text stringlengths 0 2.68k |
|---|
\[12:16\] At one point I thought about starting a record label, because I'm like "I like music, and I like business, so maybe I'll start a record label." I remember buying a book about it, and doing research... And at some point I started a chocolate company... And I kind of realized - and it's kind of obvious in hinds... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** I mean, even more so now, but even back then... And so I think that's what kind of brought me to tech, and I think that's what keeps fueling me, is like... Yeah, just the ability to have a positive impact in the world, and on other people. And it's not always fun, it's not always easy, but I think th... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Hmm. Can you expose some scars, some hard years, some bad choices that you can not reflect on, that are formative to who you are today? Kind of like what I did with you a little bit. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** Yeah... So you mean like life choices? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, where are the forks in the road that you're like "Man, that's the moment where I learned this hard lesson", or that's the moment -- I know you mentioned Mike, and 28 years, so maybe that's one of those forks, but... Just those moments where you look back now -- and it's kind of funny, because ... |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** As a mistake or a good choice? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You pick. Whichever direction you wanna go. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** I feel like mistakes are more interesting. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Scars, bloody knuckles... You know, sometimes mistakes can be either/or, sometimes the positive choice we make can be either/or, a scar or a bloody knuckle. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** I mean, look, I think you probably know this - entrepreneurship is a series of mistakes. And the key is just like not letting the company die, despite your mistakes. There's many I've made over the years: bad hires, bad strategic decisions... I'll tell you one actually that started even before then..... |
\[15:58\] I guess, I don't know, maybe -- I guess, long story, I think I changed my style, but I also realized that you have to look out for yourself, and your manager, whoever, that they will not necessarily look out for you. But also, conversely, I've tried to be the type of manager who looks out for people. I don't ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, so let's zoom into maybe how are you changed as a result? What did you do to -- where I'm trying to go to is how did you get here? ...in terms of not just where you're at in this moment, but like the person you are leading the company you are. What are some of the things that were in your past... |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** Yeah, I would say that I've made -- I'm not sure you want to call them mistakes, or just, I've had learning experiences over the years... And I think that I've formed who I am today. I think the key theme - and this is not all of them, but I think one key theme is I have learned how to trust myself. ... |
I think more recently... Look, I have a conversational style that myself -- both Mike and I, we talk about this... It's called cooperative overlapping. It essentially means that we interrupt a lot. But we interrupt because that's how we talk. Like, if you interrupt me, I feed on that. And one thing we realize is that -... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** And what I realized is that there are people in the company who liked who we are. They liked that we interrupted, you know? And so I got to the point, I was like "Yeah, you know what--" You know, we talk about California mentality versus New York mentality... New York mentality is "Hey, I'll be kind ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[19:42\] Yeah. One thing I wrote down a while back... This is actually 2012. September, 2012. And it was the question of "Where does a company's culture come from?" And essentially, it's boiled down to what you just said there, which is a founder's values and principles define the company's culture... |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** Cooperative overlapping. I think that's the technical term. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. And so it does put a name to it to tame it. So it's not interruption, it's meant to be a courteous interrupt to probably provoke deeper conversation, or to provoke more collaboration and involvement, right? Isn't that probably the reason for -- |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** No, totally, but I think it's also a function of like "Don't try to shore up your weaknesses, try to lean on your strengths." So I am an intense person. When I was younger, I would feel bad about it, because some people were like "Oh... Well, you're intense." But now I'm like "No, it's just who I am.... |
Similarly, I talk a little fast. I remember at one point I was giving a presentation, and some of my peers were like "Oh, why don't you slow down? You're talking really fast." And I slowed down, and they were like "No, this is worse. It was better when you talked fast, because your energy was there", you know? And I wa... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Just keep swimming, right? |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** Just keep swimming, yeah. And so, it's -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Dory's got the best advice. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** Dory... Yeah, that's right. Keep swimming. But it's just like, figure out who you are... Yeah, and lean into it. I mean, people talk about this in athletics, how once upon a time, maybe 50-60 years ago, the idea of the ideal athlete was someone who was just balanced in every possible way. Not too tal... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** The Michael Phelps with like massive wingspan. Gosh... |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** Yeah, dude. Totally. Michael Phelps is like - what, 6'4", 6'5", I think? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** He's huge, yeah. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** And there's this marathon runner who I think is like 5'7". And I remember reading an article that talked about how they wear the same pants. Because the marathon runner is all legs. And Michael Phelps is all torso. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** And you're like "Yeah--", you know? You don't get good at a sport by being balanced in everything. You find the thing where you have the edge, and you lean into that, you know? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. One thing you mentioned was this -- it seems like you've got some history in enterprise sales, enterprise database, you mentioned PLG, product-led growth... Help me understand some of your backstory when it comes to I guess just databases in general. How did you get into that world? What was t... |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** \[23:52\] Yeah, I mean, I've been using databases since the late '90s, I guess, ever since I started getting into computer science. I started using probably MySQL in 2004, Postgres in 2011, I think, thanks to Heroku... So I've always been involved in databases. |
I think what's interesting to me is when we started this company, which was then Timescale, we entered a world where the success stories were companies like Hortonworks and Cloudera. Really big on-prem. And that was not my background at all. I'd never been a salesperson, never worked with enterprise salespeople... Now ... |
One thing I like to say about myself and my co-founders is that we're very good students of the game. And so we were new to open source licensing, and then quickly became open source licensing experts. I would say we were new to PLG and sales, but I think now we're -- I'm not sure if we're experts, but I think we're pr... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You know, I think about the way databases have changed, and the way the sales of them have changed. Largely, it's as if -- if you're not an open source database, you're not worth your weight in gold, because it's a black box; things can change. Even the term - and this may cut deep to you, potential... |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** That's right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...but some out there choose that Postgres-compatible, and that's because they wanna do business differently, they wanna license differently... And I think the PLG model has obviously -- one, I feel as a developer if I can't go and play with your tool, even not so much in a free capacity, but the ab... |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** Yeah, no, it's fascinating, because I think databases, like software, used to be something where the key decision-maker was the CIO or CTO, and that deal was done in a steakhouse or on a golf course. That's how it used to be. And with the shift to SaaS, and then to shift to cloud for databases, that ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. What was the original challenge you faced to even consider creating Timescale? What was that moment, and when was that moment? |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** \[28:06\] We started off as a company building an IoT platform, internet of things. And it's like 2015. Yeah, I mean, back then I'd just spent 10 years in mobile, and I remember thinking "Wow--" Mobile was really exciting, but around 2014 it started to get a little bit boring. Pre and post iPhone it ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, gosh... |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** ...we had this database. And I'm trying to sell this IoT platform... And look, as an entrepreneur you learn to listen to signals of when someone is really engaged. And when someone's like "Oh yeah, that's cool", that's not cool. But when someone's like "Wait, wait, wait, hold on... Can you tell me th... |
So here I am, trying to sell this IoT platform, and I'm meeting with the German head architect of this large shipping logistics company... I'm meeting them in Mountain View, and I'm telling him about this IoT platform. And he's like "Look, there's so many IoT platforms out there. What makes yours different?" And I was ... |
So yeah, long story short, we kind of scratched our own itch and realized other people have the same itch... But again, we are students, we listen really well to the market, we try not to be dogmatic.... And when someone says "That thing's not interesting, but this thing is", we're like "Hey, we're not here just to bui... |
**Break**: \[30:50\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Today you're not called Timescale, though. |
**Ajay Kulkarni:** That's right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So there's a name change of recent, which I think is challenging, but it kind of maybe shows the evolution... What's the evolution of that discovery, that 12-month discovery, scratch your own itch, IoT company, to Timescale to now be Tiger Data? |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.