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A not quite similar to acquisition, but they could have endowed you quite well, as well as others could have. But at some point, something would change. Like you had said, somebody would have made their own thing, they would have had a larger team that was a Benthos team, and they would have outweighed you in capabilit... |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Then I could have just been the goofball, and not having to do anything. So I thought about -- there was different outcomes that I planned for... Because the way that I would describe the whole process - because it was chaotic. I was doing all kinds of like random stuff. But the way that I would descr... |
The problem there is -- it's the same with a few of these streaming tech projects, where I'm just one piece of the overall puzzle, and the actual streaming service is like the biggest piece. You're going to spend more on Kafka than you are on Kafka Connect. And likewise, Flink and all these other things are kind of lik... |
So I would have had to have had that competency baked into this new startup company, and that's not really in my mind. Like, I'm thinking about the product side of Benthos. I just thought "It's a possibility", but there's a big gap there in stuff. And also, I wasn't 100% sure if I'd enjoy it, being that kind of high up... |
But yeah, the other option is just band together people in the industry that could be like partners, and get them to sponsor me. And there was prior art for that, because Synadia were sponsoring me. And like, if I had 10 Synadias all sponsoring me, with similar kind of like setups, then that could have sustained me and... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[01:20:29.25\] Or that it's guaranteed to be there next year. |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's really hard with yearly contracts renewing. |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Yeah, exactly. And when you've got 10 of them, they're not necessarily going to see it as beneficial anymore. So they might not want to give you as much. And that's fair enough. It's free money with no obligations, so there's no way of like tying them to it. I cannot imagine hiring somebody under thos... |
It's really easy to get -- if you've got a really popular project, it is really easy to get somebody to give you like a sponsorship. So there were a couple companies that gave me a sponsorship as part of their open source initiative kind of thing... But I would need those all the time. I'd need to have a constant feed ... |
But the other way was to just accept that life is fleeting, and I can live off my current income. Why don't I just do this forever? And I think if -- if I could just delete my family... \[laughter\] Maybe that's the trajectory I would have had. |
**Jerod Santo:** You've said that way too seriously. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, he did say that way too seriously. |
**Ashley Jeffs:** \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You are a unique individual, that's for sure. |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. This felt more like you're making a deal. |
**Ashley Jeffs:** If some villain accidentally deleted them. Not me. I would never do that. But if that were to happen, then maybe I would have just carried on... Because I did enjoy that lifestyle. Just having sponsors, and a humble life, and all that stuff... It would have been fine. But it's just difficult when you'... |
**Jerod Santo:** You've gotta answer those questions, you know... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Here's a question for you, though... Did Synadia miss the boat, the opportunity to acquire? |
**Ashley Jeffs:** I can't really give any -- I can't tell you any of that stuff. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It is video and you can nod, or make a face. |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Not really, because I think basically -- at the end of the day, an acquisition, two companies coming together, you have to have a really good plan for what you're going to do afterwards. And I know of founders that they -- they had a project, they got acquired, and then it just kind of fizzles a bit, ... |
\[01:23:58.25\] There were lots of companies that I could have spoken to and could have could have had some sort of deal with. I can't give details as to -- I'm pretty sure I can't give details about who I talked to. I would assume I can't, even just ethically. But if that had been one of the ones on the table, then it... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, for sure. What I know about Synadia, or at least NATS, which is sort of sits above NATS... It's NATS in the cloud, basically. I'm paraphrasing and botching my description of Synadia and NATS. But from what I understand, NATS generally tries to render Kafka obsolete. It tries to be the better K... |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Yeah. They've got JetStream as well, which has way more overlap than the original NATS. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. And I just wonder if -- it's kind of funny that they were sponsoring you. I think that they would have had to have some ambition for doing so, not just simply generosity. Sure, Derek Collison is a great person, running Synadia and founder and creator of NATS, all that good stuff... But there ... |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Yeah, I mean we made a load of content together at the time... I had a user base that overlaps massively with all of these companies. So it's not just Synadia and Redpanda. There's also -- I mean, obviously, WarpStream and Confluent, all the various Kafka shops... But also AWS, Azure... All these vari... |
So there is an incentive to all kind of come together and have like a sort of shared marketing message. Obviously, if I did that with every company at the same time, then it would kind of render them all obsolete, to an extent. I mean, maybe \[unintelligible 01:26:45.09\] and it would be good, but... Yeah, there's defi... |
So there is kind of an indirect, non-contractual sort of thing going on there. But I genuinely think they're just really nice people. And it's very difficult to prove that that's what's gonna happen... Like, you're gonna donate to somebody and then that's how the relation is gonna play out. So they're kind of taking a ... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[01:27:54.12\] Sure. What happens after that acquisition with your GitHub Sponsors? Do you just go back to them and be like -- |
**Ashley Jeffs:** \[unintelligible 01:27:57.21\] Understandably, everybody basically just immediately turned off. Because why would you? Like, I've got a company now, and... I think that's fair enough. Yeah, there were sponsors that were giving me quite a lot, and some of those lasted a few months... But to be honest, ... |
**Jerod Santo:** Well, where do you go from here? What happens next? I mean, is this the end of your story? |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I'm just gonna play video games... \[laughter\] No, there's tons of work. I mean, as soon as I joined Redpanda, there's a mountain of stuff to do to get everybody in action. So I've got enough work to get on with; as much as I want, I can chomp down on. But I'm not really sure l... |
My plan is to keep on working at Redpanda on it. The team isn't anywhere near as big as I would eventually want it to get to, so there's a lot of work there to do. Eventually, I will stream again, because I used to do loads of like community stuff, but that's kind of fizzled out a little bit with the little kids... But... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's true. |
**Ashley Jeffs:** They could tell me "You're too much of a goofball. We're done with this. We're sick of it." And then I don't know. But stay tuned. |
**Jerod Santo:** Well, the future is unclear, but probably positive, unless the whole firing thing happens... |
**Ashley Jeffs:** The future is terrifying and unknown, and I'm here for it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. That's true. You could get fired. Unlikely though. I'm sure you've got a contract of sorts, or some handcuffs to hold on to, or hold on to you... |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Not really. I'm just a person. I can't force them to employ me. |
**Jerod Santo:** \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, I've gotta imagine that as part of the acquisition there was some entanglement... |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Yeah, but they've acquired me, so the product is theirs. So if they decide that I'm not -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So there's no work contract. There's no guarantee beyond acquisition, basically. |
**Ashley Jeffs:** I can't give details. But basically, if I wasn't performing well enough, I'm sure they'd be able to -- |
**Jerod Santo:** He's expendable. |
**Ashley Jeffs:** Yeah, I'm expendable. They can get rid of me. I mean, I'm trying to make myself as expendable as possible. That is almost literally my job. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "Let me go. Must play video games." |
**Ashley Jeffs:** I'm unloading my brain on lots and lots of people. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** "Do not delete my family." |
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