Summary
In this Light Cone episode, Y Combinator’s hosts talk with Paul Copplestone, co-founder and CEO of Supabase, the open-source Postgres backend that has become a default database inside tools like Claude Code and Codex. Supabase now reports 13 million users, up from roughly 3 million a year earlier, and is spinning up over a million databases a week, with databases under management approaching 50 million versus 8 million last year.
The conversation centers on the shift from building for developers to building for agents. Copplestone describes three eras for the company: a dashboard-first product, an API-first product that suited platforms like Bolt and Lovable, and now a code-first, CLI-driven approach designed for agents running in sandboxes. Roughly 70% of new activity now comes from agents, and the team argues that open source helps because agents can read the source when something goes wrong.
Other topics include non-engineers becoming builders, why top-of-funnel growth is not hurting activation and conversion this year, and what a future in which everyone with access to AI can build and customize their own software means for databases and entrepreneurship.
📺 Source: Y Combinator · Published October 30, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
