Supabase CEO on the "painful" decisions that built a $5B company
Vibe coding has taken the tech industry by storm, and it's not just the Lovables and Replits of the world that are winning. The startups building the infrastructure behind them are cashing in too.
Supabase, the open-source database platform that's become the backend of choice for the vibe-coding world, raised $100 million at a $5 billion valuation just months after closing $200 million at $2 billion. But co-founder and CEO Paul Copplestone has a surprising strategy: he keeps turning down million-dollar enterprise contracts, betting instead that vibe coding will birth the next generation of companies.
Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort sat down with Copplestone to explore Supabase's rise and what it means for the database race.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
Why Copplestone believes "the death of Oracle won't take a generation"
The technical moonshots Supabase is funding to make Postgres even more scalable
How he decides which enterprise deals to turn down, and why it still "feels very painful"
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It all starts with Postgres (Interview)
Paul Copplestone, CEO of Supabase (the meme-lord himself), joins the show to take us on the journey of Supabase leading Postgres for life, and how it all starts with Postgres as the base-layer substrate for the entire Supabase platform. They’re laser focused on the drive ahead, not the rear-view mirror.
Disclosure: Adam and Jerod are angel investors in Supabase.
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Featuring:
Paul Copplestone – Website, GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Supabase.com
Changelog News #54: 🔥 Supabase quietly went public today
“Build in a weekend, scale to millions”
29% of Y Combinator batch (W24) use Supabase
Oriole joins Supabase
We are moving to General Availability (April 2024)
Changelog #476: Supabase is all in on Postgres
How to Run Supabase Locally
Supabase local development
Changelog #590: Good timing makes great products
Fly Postgres, managed by Supabase
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
788: Supabase: Open Source Firebase for Fullstack JS Apps
Scott and CJ chat with Paul Copplestone, CEO and co-founder of Supabase, about the journey of building an open source alternative to Firebase. Learn about the tech stack, the story behind their excellent documentation, and how Supabase balances business goals with open-source values.
Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:30 Who is Paul Copplestone?
01:17 Why ‘Supa’ and not ‘Super’?
02:26 How did Supabase start? 04:29 How long from inception to joining Y Combinator?
05:10 Was it always intended to be open source? Why Open Source.
07:22 How many users chose to self-host?
07:49 Open source mindset.
08:42 Simplicity in design.
10:32 How do you take Supabase one step beyond the competition?
12:35 How do you decide which libraries are officially supported vs community maintained? 15:17 You don’t need a client library!
16:48 Edge functions for server-side functionality.
18:51 The genesis of pgvector.
20:59 The product strategy.
22:25 What’s the story behind Supabase’s awesome docs?
25:26 The tech behind Supabase. 25:39 What is the UI built on?
27:33 Consolidation follows kaizen.
28:54 What else is involved in the stack?
31:47 Authentication.
32:35 Storage engine.
33:13 For self-hosting.
35:46 How do you balance business goals with open source?
42:01 What’s next for Supabase?
44:15 Supabase’s GA + new features. Top 10 LAunches from Supabase GA Week.
48:24 Who runs the X account?
50:39 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs.
Sick Picks Paul: Apple Vision Pro.
Shameless Plugs Paul: PostgreSQL.
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Supabase is all in on Postgres (Interview)
This week Paul Copplestone, CEO of Supabase joined us to catch us up on the next big thing happening in the world of Postgres. Supabase might be best known as “the open source Firebase alternative,” a tagline they might be reluctant to maintain. But from Adam’s perspective, he’s never been more excited about what they’re bringing to market for Postgres fans. In the last year, Supabase has gone from 0 to more than 80,000 databases on their platform — and they’re still in beta…and it’s open source. Hopefully today’s show sheds some light on why everyone is talking about Supabase.
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Featuring:
Paul Copplestone – Website, GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Supabase
Supabase docs
supabase/supabase
Supabase Realtime
Tweet: Total databases on the Supabase platform
Tweet: In 2021 Supabase grew…
The Changelog #461: Fauna is rethinking the database with Evan Weaver
postgresql.org
Firebase
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!