In this episode of The Geek Narrator podcast, hosted by Kaivalya Apte, we welcome a special guest, Kishore Gopalakrishna from StarTree, co-author of Apache Pinot and other notable projects. Kishore shares his extensive experience in building real-time analytics and streaming systems, including Apache Pino, Espresso, Apache Helix, and Third Eye. The episode delves into the motivations and challenges behind creating these systems, the innovations they brought to distributed systems, and the impact of community on open-source projects. Kishore also discusses the evolution of testing methodologies, cost optimizations in transactional and analytical systems, and key considerations for companies evaluating real-time analytics solutions.