Episode 100
· 42:40
It's like night and day. They launched their initial proprietary version, and then later, they launched the open source version. And the open source version, like, hits the front page of hacking ears. Developers are just more philosophically aligned with the idea of open source than than made proprietary.
Jack Bridger:Hi, everyone. You're listening to Scanning DevTools, and I'm joined today by Ant, who is the cofounder and CTO of Supabase. Ant is returning. And, also, I just wanna say this is the 1 hundredth episode of Scanning DevTools, and I really wanted Ant's, to come back because it was such an amazing episode. First time around, I think it's the most listened to one we've had, and, Ant's awesome.
Jack Bridger:So Ant, thank you so much for coming back.
Ant Wilson:Well, congrats on getting to a 100 episodes. That is honestly crazy. I feel like we should probably turn it around on this one and be asking you what you've learned from the first one hundred. Like, what are the the standout things that you've learned from from doing a 100 episodes?
Jack Bridger:Well, I would absolutely accept that, but I feel like everyone is just gonna wanna hear what you've got to say. But I can tell you what we what we learned from your episode last what I learned from your episode last time because that was absolutely a very valuable one. And I think we spoke a lot about like, you spoke a lot about, like, finding your product market fit and just, like, kind of keeping on launching and how, like, you you just kept trying new things and you found that, you know, this messaging that worked and it just it just hit. You also talked a lot about, like, memes and about how they actually work. And I think that was kind of one lesson that I took from you is, like, you just have to try things, see what works, and kind of follow those like first principles rather than just looking to kind of expertise experts to come along and tell you what to do and like read this article in some tech crunch or something of like, oh, I should do that.
Jack Bridger:They're like, just try things and and follow that. I think that was a huge thing from you.
Ant Wilson:So I can't convince you then to to talk about how how about how do you possibly find the time to have done a 100 podcast episodes?
Jack Bridger:Yo. I think it's, like, keeping it fun, and that's the the key. It's like I I talk to people that I wanna talk to. Like
Ant Wilson:yeah. No. No. Regarding the stuff we spoke about last time, I think now I mean, that must have been, like, what, almost 2 years ago, maybe 2 years ago we had
Jack Bridger:a conversation. Think it came out in March 20, 22 23. So
Ant Wilson:yeah. Yeah. And, I think I'm now even more, like, those ideas have, like, crystallised even more now. And I think, like, you know, when we were trying to hire for a head of marketing, I went through this, like, 6 month process where I spoke to I found 35 people who were, like, CMOs or head of marketing in other startups, companies. And I spoke to them all for hours and hours trying to figure out, like, what are we missing?
Ant Wilson:Like, what is the thing? Like, how do how do we make the next step, into, like, going up markets or anything? And what I ended up planning what the advice from almost everybody was like, well, what's working today? And I'm like, well, it's x, it's y, it's memes, it's this. And they're like, well, you just double down on that stuff.
Ant Wilson:Like, you've built this engine and have found success. Like, why would you not just, like, double, triple, quadruple the thing that's already working? Like, why are you trying to take these different approaches? And that was quite, like, nice to hear so we could go away and just be like, yeah, let's just throw more fuel on the fire, make more memes, you know, just double down on, like, talking to developers, basically. And and that's what we've been doing for the last 2 years still.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And so so it's not really been like a huge like, what you're doing now is not so different to what you were doing 2 years ago.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Exactly. And and we've built a team around that now. So so recently, we hired, this guy, Craig Cannon, to be our, like, head of DevRel and marketing. And Craig's, like, the perfect person to to do this for Superbase because he, a, he, like, set up a bunch of the, he he launched the podcast at Y Combinator.
Ant Wilson:I think he launched the the YouTube channel at YC. So he he kind of, like, knows a lot about, like, online marketing, which is one thing we think a lot about. Like, we we're not so heavy in events and in person stuff just yet. It's, like, all online. And so he's an expert in that.
Ant Wilson:But also, he previously ran this hackathon series in the US, which was like comedy hacks, like a comedy hack series where he would get comedians and developers and pair them all and have this hackathon where they would and then and then do a show do like a comedy show at the end where they would present all these things. And I was like, this is like the perfect person to run Barking and Gatsuba's because, like, that's what we are, right? It's like online, it's developers, it's like having a sense of humor, like a bit of self deprecation. And yeah. And so and so building a team just around that motion is is is where we're at now.
Ant Wilson:Like, it's it's it's really fun, honestly.
Jack Bridger:That's so interesting. So you basically were like, okay. So what we do is, like, we do, you know, there's a bit of content online content with a bit of a kind of funny angle. How do we scale this? It's higher.
Jack Bridger:Hire the guy who knows how to do both of those things well and do more of it.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Exactly. And and just to to go back and maybe talk about, like, we we have this incredible DevRel team, these guys, like, a team of 4 who are just experts in YouTube, experts in creating, like, great example applications, experts in partnering with other companies to create integrations and then make videos and content about those integrations. And one change we made, I think, probably about a year and a half ago, was previously we are creating content for, like, education to, like, help people get the most out of Supabase who already knew about Supabase. But the thing we are missing was using YouTube as an acquisition channel.
Ant Wilson:Because now if you Google something, after the first two results, you often get, like, 3 YouTube videos. Like, here's the video things for the for whatever you're looking for. And, also, like, on your YouTube homepage, like, what we want is people discovering SuperBase via YouTube. And so we made that change to start targeting people who didn't already know about us. And so, again, like, having Craig come in who's done that at YC and created, you know, the YC YouTube now is just like is so good.
Ant Wilson:Right?
Jack Bridger:So good.
Ant Wilson:And obviously, like, Gary has doubled down on that and Gary's done an incredible job of, like, taking that to the next level completely. But that's a lot of the the thing that we've been working on with the DevRel guys. They were just, like, churning out, like, this, like, incredible content every week. And, again, just like that's that's all been a part of the the strategy. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:So how does that work in terms of how is that different to just, like, educational content? Like, it's it's, like, the titles and stuff or it's because it's more entertaining, it shows up on, like, suggested videos or, like I
Ant Wilson:think it's, like, a, spending more time thinking about, like, the titles, the thumbnails, like, the descriptions, like, basically watching all of the mister beast content. You know? Like, all that advice on on how to do better there. But from a content perspective, it's less about, like, oh, here's this new super base feature, you know, and it's more about, oh, I'm gonna build this thing with Next. Js and with Vercel.
Ant Wilson:And maybe you just, like, happen to be also using Supabase to build this project out. Yeah. And you'll talk about some of the topics, some how to get the best performance out of x, and it's not just super bass related. And and this also ties back to the stuff we talked about, I think, last time, which is, like, the way to do marketing in general on social, I feel, is that you can't just go out and talk about, like, yourself and talk about your own product. And so here's my thing.
Ant Wilson:It's so amazing. It's gonna solve all your problems. It's like you can't just do that. You've gotta talk about, like, just like developer culture in general. It's like, you know, here's the things that are happening.
Ant Wilson:Oh, and by the way, we launched this thing and sort of, like, do it as an and, seems to work way better than just having a feed, which is just like feature a, feature b, feature c. Like, no one's gonna pay that much attention, especially if you're very early on.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. I feel like you you understand, your audience, like, really, really well, and I feel like a lot of it is just like, you're kind of saying something that it that shows how much you understand, and it's kind of funny and, like, it's like but it's not saying use super basses. Like And
Ant Wilson:I think that's like you know, one thing that's super hard to quantify is brand awareness. And that's something we pushed a lot. And you have to push a lot on on the early days because you just need people to know who you are, like, to recognize the logo, again before they they start to appreciate, like, the the specific features that you're pushing. But, but but it's all about yeah. It's just finding that balance and, you know, like I we do a lot of, like, humor stuff and memes, but you also can't, like, go all in on that and make that, like, your entire, like, profile because especially now that much larger companies are using SuperBase.
Ant Wilson:Like, the thing they care about the most is, like, the stability of the platform, the performance, the security. So you also have to, like, present that stuff as well, which is which is harder to do. But like I said, it's all about, like, kind of sneaking it in at the like, get them with a hook and then Yeah. Inform them that, oh, by the way, like, we outperform x y z.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That that's what, that's almost exactly what Aaron Francis said when I interviewed him, actually. He was like, you have, like, a nugget of a thing that you wanna talk about, and then you kind of wrap it up into, like, something fun or interesting.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. And and, like, Aaron's Grace, Aaron's one of the best at this. Like, you watch his trailers for the the courses he's about to launch. It doesn't like, he he's about to launch a a postgres series.
Jack Bridger:Oh, nice.
Ant Wilson:And he doesn't mention Postgres in the trailer, you know? Like How about? He he it's all about, like, his process for, like, building anticipation. I've spent a lot of what what he's selling you is the fact that he's put 100 of hours into building this course. He's not he's not selling you Postgres, he's not selling you like how to make a table, he's selling you like I've invested all this time, do you want to learn about the things that I've learned on this journey?
Ant Wilson:Which is is great Like and obviously, like, the quality of his trailers and the quality of his videos is just very high, which I think differentiates them from almost everybody else who's Yeah. You know, filming content in the in the bedroom like me.
Jack Bridger:Just the kitchen. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. That that that makes total sense.
Jack Bridger:And so so in terms of awareness, so I think last time we spoke to, you know, when I spoke to, you know, people people knew Superbase, and you were already doing really well. I think you had, like, 30 30, 40,000 GHF stars, a metric. And, but since then so I started using you with a a contract, like and and that was actually, like, I wasn't I didn't bring in SuperBase. I I was doing a contract, and they were already using SuperBase. And at Stack Overflow, you are like you've got, like, 4% use among developers surveyed, which is, like, kinda crazy.
Jack Bridger:I think Oracle had 10%. And so, yeah, people are using are using SuperBase now. So to was it the same stuff, like, that you did to get here?
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Our our goal, by the way, is to be the open source Oracle. Like so as much as much many users we can win off Oracle, the better.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I
Ant Wilson:think people are realizing in 2024, you don't need to spend 5,000,000 books a year on your on a on your postgres database.
Jack Bridger:They could do 4,000,000 with supervisor.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But but yeah.
Ant Wilson:But it's crazy because now I went on, Upwork the other day, and you you type in SuperBase and, like, there are people every single day putting jobs on Upwork being like, oh, we're hiring for a SuperBase developer. We're hiring for this job. We need SuperBase skills blah blah blah. And, like, it's just that mad because if we go back, like, 4 years, like, we just never would have thought that that would be the case. You know?
Ant Wilson:And and the Stack Overflow survey is interesting because on the same chart, you have Postgres and Supabase. Mhmm. Because, you know, Supabase all at its core is just Postgres. It's a Postgres hosting provider. So it's so interesting that people would call it by name, people would call it by Superbase.
Ant Wilson:True. And and not just say, oh, I I use Postgres because, you know, like, maybe it's not, like, so clear to everyone who signs up that it's just Postgres. But that's a big part of why people use this. Right? It's because there's been this, like, huge wave back towards Postgres over the last, 5 years.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. And I guess because a lot of them would have been using Firebase, I guess, and that Firebase is like the name is the database basically as well.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. True. True. Yeah. Yeah.
Ant Wilson:And in general, like, like, we we we love Firebase. Like, Firebase is one of the reasons we started Superbase. But there just is a trend away from NoSQL back towards relational databases, which we've wrote, which has been good. And and also, like, the I think the key behind people adopting Supabase at the start has always been easy to build, and you know you're not gonna have to churn later. And that's what you get with the Postgres bit is, like, that confidence.
Ant Wilson:Because as, like, a start I've been in this position as a start up CTO. You don't have any users yet. So you're like, I'm gonna choose the thing that's gonna be help me build as quickly as possible. But in the back of your mind is always, okay, but at some point, if we're successful and we hit the front page of hacking news and then we get all we raise 100,000,000 and then we do all this stuff, I don't want to be in a position where I have to migrate all of my databases and services because I know I'm gonna have more important things to think about. And so that's why and that's the that's the reason we're so upfront about it being just Postgres is to give that confidence of, like, well, I'm not gonna have to churn later.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That that makes sense. But one one thing I saw is that, like, I think I'm I'm I'm sure, like, when I interviewed you last, like, the the hero section was like the big title was like open source Firebase alternative. But now I think open source Firebase alternative is, like, kind of in the it's in the subtitle, but the the main title is, like, build in a weekend, scale to 1,000,000, or billions, I think.
Ant Wilson:Billions now? Billions. Billions. Okay. After after we hit
Jack Bridger:I'm out of them.
Ant Wilson:After we hit GA because because that's what we wanted with GA. We were like, we want people to come build quickly with Superbase and be able to service millions of users. And when we had I think now we've got, like, about 20 of our users themselves have in the millions of end users. Wow. Then we are like, okay.
Ant Wilson:Now we can announce that we're generally available because we're confident that it can scale to 1,000,000. Yeah. But then we were like, but now we have to be more ambitious. Like, it doesn't millions doesn't cut it anymore. We need to go bigger.
Ant Wilson:So Yeah. We upgraded it to build on a weekend scale to 1,000,000,000. Yeah. But but your point about demoting the open source Firebase alternative Yeah. You know, like, people ask us all the time, why don't you just remove it completely because SuperBase now is more than just a 5 base alternative.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. But the thing it does that we haven't found another way to express is it communicates that you can connect to Supabase directly from the client. You know, that you get the the auth layer and that it's a bit more it's a bit more of a back end as a service, which we can say back end as a service.
Jack Bridger:But then that's not
Ant Wilson:But but that also doesn't necessarily communicate that extra bit of, oh, but there's a there's a JavaScript client library. There's a, you know, Python client library. There's these mobile client libraries. It doesn't express that like Supabase comes all the way to the client. Which if if you can help us, you have a bet of a another way to express that in a single sentence, I would be very grateful.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. DM DM out with your best suggestion. Maybe a super based job is the prize if they definitely. Yeah. That's a really hard one.
Jack Bridger:Because I think Firebase has, like, such a good it's, like, so well understood, I think, in in dev community.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Exactly. And and it it's that classic thing of, like, tell people the benefit. Don't tell them, like you don't need to be specific about, like, how it actually works or what it is. It's like, what are they gonna get?
Ant Wilson:And it's like, well, you're gonna get you're gonna be able to build quickly, connect directly to the client. And actually then the database is completely different. Postgres is not. MongoDB or whatever Firebase was originally built on.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that makes sense. And, and then one of the other things I wanted to talk to you about was, so we got to hang out at this, last year at the AI Engineers Summit.
Jack Bridger:And so there, it was very obvious that, like, a lot of people are doing stuff with vector databases and that Supabase has been really riding that wave, like a lot
Ant Wilson:of people that are building with, kind of
Jack Bridger:AI tools, AI products are using Supabase. Could you tell talk a bit about about what that's been like and and the story? I know that's quite quite an interesting story about how that happened, with one of your team building out something. Yeah.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Yeah. So so Greg, who's now on our team
Jack Bridger:Legend.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Was in the community, and he said, you know, I really wanna use PG vector with SuperBase. PG vector is an extension, for Postgres that allows you to store vector embeddings, which I needed for certain RAG applications and AI workloads and stuff. And he was like, you know, PG vector's here, and here's the PR that integrates pgvectors into into super bass. And we were like, great.
Ant Wilson:Thank you. Merged. By the way, do you want a job? And and that's just kind of like how Greg came in, and he obviously, like, built a bunch of other cool stuff which convinced us that this guy is just incredible. And he also, like, had his own amazing YouTube channel actually, which was just like doing numbers, like educating people how to use how to build RAG applications and stuff so we are like this guy, it's just
Jack Bridger:he needs to be hired.
Ant Wilson:Yeah, yeah, and I think now like Greg's not in the DevRel team, but if you look at like the numbers he does on the super based YouTube, like, are just, like, way up there.
Jack Bridger:So he
Ant Wilson:kind of, like, does DevRel as, like, a as a part time thing, you know, just, like, as part of his job, but, and absolutely kills it. But but and the the AI conference that we that we went to was interesting for us as well because that's the first time we've sponsored a conference. Like, before that, like I said, everything we did was online, and that was our first, like, trial of, like, okay. Like, let's see how this works. Like, let's see if it, you know, produces numbers, like, and sign ups for us.
Ant Wilson:And the interesting thing about the conference was in the history of Supabase, that week, we had the highest number of logos sign up to Supabase than ever before. So, like, logos being, like, known brands, like, known companies. And I think that was the thing I didn't realize was, like, you know, doing a 100% online marketing. We also sweep up a lot of logos, but if you wanna do something where the ratio is just tipped towards larger companies, then conferences is is where it's at. And maybe maybe everybody already knows that, but it took me experiencing it firsthand to to figure that out.
Ant Wilson:So so we'll be now at, like you know, we're going to Next JS Conf. We just launched the this big integration with Vercel. And so we were at Next JS Conf and chatting to folks there as well. So so if this this might come come out before then, I think that's, like, middle of October, and, come along and we'll be there.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I think it should be. Yeah. That's awesome. And you've also done a lot of, kind of community meetups as well.
Jack Bridger:Right? Like, you've got, like, it's, like, many. There's images with many meetups.
Ant Wilson:I think we did 55
Jack Bridger:That's crazy.
Ant Wilson:Cities in 2 weeks.
Jack Bridger:Because you told me because you told me before we started recording, like, we don't do in person stuff really. You kinda do.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Well, it's it's been but but the thing is, like, the community meetups, we don't run them. Yeah. The community does. And all we do is we say, you know, if someone wants to run a super base event for your city, like, we'll help support.
Ant Wilson:Like, we'll give you money for food and drink. Like, we'll send you content. We'll, like, tell you how it typically works. But it it's up to the host, and the hosts have just, like I've got so much love for these people because they are just, you know, putting on these events in like some of the cities are crazy, like there's just all over South America, like all over Asia, like Maidstone in the UK, like who would have thought there would be a meetup in Maidstone, a SuperBase meetup, right? But they're just like getting the these dev communities together to talk about Supabase, which again is another thing that I just didn't think would happen, you know?
Jack Bridger:That's amazing.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. And and I'm so like, the thing that rarely stings is that we can't go to all these events. You know? Like, I wanna go and I wanna talk to the people there Yeah. And, like, be like, how did you learn about Superbase?
Ant Wilson:You know? Like, what are you building? Like, what's bad? Like tell tell us how to improve and we there's just we can't go to the mall which is, I don't know, maybe one day when when I retire from the from Superbase I can find the time to travel the world. Yeah.
Ant Wilson:I
Jack Bridger:can help just help out with the Maidstone event. Maidstone, for anyone listening that's not from the UK, is, like, I guess, if they've watched The Office and, like, Scranton, it's probably like a bit of a Scranton or something. Like
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Yeah. I don't I I've never been, so I don't wanna diss it diss it too much. I'm sure it's lovely.
Jack Bridger:It's probably not on my the business map where, like, people are coming in, flying in, go to Maidstone. Let's see. Yeah. That's that's amazing. And so would, like, have you seen, like, a lot of benefits from those in person ones, like the community meetups?
Jack Bridger:Or is it
Ant Wilson:It's that bit is less about, like, oh, how many top of funnel do we have? How many leads are we converting? How many whatever? It's more about just, like, growing the community then gives this extra level of support to anyone else who's trying to use Supabase. And so, like, one of the the the are the best things about Supabase is if you get stuck on something, you post on Twitter or you post on Reddit or you post on Discord, it's likely that someone in the community will come and solve your problem before the team gets to see it.
Ant Wilson:So I think that's what's been great about these community meetups is people can give each other tips, solve each other's problems. And actually the the thing that I think is coolest is me and Kopple got to Kopple's my co founder, know each other and learn about our working styles and build cool things together before Supabase through doing hackathons and like tech meetups and get togethers. And the thing that excites me the most is, like, people are gonna be meeting their cofounders at these events because it's all people who are trying to build stuff. Yeah. You know, they're all builders.
Ant Wilson:They're all like probably like at the first stage of trying to get something to wear and that's where you're gonna meet other cool builders and Yeah. At these meetups, which is is very
Jack Bridger:cool. Yeah. And and I think that's something that you've done really well because, I for anyone listening, I ran, like, 2 of the SuperBase meet up like, meet ups in London, like, last year. And then people were asking me like, they just assumed that I worked for Superbase, and then they were like I was like, I don't work for Superbase. Like and then, like, why why are you running this?
Jack Bridger:And it was like because well, firstly, because I really like you you and Paul and and the team and stuff, and, like, you've been super helpful to me. But then also because I think, like, your whole message around, like, build like, building the weekend scaled to 1,000,000,000 is like just like attracts or billions. Sorry. Attracts, like, a lot of really cool people. And I think it's like it is a really nice community.
Jack Bridger:And there's also I I made friends at some of the meetups and, like, people I'm still in touch with. And there's a lot of crossover in, like, other cool London communities of, like, kind of like indie hackers and, like, you know, dev tools people. It's like, there's a lot of crossover. Yeah. So yeah.
Jack Bridger:I think that's quite if that was something that you thought consciously about, like, in terms of that kind of archetype of person, but it's, like, quite a cool type of person.
Ant Wilson:Definitely. Definitely. And there's a funny story. Actually, the the first San Francisco meetup that we did was run by us. So we went and we hosted an event.
Ant Wilson:And then afterwards, we just went to the pub, and we said to everyone, you know, anyone who wants to come, we go in the pub. And we had, like, you know, 60 people come to the pub. And then the host from this time so it's it's no longer no longer run by by me and Coppell, but the host said, oh, I did the meetup, but then when we finished, everyone was really insistent that we go to the pub. So he was like, I actually just got dragged to the pub and, everyone just wanted to hang out and, like, you know, carry on and, like, carry on talking about things they've built and stuff. So it's quite funny.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It's it's really cool. Yeah. And so, you know, if you if you were like so now, like, 4 years in, if you're going back and talking to, like, someone that is starting out, what what kind of stuff would you be would would you be telling them? Someone building the next sewer base or the next, you know, something else maybe as well.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Yeah. One one thing is and people ask this question. Often, it's people who are already considering it. But the open source thing so people have launched their products.
Ant Wilson:They've got a few users, and then they come to us and they say, we're thinking about open source and this. Do you think that's cool? Like, what are the benefits? What are the trade offs? And I'm always, like, pro.
Ant Wilson:I'm like, yeah. Just do it. Like, there's so many benefits that aren't even obvious on the surface and on day 1, such as hiring. Hiring's a big one that that kicks in later that it's worth doing. And of the companies who've followed through and done it, they're like it's like night and day.
Ant Wilson:So they launch they launch their initial proprietary version and then later they launched the open source version and the open source version like hits the front page of hacking ears. Yeah. And it has all this conversation and people are jumping in and getting excited about it. That's still my biggest piece of advice is that it doesn't work for everyone. But if there's a small window where you're considering, should this be open source, just do it.
Ant Wilson:Because, like, it's it's a, it's better for everyone, and, b, it's it's better for you and your chances of, I think, getting past that first stage. Mhmm. And because it's the hardest thing. It's hard it's the hardest thing is getting the first user. Getting the first three users, getting the first five users is way harder than getting the, you know, the next 1,000 users when you've already got 50,000.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That makes that makes total sense. What what are, like, the non obvious benefits? So you mentioned hiring.
Ant Wilson:I'd say, like, just guesstimating that, like, 40% of the people who work at Superbase
Jack Bridger:No worries.
Ant Wilson:Probably contributed before they
Jack Bridger:joined 40%.
Ant Wilson:Before they joined the team in in some way. And it it might have been, you know, like, they did some moderation in the GitHub. It doesn't mean you've come in and you've built a whole huge feature, and it can be like you've engaged in some way through maybe you opened an issue, a GitHub issue and helped us work through it. And there's a there's a hit a long history of people who came in through the open source community. The second one is just developers are just more philosophically aligned with the idea of open source than the main proprietary.
Ant Wilson:It's it's a great way to compete against incumbents because incumbents, there's just too much red tape for them to ever have the possibility of open sourcing their proprietary tech. Their lawyers would never accept it. The business people would never accept it. So if you're going head to head with someone that is already well established, it's just a huge leg up. It's a huge advantage that you've got.
Ant Wilson:Yeah and and the the things that people worry about is like, isn't someone gonna take my thing and like use it against me, like compete against me with with the tech I've built.
Jack Bridger:AWS.
Ant Wilson:But you are the expert in your product, you know? I just think the chances and most of the time, like, people who have followed SuperBase and try to compete those, They don't want to like, they want to write the code. They wanna do things their way anyway. And we we have we have had people for Superbase and create competitive services, but like I say, like, we're the experts in building a super base. We've got, you know, almost a 100 people now who are just, like, night and day, know it inside out, the best in the world at what they do.
Ant Wilson:Like, you're not gonna compete with us on building the next version, the next generation of of the super base offering, basically.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. That makes total sense. Like, like, it sounds, it it it's funny. It's like when imagine someone saying, oh, that's just like a superways fork. Like, kinda sounds bad.
Jack Bridger:I could imagine the only time that would ever be good is if, like, that team had basically given up and it was like, you know, everyone knew no one they that company was just like a cash cow. No one gave a shit. And then it was like, yeah. Yeah. They these guys fought them, and they made it better.
Jack Bridger:But, like Yeah. Then that's I feel like that's the bigger problem is not that, like, someone fought you. It's like that you just stopped giving a giving a damn about it.
Ant Wilson:Exactly. Yeah. Like, you get acquired or you change your license, like, that's the biggest problem.
Jack Bridger:Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, the Hashtagos firm thing.
Ant Wilson:Like, make like, makes it closed source and then Yeah. Everyone's like, okay then I guess we'll fork it and make a better version.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. True. True. True. True.
Jack Bridger:But not from, like, you're doing well. You're still meeting the expectations that you set out at the beginning.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and then to your point, like, if that happens, then you probably deserve deserve to lose.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. It's like, that's a consequence of your previous actions rather than, like, the thing that killed you.
Ant Wilson:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:And, I guess people also like, are you finding now that you're selling to, like, enterprises and stuff, like, that they prefer open source?
Ant Wilson:Yeah. And, you know, we have people who come in, I'd say, especially on the enterprise side, and they say, oh, I need, login for Azure on the old service. And then they come in, and they have a 5 person team who build it and ship it into into our product, into the open source product. Really? Yeah.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'd say, like, the enter some of the enterprise customers, like, do more of the open source development than than anyone else. And and, again, like, it just improves the product for everyone who follows, which is great. And and that's particularly cool.
Ant Wilson:Actually, this is another benefit of of open source is that let's say, like, log in with Azure, it's not, like, super high on our priority list. We have, like, 50 other things which are just way more, like, important for us to ship, But it is still important, like but it's not crucial. And that's where, like, we'll eventually get to it. But someone in the community can come in and say, this is high priority for me. I'm gonna do it in 2 days, and then it's available for everyone.
Ant Wilson:Like, that's just a huge benefit to us and to the community and to the to the customers.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. This kind of difference is an importance. They can just have a vote, like, essentially, like, buy or, like, code their way to this getting built. Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Bridger:That's super cool.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. And then, you know, enterprise, I think, like, they just want to know that you're not gonna disappear next year, basically.
Jack Bridger:Yeah.
Ant Wilson:So it's almost like you kinda like, we've been around for 5 years now. You need that in the bank to convince anyone that you're gonna be around for the next 5. Yeah. And, you know, like, we're well funded. Like, we have an incredible, like, infrastructure team, the support team, the all these people are just, like, experts in postscripts, experts in super base.
Ant Wilson:And that's what they need to see before they even try it out. And that's what's starting to to happen now, I think, is like you know, we've we've always had devs using us for their side projects, and internally they're saying to the boss, you know, can't we just use Supabase for this new project? And I think, like, over the last, like, 12 months, that's the answer to those questions have started to be yes. So to be like, you know, you've got more confidence now that we're not gonna just disappear
Jack Bridger:next year. Yeah. Which is really hard. There's no I feel like there's not many shortcuts,
Ant Wilson:to that. You can't you can't you can't do that in 12 months. You can't, like, build your way around that. It's just Yeah. You need time in the markets.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. You need to have, like, a great security track record. You need to have a great stability track record. It just takes time.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I realize we're we're actually out of time. So I'm sure you need to go.
Jack Bridger:So, thank you so much for coming back, and thank you so much for, like, coming on, like, the first time around as well, like, and and just, you know, being so supportive and stuff and just I will say for other people and has been so helpful to me in terms of, like, just giving me feedback on the show and, like, how to make it better and how to, like, market it better. And, you know, for someone so busy, that's just incredibly, incredibly great. And I say to everyone, like, the Superbase guys are just so nice and so, you know, they really are great. And, yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Jack Bridger:And, yeah, thank you.
Ant Wilson:Well, we love your work, man, and you've gotta give us a little something after a 100 episodes. You've gotta give us, like, what, like Yeah. What are you gonna what what are you gonna take from the first 100 that you're gonna, like, carry over to the to the next 100?
Jack Bridger:Yeah. I I am working on something slowly. I I spoke to a 100 DevTools founders, and here's what I learned. That's, I think, the type the working title.
Ant Wilson:Are you actually gonna do
Jack Bridger:that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Adam, Adam Frankel gave me the title that, you know, Adam Frankel, the VP of marketing yeah.
Jack Bridger:Guy.
Ant Wilson:Yeah.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. Very cool guy. He was like, that's so that's your title, Jack.
Ant Wilson:That's amazing, man. Yeah. I I I think, like, honestly, like, I can't say enough, like, doing a 100 episodes is epic. Like like, did you think that when you started, did you think you were gonna get to this point?
Jack Bridger:Actually, I well, I don't know. But I did actually I think I listened to, like, mister beast or someone, and they said, like, your first thing should just be, like, just do a 100. Like, do a he was talking about videos. Do a 100 videos, and then don't worry about anything else. Just do a 100.
Jack Bridger:So, like, that's pretty much what I did. Maybe took that too late for me sometimes where I should, like, refining a bit more. That was the goal is just do a 100. And so, yeah, it was it's definitely been a a target of mine.
Ant Wilson:That's an epic one. Well, I'm looking forward to the next 100 Yeah. For sure.
Jack Bridger:So yeah. Skeletal billions.
Ant Wilson:Definitely.
Jack Bridger:Yeah. But yeah. Ant, thank you so much, and thanks everyone for listening. Superbase.com, antwilson on Twitter. You just antwilson on Twitter.
Ant Wilson:Yeah. Atantwilson. Yeah. If you sign up to Superbase, you can expect some emails from me, telling you when when you haven't had any API requests.
Jack Bridger:The bane of my existence when I
Ant Wilson:was working
Jack Bridger:on side projects. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that one. Thanks, Anne, and thanks everyone for listening, especially for those that have been around since the the early episodes. Really appreciate it.
Ant Wilson:That's fine.
Jack Bridger:Also, sorry. Just thanks, Elliot, for editing the episodes. You did a great job. Thank you.
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