Morgante Pell is the Founder of Grit , the developer tool that puts software maintenance on autopilot and was acquired by Honeycomb in April 2025. In this episode, we dig into: The Grit product and how LLMs have made software maintenance much more efficient Launching GritQL - Grit's embedded query language for searching and transforming code Their early focus on the JavaScript community The motivation for Grit to open source How AI generated code has put pressure on software maintenance Where ne...
Aug 18, 2025•43 min
Emma Burrows is Co-Founder & CTO of Portia AI , the platform to build AI agents in regulated environments. Their open source Python SDK provides a developer framework for predictable and stateful agentic workflows. Portia AI has raised around $5M from investors including General Catalyst and First Minute Capital. In this episode, we dig into: Why they built an end-to-end platform from agent planning to deployment The focus on accuracy as their true north star metric Their paid contribution p...
Jul 31, 2025•33 min
Alan Braithwaite is Co-Founder & CTO of RunReveal , the security data platform with real-time monitoring, built-in detections, and AI-powered investigations. Today, they manage and analyze security logs for teams at Harvey, ClickHouse, Cloudflare, and Temporal. RunReveal has multiple open source projects including event stream processing library kawa and query language pql . RunReveal has raised from investors including Costanoa, Modern Technical Fund, and Runtime Ventures. In this episode, ...
Jul 08, 2025•44 min
Vasek Mlejnsky is Co-Founder & CEO of E2B , the open-source runtime for executing AI-generated code in secure cloud sandboxes. Essentially, they give AI agents cloud computers. Their open source repos, particularly e2b which has 9K GitHub stars, have been widely adopted to help securely run AI-generated code. E2B has raised $12M from investors including Decibel and Sunflower. In this episode, we dig into: Why agents need a sandbox Building a new category of infra tooling, much like LaunchDar...
Jun 23, 2025•37 min
Roman Gershman is Co-Founder & CTO of Dragonfly , the drop-in Redis replacement for heavy data workloads that has significant performance, cost, and scale benefits. Their open source dragonflydb has 28K stars on GitHub. Dragonfly has raised $21M from investors including Quiet Capital and Redpoint. In this episode, we dig into: The challenges with Redis The users that have really benefitted from Dragonfly (high scale + real-time needs - gaming, B2C) The benefits of being multi-threaded How th...
May 19, 2025•40 min
Lukas Schulte is Co-Founder & CEO of SDF Labs , the developer platform that scales SQL understanding across organizations, which was recently acquired by data transformation unicorn dbt Labs . In this episode, he's joined by Anders Swanson , Senior Developer Experience Advocate at dbt, to discuss the acquisition and future of data engineering. In this episode, we dig into: How the acquisition happened, as well as the M&A process How dbt thinks about building capabilities internally vs. m...
May 02, 2025•40 min
Andrew Norris is Co-Founder & CEO of DevCycle , the leading feature flagging platform based on the OpenFeature project. OpenFeature provides a standard for feature flagging unifying tools behind a common interface and avoiding vendor lock-in at the code level. DevCycle is a product created by Taplytics , the platform for marketing and product teams to A/B test. In 2023, they raised $5M to scale DevCycle. In this episode, we dig into: The creation of DevCycle through insights at Taplytics Lea...
Apr 14, 2025•35 min
Aviram Hassan is Co-Founder & CEO of MetalBear , the cloud development platform that lets developers run local code as if it were part of their remote environment. Their project, mirrord , has 4K stars on GitHub and is loved by users at companies like SentinelOne, Flexport, and Run.ai . In this episode, we dig into: How traditional staging environments create friction for cloud developers Their unique approach that allows for concurrency - and educating the market on it How open source helpe...
Apr 07, 2025•35 min
Manik Surtani is Head of Open Source and Bradley Axen is Principal Engineer at Block. Manik was key to launching Block's Open Source Programs Office and Bradley is a major open source contributor - including the project Goose which is Block's extensible AI agent project. It currently has over 11K stars on GitHub and has been used for a number of internal use cases at Block as well as by the general AI builder ecosystem. In this episode, we dig into: Block's history releasing and supporting open ...
Apr 03, 2025•40 min
Nikhil Rao is Co-Founder of Reflex , the open source framework to build and deploy web apps in python. Their project, also called reflex, has over 22K stars on GitHub and is a library to build full-stack web apps. Reflex has raised $5M from investors including Lux Capital. In this episode, we dig into: The power of deploying apps using only Python Balancing abstraction and code level access for users The challenges low code frameworks have had becoming production-grade The apps users are buildin...
Mar 25, 2025•39 min
Ben Sigelman is the Co-Founder & CEO of observability platform Lightstep as well as Co-Creator of open source observability frameworks OpenTracing and OpenTelemetry . Lightstep was acquired by ServiceNow in 2021 and OpenTelemetry was released in 2019 and has since become the standard observability framework. In this episode, we dig into: The founding story for Lightstep - including the initial pivot into the idea The benefits Lightstep got from open sourcing OpenTracing The OpenTracing and O...
Mar 19, 2025•39 min
Tobie Morgan Hitchcock is the Co-Founder & CEO of SurrealDB , the next generation serverless cloud database for modern applications. Their open source database, also called surrealdb , has 30K stars on GitHub. SurrealDB has raised $26M from investors including FirstMark and Georgian. In this episode, we dig into: Taking a broad vs. niche approach to building a new database How coming from a non-traditional DB background helped Tobie take a new, first principles approach How graph databases b...
Mar 04, 2025•40 min
Misha Bragin is the Founder & CEO of NetBird , the open source zero trust networking platform that allows companies and individuals to create secure private networks without the hassle of corporate networks. Their open source, also called netbird , has over 12K stars on GitHub and connects devices into a secure WireGuard-based overlay network. NetBird has raised $4M from investors including InReach Ventures. In this episode, we discuss: Pivoting away from their initial hardware-based approac...
Feb 24, 2025•35 min
Kevin Wang is Founder & CEO of Fossa , the product security platform that automates compliance & security across open source third party code, suppliers, and tools. In this episode, we discuss: Where Kevin's interest in open source started Learning to work with big enterprises The shift from scanning to fixing Repositioning from an engineering to security platform Resisting the market pressure to push hard into AI...
Feb 19, 2025•40 min
Max Stoiber is Co-Founder & CEO of Stellate , the GraphQL edge platform recently acquired by Shopify. In this episode, we discuss: The Stellate journey from idea to initial traction to acquisition The market size (and limitations) for GraphQL, APIs, and DevTools How he ran a top-notch acquisition process for Stellate Why startups fail...
Feb 10, 2025•43 min
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 t...
Feb 03, 2025•34 min
Viraj Mehta is the Co-Founder & CTO of TensorZero which is an open-source infrastructure platform that creates a feedback loop for optimizing LLM applications. Their open source project helps users turn production data into smarter, faster, and cheaper models. In this episode, we dig into: The benefits of feedback loops for LLMs Helping their users choose the best underlying models for their applications "Recipes" as a potential monetization path The most common optimizations for LLM-based a...
Jan 27, 2025•38 min
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 ed...
Jan 07, 2025•30 min
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 abo...
Dec 16, 2024•34 min
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, t...
Dec 12, 2024•40 min
Karthik Ranganathan is Founder & CTO of Yugabyte , the PostgreSQL-compatible distributed database for cloud native applications. Their open source database, also called yugabyte , has almost 10K stars on GitHub. Yugabyte has raised almost $300M and sits at a $1.3B valuation. They've raised from investors including Sapphire Ventures, Lightspeed, and 8VC. In this episode, we dig into the enormous interest Yugabyte had at the onset as transactional databases were due for innovation, the key arc...
Dec 09, 2024•42 min
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!...
Dec 05, 2024•41 min
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 ...
Nov 25, 2024•36 min
Lauren Long is Co-Founder & CTO of Ampersand , the developer platform for native product integrations. Ampersand has raised $5M from investors including Matrix, Base Case Capital, Flex Capital, and 2.12 Angels. In this episode, we dig into their differentiation as a "code-first" product, why they focused on the GTM vertical to start (Salesforce was the first integration), why their CLI is open source but their orchestration layer is closed source, how being transparent on pricing has been a ...
Nov 22, 2024•26 min
Philippe Noël is Co-Founder & CEO of ParadeDB , the modern Elasticsearch alternative built on Postgres. They're purpose-built for heavy, real-time workloads and their open source project, also called paradedb , has over 6K stars on GitHub. ParadeDB has raised $2M from investors including General Catalyst & YC. In this episode, we dig into the benefits of connecting search directly to the database (ie. no ETL), the types of users / use cases that really benefit from ParadeDB (e-commerce, ...
Nov 12, 2024•33 min
Eric Futoran is Co-Founder & CEO of Embrace , the mobile observability platform built on OpenTelemetry. Embrace has raised almost $80M from investors including NEA, Greycroft & Eniac. In this episode, we dig into the creation of mobile observability as a category and how Embrace helped evangelize it, what makes mobile observability unique, why they open sourced their SDKs, how aligning with OpenTelemetry changed their trajectory, the difference between having product-market-fit and GTM-m...
Nov 04, 2024•42 min
Ivan Burazin is Co-Founder & CEO of Daytona , the open source developer environment management platform. Their open source manager, also called daytona , has 9K stars on GitHub. Daytona has raised $5M from investors including Upfront Ventures. In this episode, we dig into Daytona's plan to be the fastest growing cloud development environment, how consistent and frequent content has become a huge driver of their growth, how bringing successful DevTool founders as angels helped with initial cr...
Oct 21, 2024•39 min
Steven Tey is Founder & CEO of Dub.co , the open source link management infrastructure platform for modern marketing teams. Their open source project, also called dub , has almost 18K stars on GitHub and is used by teams at companies like Vercel, Raycast, and Perplexity. In this episode, we dig into starting Dub.co as a side project and how it ultimately turned into a company, their initial positioning as a Bitly alternative, their focus on great design and how that shows up in all parts of ...
Oct 03, 2024•32 min
Lukas Schulte is Co-Founder and CEO of SDF Labs (Semantic Data Fabric), the data transformation layer and query engine platform. They're an open core company powered by the Apache Data Fusion query engine. SDF Labs has raised $9M from investors including RTP Global and Two Sigma Ventures. In this episode, we dig into the complications and pain points with the Modern Data Stack, shifting left with data (ie. moving more over to the client), competing with DBT by adding a query engine, why building...
Sep 30, 2024•31 min
Sameer Al-Sakran is CEO of Metabase , the open-source analytics and business intelligence platform. Their open source project, also called metabase , has over 38K stars on GitHub. Metabase has raised $51M from investors including NEA, Insight and Expa. In this episode, we dig into the company's 10 year journey, what it means to have a "developer friendly analytics platform", eliminating the friction with BI by making Metabase super fast to get started with, keeping the product simple, juggling s...
Sep 24, 2024•40 min
