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Founders Talk: Startups, CEOs, Leadership
Founders Talk: Startups, CEOs, Leadership episodes
- From open source to commercially viable
This week Adam is joined by Asim Aslam, the founder of Micro - a new cloud platform entirely focused on the developer experience of consuming and publishing public APIs. Asim’s journey spans many years of open source work on Micro. His sole focus right now, is evolving that work into a commercially viable business. This episode is jam-packed with stories of great timing, grit, resilence, success and failure, and, of course, lessons learned.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
- Render – The Zero DevOps cloud that empowers you to ship faster than your competitors. Render is built for modern applications and offers everything you need out-of-the-box. Learn more at render.com/changelog or email [email protected] for a personal introduction and to ask questions about the Render platform.
- Snowplow Analytics – The behavioral data management platform powering your data journey. Capture and process high-quality behavioral data from all your platforms and products and deliver that data to your cloud destination of choice. Get started and experience Snowplow data for yourself at snowplowanalytics.com
- Sendinblue – Take your digital marketing to the next level. Head to sendinblue.com/founderstalk and use the code FOUNDERSTALK to get one month free with 100,000 emails.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
- Asim Aslam – GitHub, LinkedIn
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- Micro (the platform)
- Micro APIs - Programmable building blocks for everyday use
- Go Micro - a framework for distributed systems development
- Asim and his team build Distributed to demonstrate what Micro is capable of (check it out on Product Hunt)
- OCS 2020 Breakout: Asim Aslam
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
2 hr - From disrupting the cloud to IPO
This week Adam is joined by Mitch Wainer, previously CMO at DigitalOcean and a member of the founding team. They talk about his journey as an entrepreneur and marketer, the early days at DigitalOcean, and everything that went into disrupting the cloud with blazing fast SSDs. Back in March (2021), DigitalOcean started trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) — this obviously earned Mitch and many others a very large payday. They also talk about the work Mitch is doing now with Welcome and Sponsored.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
- Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
- Snowplow Analytics – The behavioral data management platform powering your data journey. Capture and process high-quality behavioral data from all your platforms and products and deliver that data to your cloud destination of choice. Get started and experience Snowplow data for yourself at snowplowanalytics.com
- GitLab – You are invited to attend GitLab Commit 2021 (it’s free) — GitLab’s upcoming user community event, August 3rd & 4th. Learn more about modern DevOps, and how it transforms companies of all sizes and pushes teams to drive innovation to market. Get ready to Innovate Together during this free event designed to help you commit to better DevOps. Register and learn more at gitlabcommitvirtual2021.com.
- Sendinblue – Take your digital marketing to the next level. Head to sendinblue.com/founderstalk and use the code FOUNDERSTALK to get one month free with 100,000 emails.
Featuring:
- Mitch Wainer – X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- This Week in Startups #425: From caller to cofounder: how Mitch Wainer raised $37.2m from Andreessen Horowitz
- DigitalOcean OR do.co/changelog if you want to use a link DigitalOcean no longer pays us to promote
- DigitalOcean becomes a public company
- DigitalOcean IPO
- Welcome Homes (or, just Welcome)
- Sponsored
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
1 hr 11 min - The journey to massive scale and ultra-resilience
This week Adam talks with Spencer Kimball, CEO and Co-founder of Cockroach Labs — makers of CockroachDB an open source cloud-native distributed SQL database. Cockroach Labs recently raised $160 million dollars on a $2 billion dollar valuation. In this episode, Spencer shares his journey in open source, startups and entrepreneurship, and what they’re doing to build CockroachCloud to meet the needs of applications that require massive scale and ultra-resilience.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members get a bonus 3 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!
Sponsors:
- Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
- Grafana Cloud – Grafana Cloud is our dashboard of choice – Grafana is the open and composable observability and data visualization platform. Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres and many more.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
- LaunchDarkly – Ship fast. Rest easy. Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
Featuring:
- Spencer Kimball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- Spencer is a co-founder of GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) (but is no longer involved with the project)
- Cockroach Labs
- CockroachCloud - Build and scale fast with CockroachDB-as-a-service on AWS and Google Cloud.
- How We’re Building a Business to Last
- Cockroach Labs scores $160M Series E on $2B valuation
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
1 hr 11 min - Intensely focused on building a software company
This week Adam talks with John-Daniel Trask, co-founder & CEO of Raygun. Raygun is an award-winning application monitoring company founded by John-Daniel Trask (better known as JD) and Jeremy Boyd in Wellington, New Zealand. They have revenues in the 8 digits annually, and have done it with very little funding (~1.7M USD). Today’s conversation with JD shares a ton of wisdom. Listen twice and take notes.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members get a bonus 3 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!
Sponsors:
- Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – Linode is our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
- Grafana Cloud – Grafana Cloud is our dashboard of choice – Grafana is the open and composable observability and data visualization platform. Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres and many more.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
- LaunchDarkly – Test in production! Deploy code at any time, even if a feature isn’t ready to be released to your users. Wrap code in feature flags to get the safety to test new features and infrastructure in prod without impacting the wrong end users.
Featuring:
- John-Daniel Trask – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- Raygun.com
- The Microsoft Way: The Real Story Of How The Company Outsmarts Its Competition
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
- The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
- The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
- Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Full-disclosure: Raygun is an active sponsor of JS Party and a prior sponsor of The Changelog and Changelog News.
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
1 hr 22 min - Balancing business and open source
Raj Dutt is the founder and CEO of Grafana Labs. Grafana has become the world’s most popular open source technology used to compose observability dashboards (we use Grafana here at Changelog). Raj and team are 100% focused on building a sustainable business around open source. They have this “big tent” open source ecosystem philosophy that’s driving every aspect of building their business around their open source, as well as other projects in the open source community. But, to understand the wisdom Raj is leading with today, we have to go back to where things got started. To do that we had to go back like Prince to 1999…
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members get a bonus 2 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!
Sponsors:
- Linode – Get $100 in free credit to get started on Linode – our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Head to linode.com/changelog OR text CHANGELOG to 474747 to get instant access to that $100 in free credit.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
- LaunchDarkly – Power experimentation at any scale. Fast and reliable feature management for the modern enterprise.
Featuring:
- Raj Dutt – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- What $24 million means for our open source community
- Grafana Labs raises $50 million to accelerate R&D investments in open source logs, metrics and composable observability
- Grafana Cloud is a fully managed observability platform for your applications and infrastructure. Metrics, logs, and dashboards at scale.
- Grafana Enterprise includes access to enterprise plugins that take your existing data sources and allow you to drop them right into Grafana.
- Grafana Metrics Enterprise is a scalable, self-hosted Prometheus service that is seamless to use, simple to operate/maintain, and supported by Grafana Labs.
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
1 hr 36 min - Slow and steady wins
Jeff Sheldon is the founder and creator of Ugmonk. Jeff is a designer by trade, and an entrepreneur by accident. I been following Jeff’s journey for the better part of Ugmonk’s existence. I’m also a customer. Jeff and I hold several similar values near and dear to our hearts. In addition to my appreciation for Jeff’s product design abilities, and how he leads his business, I also appreciate Jeff’s awareness and focus on the long hard path.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members get a bonus 4 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!
Sponsors:
- Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019 OR changelog2020. To learn more and get started head to linode.com/changelog.
- Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
- Jeff Sheldon – Website, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- Join Changelog++ to get extended content + make the ads disappear
- ugmonk.com
- Analog on Kickstarter ~> Analog: The simplest productivity system
- Gather on Kickstarter ~> Gather: The minimal, modular organizer that cuts clutter
- “Slow and steady wins”
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
1 hr 13 min - From acquisition to full conviction
Guy Podjarny is the Founder of Snyk, a security platform that empowers software-driven businesses to develop fast and stay secure. Prior to Snyk, Guy founded Blaze which was acquired by Akamai and became CTO. We talked through the topic of acquisition — the sale, the merge, the learnings, and why Guy might not be planning for Snyk to be acquired anytime soon. We started the conversation with Snyk’s recent raise of $150 million dollars.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
- Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019 OR changelog2020. To learn more and get started head to linode.com/changelog.
- Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
- Guy Podjarny – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- Snyk Closes $150M to Accelerate Developer-first Security
- Scaling security through DevSecOps & dev-first security
- Scaling developer-first security
- Snyk pricing
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
1 hr 32 min - Leading GitLab to $100M ARR
Sid Sijbrandij is the Co-founder and CEO of GitLab — an all-remote company and complete DevOps platform. As a company, they have their eyes set on taking the company public to IPO and they’re very outspoken about their culture, open handbook, and how they work as an all-remote company. We talk through where Sid came from, the early days of GitLab, why IPO vs a private sale (like GitHub), what it means to put “family and friends first, work second,” how we should view work, and his biggest fear — the company failing.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
- DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with a 99.99% uptime SLA, and 24/7/365 world-class support to back that up. Get your $100 credit at do.co/changelog.
- Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
- Sid Sijbrandij – Website, LinkedIn, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- GitLab More Than Doubles Valuation To $2.75 Billion Ahead Of Planned 2020 IPO
- Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
- The importance of a handbook-first approach to documentation
- GitLab values
- GitLab’s biggest risks
- GitLab maturity
- Family and friends first, work second
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
1 hr 2 min - Building a real programmable robot
The role of a father plays a pivotal role in a child’s life. Ian Bernstein is a former Founder of Sphero and is now the Founder and Head of Product of Misty Robotics — they’re building the first programmable robot for the home and business. It’s called Misty II. The journey of building Misty II started when Ian was 5 years old and his dad bought him an Apple IIe.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
- Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019 OR changelog2020. To learn more and get started head to linode.com/changelog.
- Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
- Ian Bernstein – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- Sphero
- Misty Robotics
- The Changelog #354: Go is eating the world of software — Ron Evans is betting big on TinyGo at OSCON 2019
- I’m a cog.
- Give Away Your Legos
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
1 hr 18 min - Becoming an accidental founder
Mike McDerment is the founder and CEO of FreshBooks. Believe it or not, Mike became a founder by accident. Like many of us, Mike had an itch that he just had to scratch. One thing led to another and soon enough FreshBooks became a key tool in the belt of many freelancers and agencies looking for an easy way to send invoices and get paid quickly online. We talk through the early days of FreshBooks and how things came to be, why they created a secret competitor to iterate on a bold idea for the future of FreshBooks, and we also cover what keeps Mike excited.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
- DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with a 99.99% uptime SLA, and 24/7/365 world-class support to back that up. Get your $100 credit at do.co/changelog.
- Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives.
- Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
- Mike McDerment – Website, LinkedIn, X
- Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
- We use FreshBooks
- The Web 2.0 Show #66 - Freshbooks / Mike McDerment
- Why You Should Become Your Own Competitor
- Starting Over: How FreshBooks Reinvented Its Online Accounting Service On The Fly
- 7 Ways I’ve Almost Killed FreshBooks
Listen to Brain Science #9: One small act of kindness
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
42 min
About Founders Talk: Startups, CEOs, Leadership
From the publisher's feed
In-depth, one-on-one conversations with founders, CEOs, and makers. The journey, lessons learned, and the struggles. Let's do this! Host Adam Stacoviak dives deep into the trials, tribulations,…
successes, and failures of industry leading entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators, and visionaries.