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**Adam Stacoviak:** Can you give me some specifics in terms of how that plays out with one or many of these open source projects? You know, Grafana, Prometheus, Loki... What specifically will the funding enable you to do? Would it put more firepower behind it, more community involvement, more community initiatives, mor... |
**Raj Dutt:** All of the above, really. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** All those things. |
**Raj Dutt:** All those things, absolutely. The Loki teams, the Cortex teams, the Prometheus teams - they're relatively small teams within Grafana Labs. We've traditionally put most of our engineering resources behind Grafana. But those other things, like Prometheus, like Loki, Cortex - we'll have some interesting anno... |
So it's really not one thing in particular. It's more on Grafana, scale up on the big tent, wider ecosystem, scale up on empowering the community, investing in the community, investing in open source, also building commercial differentiation, launching new products in our cloud platform that are very different to what ... |
Everything from getting an alert at 3 o'clock in the morning - you're blurry-eyed, it's a high-stakes game; something's down, your boss is calling you every ten minutes... From the time you get an alert to the time that you have to look at your metrics, you have to look at your logs, you have to look at your traces, yo... |
\[01:24:20.05\] So that's really what we're focusing on. It goes so much beyond Grafana itself. And if you can kind of optimize for that experience across different vendors, do it in a way that's really composable, prioritize interoperability, but also just create a flow, if you will, for that poor developer or SRE. Sh... |
So that's the majority of the answer to where we're gonna focus. But then the other part of the answer is -- Grafana itself has been pushed in all these interesting directions by the community, in ways that we couldn't even imagine. And that's the magic of open source. Most people are using Grafana for IT operations, w... |
There's an emergency room system in Tokyo that's using it to track wait times across all the ERs in Tokyo. The German rails system is using it to help with metrics there. There's a community of people who run beehives that are using it to monitor the activity and the weather around all their beehives. SpaceX is using i... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Raj Dutt:** So we wanna find those use cases within the community and figure out what the next step for Grafana is, that goes beyond the world that we're in today. And that's the really long-term stuff, that's really exciting. I know Torkel, my co-founder, is really excited about that angle, which is where does Grafa... |
So those are the things that we're thinking about in raising the series B... And luckily, our existing investors Lightspeed and Lead Edge participated in the series B, the same investors that participated in our series A... So it was relatively easy for us to get done. It was definitely kind of an opportunistic move fo... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, I'm glad we can ship this show in time to delay, to allow that news to be on this show, for one... And then two, I'm glad that that news came in, so that you can double down on your focus on the foundation of open source and all that you've just talked about there... Because that's awesome. |
**Raj Dutt:** Yeah, we're pretty psyched about it, for sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:27:49.29\] I'm sure. This is breaking news, and that's super-cool; I'm glad for you on that front. It's even more reassuring, I suppose - back to reading between the lines - that these same investors felt comfortable to come back in, in a relatively short amount of time, with a more sizeable in... |
**Raj Dutt:** Yeah, absolutely. And we're really lucky to have Lightspeed and Lead Edge believe in what we're doing, and share the same long-term greedy philosophy. So we're pretty psyched about that, for sure. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Any closing advice you wanna share with us audience? I know we covered a whole lot, but is there any major themes over this last couple years, or any major things just like "Man, I've learned this lesson, I've got to share this." |
**Raj Dutt:** Major theme or advice... I suppose for me it just comes to people. You kind of doubled down on yourself, Adam, and thinking this through... The Grafana Labs journey for me - this is by far the largest, fastest-growing organization that I've ever been a part of. Oftentimes I feel like kind of impostor synd... |
I think a lot of first-time founders - and I was certainly this way at Voxel - think that they have to know everything, or do everything, or get involved in every detail. That was a mistake that I made at Voxel. What I'm trying to evolve my own MO to be is realize that my role is really to create alignment and to make ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's a hard thing to do. |
**Raj Dutt:** It is a super-hard thing to do. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:30:53.06\] You have to be quite humble -- I mean, that's a humble perspective, and not everybody has that perspective. So I don't know where you learn that at, if it's just school of hard knocks, or bloodied knuckles, or what... But that's why I asked you that question; I don't know what you're... |
**Raj Dutt:** I'll be the first to admit that I violate what I just said on a continual basis, but I think that's the -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's your North Star. |
**Raj Dutt:** Exactly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's what I say for myself. One of my personal North Stars is "Work 8, play 8, and sleep 8." And just like you, I violate that often. I don't always get it right, but that's my North Star. That's what I'm trying to get right. So as a CEO, if that's what you're trying to get right, then at least yo... |
**Raj Dutt:** I think North Star is a good way to put it, and I think it's okay if you don't always get it right... And I think particularly in a startup it's not a rule that you should endeavor to always follow; and you're just not gonna be able to follow it, either because you're not gonna be able to resist violating... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I will say then, to encap that, when I do violate it, I do it with intention, and purpose, and usually with the season. There's a time attachment to it. I'll do it or I'll allow it for this season or for these particular reasons, and I'm always in check on that. |
**Raj Dutt:** Yup. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Because I will let myself violate it, and it's necessary, as you said. Sometimes. But I've gotta do it for the right reasons, and I've gotta maintain that balance of like "If I'm gonna do this, here's the repercussions of it." |
**Raj Dutt:** Yup, yup. I think you need to be self-aware about doing it. And I also think you need to do it more the earlier stage the organization is. That North Star should become increasingly bright as you scale the company. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well-said, Raj. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for your heart in what you're doing, your focus on this golden goose. I love that metaphor, it's awesome. And thank you so much, more so for sharing your wisdom here today. We appreciate it. |
**Raj Dutt:** Yeah, thanks for having me, Adam. I appreciate it. This was fun. |
• Mike McDerment's accidental founding of FreshBooks due to personal frustration with invoicing process |
• 2003 as the launch year for FreshBooks in a different technological landscape |
• Comparing and contrasting technologies used in early days (LAMP stack, building from scratch) vs. current tech (single-page app, open source, cloud hosting) |
• Impact of advancements in technology on user experience expectations (mobile, ease of use, location services) |
• Evolution of FreshBooks over time due to changes in technology landscape |
• The FreshBooks team realized their old technology was outdated and needed a major overhaul |
• The company considered replatforming, but faced significant challenges and risks, including potential failure to deliver a better product |
• To mitigate these risks, the team created a separate company with its own brand and website, where they could develop the new platform in secret |
• This allowed them to test and refine the new technology without affecting the existing customer base |
• The company then ran both platforms concurrently, allowing customers to choose when to migrate to the new platform |
• The goal was to minimize disruption and build trust with customers by giving them control over the transition |
• FreshBooks transition from old platform to new one took around 3-5 years |
• The company's approach to migrating customers was novel and involved creating a new platform (BillSpring) that was acquired by FreshBooks |
• The new platform was designed to be simpler and more user-friendly, with users not being aware of the underlying complexity |
• The transition was successful, with most customers now using the new FreshBooks platform |
• The company is still supporting both old and new platforms, but expects to eventually phase out the old one |
• Challenges of being a CEO and leader at scale |
• Personal growth and self-awareness as a leader |
• Importance of hiring seasoned team members to support leadership |
• Difficulty in letting employees make mistakes and learning from poor leadership |
• Need for ongoing learning and professional development as a leader |
• Building collective leadership capacity through sharing knowledge and experiences |
• Changing role of CEO from operational to strategic and long-term planning |
• Return to creative work and building |
• Understanding one's strengths and focus areas (create, build, scale) |
• Working with a COO to free up time for future-focused work |
• FreshBooks' growth and future plans |
• Product development and feature creation |
• Personal projects and ideas for new categories of products |
**Adam Stacoviak:** This is one of those shows that starts out in a very unique way. Mike McDerment, the founder of FreshBooks, became a founder by accident. Like many of us, Mike had an itch that he just had to scratch, and one thing led to another, and soon enough FreshBooks became a key tool in the belt of many free... |
Getting started by accident was interesting to me, so that's exactly where we started. You're an accidental founder... How does that happen? How did you become an accidental founder, Mike? I still don't get that one... |
**Mike McDerment:** First of all, I'd say when we started out -- I guess I had founded a design firm. But starting this company in an accidental way -- I think the inspiration for FreshBooks, for those who don't know it, was I basically was using Word and Excel to bill my clients; I saved over an invoice, and I just...... |
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