This week on Cloud Native Startup, I am joined by William Morgan, CEO of Buoyant, Inc. In this episode, William talks about his beginnings as a software engineer at Twitter and his transition towards starting and running his own company. We also discuss how rewriting Linkerd enhanced its core value of simplicity, the blessing and curse of open source, his advice to his younger self, and more.

In this episode, we cover:

• Who is the CEO of Buoyant? William Morgan shares his background. (00:14)
• The story behind Linkerd and how it came into existence. (1:40)
• Building a company around Linkerd - and monetizing an open source project. (3:43)
• William’s thoughts on the open-core model. (7:52)
• The evolution of Buoyant: Building the long-term future of the business. (9:08)
• Lessons learned and advice to William’s younger self. (13:48)
• Deep dive into the process of simplifying Linkerd to reach its core value. (17:34)
• Istio or Linkerd? William’s take on deciding what is right for you. (23:26)
• The blessing and curse of open source. (27:03)
• William reflects on his journey as an engineer to starting and running a company:  (32:00)

Links:

William Morgan

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wmorgan
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wm

Buoyant

• Website: https://buoyant.io
•  Twitter: https://twitter.com/BuoyantIO

Linkerd

• Website: https://buoyant.io/linkerd/
• Linkerd Twitter: https://twitter.com/Linkerd