Summary
David Ondrej interviews a co-founder of Supabase, the open-source Postgres-based backend platform that has grown into a company valued at over $10 billion. The conversation covers what it takes to build a breakout developer company in the age of AI coding agents.
The co-founder explains how Supabase found its footing once it changed its tagline to the open-source Firebase alternative, and why sharp messaging matters as much as the product itself. They also advise founders to talk to real users face to face and watch them try the product for the first time, since AI makes it easier than ever to build the wrong thing faster.
The discussion also looks at where software is heading. Topics include the rise of personalized, internally built tools, whether AI agents will favor open-source components over closed ones, and whether the claim that SaaS is dead holds up once maintenance and token costs are considered. The co-founder describes how coding agents have become elite-level engineers, recalls a period when agents carelessly disabled row-level security (RLS) to get things working, and argues that open-source code gets scrutinized earlier as agents start probing systems for vulnerabilities.
Viewers interested in startup strategy, open source, and the future of AI-assisted development will find practical takeaways here.
📺 Source: David Ondrej · Published October 16, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
