrial companies as users, and the innovative concept of DBOS as an operating system for TypeScript applications.

John Viega is Co-Founder & CEO of Crash Override, the open source monitoring platform based on the Chalk project which has 22K stars on GitHub. Crash Override has raised $14M from investors including SYN Ventures, BVP & Firestreak Ventures. In this episode, we dig into what being "dev friendly" means, what their best performing content has been, standing out in the incredibly crowded security landscape & more!

Jeff Huber, Co-Founder of Chroma, discusses the importance of vector databases for AI applications, partnership with LangChain, and how data is crucial in changing AI behavior. They cover the journey from an AI tooling company to a successful vector database, focusing on user-friendly installation and community engagement.

John Britton & Mike McQuaid, Co-Founders of Workbrew and involved in Homebrew, discuss how Homebrew has kept projects simple, value from contributors, ICP shift to dev teams. They explore challenges in maintaining Homebrew, community contributions, project governance, and managing enterprise challenges with Work Brew. They also touch on navigating project and company growth hurdles, sales conversations, and adapting to the startup landscape.

Brian Raymond, Founder & CEO of Unstructured, discusses the importance of data preparation in NLP, creating a single API endpoint for handling diverse data formats, transitioning from open source to commercial success, engaging with government design partners, and the value of world-class design & marketing for open source companies.