text stringlengths 0 1.78k |
|---|
\[58:05\] Anyways, so there's still a lot of sense with that, and that's okay. What I want to do is I want to build a cloud business. And so the restriction is no one -- or you can, but you would have to pay us license. No one can build a Redpanda cloud without paying Redpanda licenses. That's fundamentally the restric... |
And so that was, to me, for this project, for the context, for kind of like who I am as a person and the project I was trying to build, that seemed like the right balance. And so now the sort of following effect of that decision is that because we already have that protection, it allows us to make the best possible pro... |
So I actually empathize quite deeply with the struggle of companies that are based on that, in part because open source gives people the adoption. Like, it's basically infinitely cheap; you have all of these developers, and you just call them whenever they're in production and they need help. But the challenge with tha... |
And so anyways, with that, I just wanted to say that for me, the balance of expiring in four years to become Apache 2, with the clause that we are the only company allowed to build the Redpanda cloud, seemed like the right balance. And it's worked out great. No real issues. In fact, I think people empathize with the wa... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Well, you don't have to defend your decision, but I do love that you described decision. It's important whenever you look at the success you've had, and the heart you've had to get to where you're at, to just understand the decision. Because other founders, other future founders will listen to... |
**Alex Gallego:** And it's likely - you know, for those that are going to listen to this in the future, in like five years... Remember, we started this in 2019, so like four years, or five years. A decade later, it's very likely that a different set of trade-offs may make sense for that particular time and context. And... |
And so I talked to a bunch of them, and at the time that we chose that license, that felt like the right balance. And in 10 years it may be totally different. So I think context -- if there's one thing people take away, context is kind, and we evaluated it at the time. The world may be a different place. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:02:02.28\] If you had to make that decision today to go BSL, given today's context, would you still make the same decision? Or would it be different? |
**Alex Gallego:** If there wasn't a Redpanda available, which I think there would be, I think that there's just like -- I know that we have changed the roadmap of other startups. If there wasn't a Redpanda, probably... If there was a Redpanda, then I would only build a cloud service. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Cool. Okay, so let's move on to goals for the future. What's the horizon for you? Where are you trying to go? What's the next big thing for you all? |
**Alex Gallego:** I guess in terms of success for us, we hope to be at the driver's seat to take this company public. And part of that is because we have a different view on how the world should look like. And I see Redpanda, the product, as sort of this keystone that is going to help the market transition from batch t... |
In terms of technical developments, I mentioned things like leaning into open formats, leaning into things like WebAssembly... Future-looking, it's going to look a lot more cloud than it has been in the past. We had to start somewhere, and we had to pay the bills, so we started with the self-hosted, and that's kind of ... |
So yeah, I'm just excited to try and -- look, the way financially I think about this, and actually also from a developer perspective, is we don't have to make all the dollars in the world. If we manage to help developers to think differently, we will be successful. We just have to capture a small amount of the value th... |
An example is we've built the most successful Kafka-to-Prometheus metrics converter. It's called KMinion. It's Apache 2, by the way; it's open source, it's maintained by us. And what it does is it takes Kafka and it makes it into the Kafka metrics, like for Apache Kafka open source, and then it makes it into Prometheus... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What about the inception of this scholarship, Hack the Planet? What's the backstory there? Is it for the future Alex'es, or the Alex'es that -- I mean, this wasn't in place whenever you were young. What would you have done if you had Hack the Planet scholarships available to you? I guess maybe you t... |
**Alex Gallego:** \[01:04:47.29\] Thanks for asking. It is a totally non-scalable program. And by that, we help one person per year for four months. We give them money, and mentorship, and release all of the intellectual property and expect zero results. This is not an internship. It is really just designed to help peo... |
To date, we've helped someone in the UK, who is a woman. We helped someone in the Middle East. We are now helping someone in South Africa. So it's actually a global program. As long as we can wire the money... I'm not doing Moneygrams anymore. That was the first one, and I was like "Okay, this is too crazy." Like, walk... |
But anyways, as long as my finance can wire you money into a bank around the world, we will send you money, and we'll help you. And what folks typically -- like, the superficial value is we'll help you understand, we'll help you program, and help you think differently; we'll give you a different mental model. It's one ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So one person... How do you -- you must get just tons of applicants, or at least 50; let's just say 100, maybe 200. I mean, how do you get down to the one? What's the process involved? |
**Alex Gallego:** It boils down to how we -- this team today, we ask them like "Go on LinkedIn, look at the engineers. How can we help you the most?" And for the person where we have the largest leverage, that still fits the base criteria, that's the person we'll pick. So you're picking an ambitious goal... Typically, ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. |
**Alex Gallego:** Anyway, so one is they look at the LinkedIn and they say, "This engineer, this engineer, this engineer will really help me to -- this is the impact that you'll have." And so we pick the best project out of that. We actually get thousands of applicants, so it's very hard. Personally, it takes her like ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Thousands, huh? Wow. I mean, one person out of 1000... I guess that is the needle in the haystack, so to speak... And what a burden to make the choice. And then I guess the lack of scale, which is by design... |
**Alex Gallego:** You know, but if other companies start doing that... I know we've inspired other companies, like DoorDash. I haven't followed up with them, but I know that they launched -- they wanted to join a similar thing, and what I told them was like "This isn't a scalable system. If you choose to do it, don't s... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Very cool. |
**Alex Gallego:** Yup. So that's how it goes. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I love it. Love it. This has been a fun conversation, Alex. I've enjoyed hearing your journey firsthand, and I'm happy to share it here on Founders Talk. Just stoked to see your ambition, your obsession, and out the other end, magical things have happened... So keep doing what you're doing, for sure... |
**Alex Gallego:** Thanks so much for having us. I really appreciate it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It was awesome. Thanks, Alex. |
• Linear's founders kept a low profile during its early years, preferring to focus on building rather than seeking media attention. |
• The company's approach is characterized by intentional and careful decision-making, with a focus on core fundamentals and product quality over speed and growth. |
• Jori Lallo credits Scandinavian humility and a desire for independence as influences on Linear's understated approach. |
• Linear aims to help teams build better software through issue tracking, project management, and workflows that integrate customer feedback and bug reporting. |
• The company prioritizes flexibility and customization, integrating with other tools like Sentry and Google Sheets rather than trying to own every aspect of product development. |
• Frustration with existing project management tools led to the creation of Linear |
• The founders' experiences at Convore, Grove, and Coinbase influenced their vision for Linear |
• IRC limitations and frustrations with modernization efforts led to interest in creating a better experience |
• Slack's success was due in part to its mobile apps and centralized approach |
• The shift from protocols to applications has made it harder to build on top of open APIs |
• Open APIs are essential for innovation and building new products and services |
• Companies should prioritize keeping APIs open to encourage innovation and mashups |
• APIs and integrations becoming more open and easier to work with |
• Markdown as a widely accepted format for data exchange between apps |
• Example of Tweetbot competing with Twitter's desired user experience through API usage |
• Importance of embracing early users and maintaining accessibility in software development |
• Dropbox as an example of a company struggling to balance consumer and enterprise needs |
• Internet shared file storage becoming commoditized, with multiple options available but no clear winner |
• Importance of customer dialogue and feedback in building a product |
• The need for transparency and openness with customers regarding product development and changes |
• Integrating customer experience teams into the product-building process |
• Having a tight-knit company culture that encourages collaboration between different functions (e.g. engineering, design, customer success) |
• Decision-making processes and autonomy within teams at Linear |
• Hiring people who can make decisions and have "taste" for the product |
• Emphasis on being nimble and adaptable in a startup environment |
• Importance of flexibility in business planning |
• Building a recruiting team to bring in qualified candidates with company "taste" |
• Lessons learned from building and staffing a recruiting team over 3 years |
• Challenges of hiring for multiple roles and teams at a growing company |
• Role of the recruiting team in evaluating new hires and onboarding processes |
• Balance between founder involvement and team-driven decision making in the hiring process |
• The importance of having a strong in-house recruiting team |
• Setting up new teams and scaling them effectively |
• Designing companies as well as products, with care and attention to detail |
• Learning from mistakes and course-correcting when necessary |
• Creating a culture that values intentional storytelling and communication |
• Sharing the company's story and values through its readme page |
• Attracting like-minded individuals who share the company's vision and beliefs |
• Balancing product and company growth with founder involvement |
• Jori's transition from coding to focusing on business strategy and internal tooling |
• Importance of building internal tools for efficiency and employee satisfaction |
• Relationship between Linear and other companies' tools, including Census and "is another tool" |
• Potential challenges and benefits of having a distributed team for internal tool development |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.