From GitLab to Kilo Code (Interview)
We’re joined by Sid Sijbrandij, founder of GitLab who led the all-in-one coding platform all the way to IPO. In late 2022, Sid discovered that he had bone cancer. That started a journey he’s been on ever since… a journey that he shares with us in great detail. Along the way, Sid continued founding companies including Kilo Code, an all-in-one agentic engineering platform, which he also tells us all about.
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Featuring:
Sid Sijbrandij – Website, LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Sid’s cancer journey
Kilo.ai
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
EP 44: Sid Sijbrandij (Founder/CEO, GitLab) - Corporate Transparency, Open Source Philosophy, Remote Work and Global Talent Pools
In the 44th episode GitLab Co-Founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij discusses the importance of transparency both within a company and publicly and the philosophies of open source and success. Plus why he’s such an advocate for remote work and the troubles with hybrid offices.
(0:00) Introducing Sid Sijbrandij
(13:43) Corporate Transparency
(22:03) Remote work
(25:13) Philosophies for success
(26:55) Team ops
(32:37) Human elements of remote work
(36:14) Hybrid work
(39:07) Global talent pool
(43:10) Measuring productivity
(50:08) The shadow program
(54:14) Staying in the Bay Area
(56:57) Situational leadership
(1:00:08) Outro
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
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About the Show
A Saturday morning podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett (Partner and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures) covering the tech news with his friends and other people with industry expertise.
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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20VC: Gitlab CEO Sid Sijbrandij on Why You Are Not Allowed to Present in Meetings at Gitlab, Why it is a Pipedream We Will Go Back to Offices and What is the Future of Work & CEO Coaches; What Makes The Best, When To Have Them and When To Change Them
Sid Sijbrandij is the Co-founder & CEO @ GitLab. GitLab's single application helps organizations deliver software faster and more efficiently while strengthening their security and compliance. Prior to their IPO last year, Sid raised funding from some of the best including ICONIQ, GV, Tiger, Coatue and D1 to name a few. Under his leadership, the company has grown to over 1,500 employees and over 30 million registered users. If that was not enough, Sid is also an active angel and sits on the board of Meltano, a spinout of Gitlab that allows you to manage all the data tools in your stack.
In Today's Episode with Sid Sijbrandij You Will Learn:
1.) The Founding of Gitlab:
How did Sid make his way into the world of tech and startups?
What was it about Gitlab as a project that excited Sid so much from Day 1?
How did Sid convince his co-founder to turn Gitlab from a project into a company?
2.) The Future of Work:
Why does Sid believe it is a fallacy that everyone will go back to the office?
What are the 1-2 most important things for companies to do when moving to a remote work environment? Where does Sid see many make mistakes?
What have Gitlab done to create a remote working environment so successfully? What have they tried that has not worked?
What stage of company building does remote work best for? When is it most challenging?
3.) Sid: The Leader
How has Sid changed and evolved as a leader over the Gitlab journey?
How does Sid look to get as much feedback as possible on his leadership?
How does Sid create an environment of safety where everyone feels they can provide feedback?
How does Sid work with his CEO coach? Should every CEO have one? What should one look for in them? How do you know when you need to change your CEO coach?
4.) Sid: The Board Member:
What have been Sid's biggest lessons on what makes successful board management?
In prep for the meeting, what materials does Sid provide? When does he send them? Does he present to the board? What mistakes do founders make in boards?
From being on the other side as a board member, what does Sid believe the best members do?
What would Sid most like to change about board meetings today?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Sid Sijbrandij
Sid's Favourite Book: High Output Management
SaaStr 512: How To Innovate Faster with Community, Insights From GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij
GitLab started as an open-source project that expanded into a public company with a buyer-based open-core business model. With over 300+ code contributions per month, innovating with the wider community is key to accelerating development efforts. Join GitLab CEO, Sid Sijbrandij, as he discusses GitLab's journey, choosing the right business model that balances high revenue potential and community contributions, and co-creating the product with the wider community to deliver safer software faster.
Gitter’s big adventure (Interview)
Gitter is exiting GitLab and entering the Matrix…ok, we couldn’t help ourselves with that one. Today we’re joined by Sid Sibrandij (CEO of GitLab) and Matthew Hodgson (technical co-founder of Matrix) to discuss the acquisition of Gitter. A little backstory to tee things up…back in 2017 GitLab announced the acquisition of Gitter to help push their idea of chatops within GitLab. As it turns out, the GitLab team saw a different path for Gitter as a core part of Matrix rather than a non-core project at GitLab. We talk through all the details in this episode with Matthew and Sid.
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Featuring:
Matthew Hodgson – GitHub, X
Sid Sijbrandij – Website, LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Share your feedback on our podcast and Changelog++ experiences.
Welcoming Gitter to Matrix!
Gitter - Where developers come to talk
Element - All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations
Matrix - An open network for secure, decentralized communication
Gitter is joining the GitLab team (March 15, 2017)
The Changelog #384: Enter the Matrix
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
SaaStr 282: The Ultimate Guide To Remote Work; All vs Part Remote Teams, How To Maintain Culture Across Teams, Should Compensation Be Location Adjusted, How To Structure Internal Processes with Remote Teams, How Remote Teams Impact Hiring, Sales and Fundr
Michael Pryor, Co-Founder & CEO @ Trello, now Head of Trello Product with Atlassian following their recent acquisition.
Kolton Andrus is the Founder & CEO @ Gremlin, the failure as a service startup finds weaknesses in your system before they cause problems.
Dylan Serota, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer @ Terminal, the startup that helps you create world-class technical teams through remote operations as a service.
Rachel Carlson, Co-Founder and CEO @ Guild Education, the leader in education benefits offering the single most scalable solution for preparing the workforce of today for the jobs of tomorrow.
Sid Sijbrandi, Founder & CEO @ Gitlab, a single application for the entire software development lifecycle.
Jeppe Rindom is the Founder & CEO @ Pleo, the simple spending solution for your company automating expense reports and simplifying company expenses.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
How should founders think about the debate between all remote vs part remote teams? How does life and operations change with each? What are the pros and cons? Is it possible to move between the two overtime?
What can one do to maintain culture with remote teams? What processes need to be in place to ensure a cohesive and streamlined communication process? What technical architecture needs to be in place? Where are the breakpoints when it comes to communication? How often does one need to do in person off-sites?
How does being remote or part remote impact fundraising? How do VCs think about this new structure of operations? What is the right way to present it? How does being outside a core tech hub impact one's ability to raise? How should one run a fundraising process if outside a core hub?
How important is it for your team to be near your customers? How does this change according to sector and customer base? How important is it for your team to be near your investors? Does having an exec and sales team in one place and the rest of the team elsewhere work?
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Read the full transcript on our blog.
20VC: Gitlab Founder, Sid Sijbrandji on Lessons From Scaling from 400 to 1,000 People in 1 Year, Why You Have To Have A Low Level Of Shame On The Product You Release & The Secret To Making Remote Work So Effectively At Scale
Sid Sijbrandij is the Founder & CEO @ Gitlab, a single application for the entire software development lifecycle. From project planning and source code management to CI/CD, monitoring, and security. To date, Sid has raised over $145m in funding for Gitlab from the likes of GV, August Capital, YC, Khosla and Goldman Sachs just to name a few. What is incredible, Sid has scaled the team to over 762 team members across 55 countries and is famed for his openness and transparency on how he builds both the product and company. You can find the fantastic Gitlab handbook here.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Sid made his way into the world of startups, learned Ruby in the early days and came to found Gitlab? What was that a-ha moment?
2.) In 2019 Gitlab is growing from 400 to 1,000 people, what are the biggest challenges that come with such operational growth? How does one hire at such pace and retain quality? How does Sid think about the right way to onboard new employees? How does Sid think about KPI and goal setting in the early days?
3.) Today all 750 Gitlab employees are remote, what does Sid believe is the secret to making remote teams work at scale? How does Sid think about the balance between fast shipping cadence and perfect product releases? Why does Sid believe, "you have to have a low level of shame on the product you release"?
4.) How does Sid think about operating Gitlab as a totally transparent company? What does that mean both in reality and in process? Why does Sid believe it is optimal to have a roadmap that is open for everyone to see? What are the pros? What are the cons of such transparency? How do competitors respond?
5.) If every great business is bundling or unbundling, where does Sid believe he and Sid are in the process today? How does Sid think about being too much to too many people? How does the open-source community really come into play in the development of Gitlab?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Sid's Fave Book: High Output Management
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sid on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
GitLab’s CEO | CR 313
We chat with GitLab’s CEO and co-founder Sid Sijbrandij, about the GitLab model, the changes they’ve made since Microsoft purchased GitHub, his thoughts on that acquisition, and his compelling case for 100% remote work.
Stack Overflow Podcast #117 - Your Friendly Neighborhood Code Mentor
On this week's edition of The Stack Overflow Podcast, we get a visit from Gitlab CEO Sid Sijbrandij. We also chat with UX Research Kristina Lustig about Stack Overflow's mentorship program experiment. As usual, the gang gets into other shenanigans.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
GitLab's Master Plan (Interview)
Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of GitLab, joined the show to talk about their recent unveiling of the GitLab Master Plan, $20 Million secured in a Series B funding round, their idea of Conversational Development in this “post Agile world”, and their focus on the enterprise and on-premise Git hosting as the business model to sustain and build GitLab into something ‘modern software teams’ can rely upon.”
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Code School – Learn to program by doing with hands-on courses. Sign up for Code School at only $19/month. That’s $10 off per month!
Featuring:
Sid Sijbrandij – Website, LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
The Changelog #103: GitLab and open source with Sytse Sijbrandij
The GitLab Master Plan - YouTube
GitLab Live Event Recap | GitLab
Applied physics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
operable/cog: Bringing the power of the command line to chat
Introducing Cog
Cog + ChatOps = Continuous DevOps
Cycle Analytics (#847) · Issues · GitLab.org / GitLab Enterprise Edition · GitLab
GitLab Team Handbook
GitLab Strategy
GitLab.com - Marketing Issues
GitLab Master Plan on Hacker News (see comments)
Include GitLab projects in Changelog Nightly · Issue #21
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
