Tom Wilkie, the CTO of Grafana Labs, talks to us about his professional journey. We cover how he got into software engineering, his first startup, working as an EM at Google, and what motivated him to go back to an IC role. We talk about his time at Grafana from when they were only 25 people to now when Grafana Labs has more than a thousand employees. Tom’s journey cannot be told without diving deeper into the technical side of things - we discuss observability, distributed systems, and hard technical problems.

Where to find more about Tom and Grafana Labs:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwilkie

- X - https://x.com/tom_wilkie

- Grafana Labs - https://grafana.com/

- Grafana Labs events - https://grafana.com/events/

Where to find Bartek:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/

- X - https://x.com/bwplotka

Where to find Ivan:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/

- X - https://x.com/ivvalkov

As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form -https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

0:00 - Tom’s intro

7:09 - How Tom got into software engineering

15:05 - Tom’s first startup 21:25 - Tom’s experience as EM at Google

28:04 - Joining Weaveworks as employee number 7

38:51 - Tom joining Grafana

45:32 - Grafana’s Third Act

53:12 - Startup advice

59:41 - Perseverance and motivation

1:04:35 - How Grafana acquires startups

1:10:25 - Where to find out more

Monica Sarbu, the CEO and founder of Xata.io, talks to us about her inspiring journey from getting into tech to building Xata - the serverless database platform for modern apps. We chat about the founding of her first company, Packetbeat, its acquisition by Elastic, and her time as a director there. We talk about mentoring, diversity, and hiring engineers that have high agency. We also cover some of the technical decisions at Xata - we even chat a bit about the Zig programming language :)

Where to find more about Monica and Xata:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicasarbu

- X - https://x.com/monicasarbu

- Xata - https://xata.io/

- pgroll - https://github.com/xataio/pgroll

- Tupu - https://www.tupu.io/

Where to find Bartek:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/

- X - https://x.com/bwplotka

Where to find Ivan:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/

- X - https://x.com/ivvalkov

As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

Episode breakdown:

0:00 - Episode intro

2:25 - Monica's introduction

4:00 - Monica's software engineering background

5:52 - Founding her first company Packetbeat

15:30 - Elastic acquisition and being a director there

25:34 - The role of managers

28:38 - Founding Tupu and diversity in tech

38:44 - The founding story of Xata

44:35 - Open source, serverless, and Zig vs Go

51:17 - Hiring high-agency engineers

1:00:37 - Where to find out more

In this episode, we talk with Jimmy Zelinskie, co-founder and CPO of AuthZed, about his journey in building a global scale OSS authorization startup. Jimmy shares insights into the creation and evolution of SpiceDB, an open-source database optimized for authorization decisions. We chat about Jimmy’s story of transitioning from an engineer to a product manager, the importance of open-source in building the business, and the strategies that helped AuthZed find its first customers. Jimmy also discusses the inspiration behind AuthZed, Google’s Zanzibar paper, and the unique challenges of building a startup grounded in cutting-edge research.

Where to find more about Jimmy and AuthZed:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jzelinskie/

- X - https://x.com/jimmyzelinskie

- Jimmy’s Github - https://github.com/jzelinskie

- AuthZed - https://authzed.com/

- SpiceDB on Github - https://github.com/authzed/spicedb

- The Zanzibar Paper annotated by AuthZed - https://authzed.com/zanzibar

- Discord - https://authzed.com/discord

Where to find Bartek:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwplotka/

- X - https://x.com/bwplotka

Where to find Ivan:

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-valkov/

- X - https://x.com/ivvalkov

As always, feedback and questions are welcome! You can use this form - https://forms.gle/NmUGeqMtyP6H6mMP9

Episode breakdown:

0:00 Episode intro

2:05 Jimmy’s introduction

3:53 Jimmy’s software engineering background

9:06 On becoming a founder

14:47 Experimenting with different startup ideas

20:41 The Zanzibar paper and using research in startups

26:44 Finding your first customers

31:56 Building SpiceDB

38:11 Monetization in an OSS startup

42:34 Authorization deep-dive

52:19 Product management in a startup

1:01:47 Where to find out more