Agents in the database

So friends, we’re here with Ajay Kulkarni, a new friend of mine from Tiger Data, previously Timescale. We’ve had this relationship, we work with you as a sponsor, and I’ve been a fan, obviously, of time-series data, and I had ideas for you all, I’ve been working with Isabel behind the scenes… And then it finally came back to this moment here, where you have agentic Postgres, which is just super-interesting to me… So I thought we would dive deep into who you are, Ajay, what your journey might be, and how you’ve come to love building databases. So let’s start there.

Yeah, yeah. I’ll try and give you the short version –

I assume you love building databases.

You know, I love building.

Yeah, okay.

I love building, and I love solving problems. Now, databases are interesting, but it would not be the only thing I’ve done in my career. I’ve been in love with technology since I was a kid, and I remember using the internet for the first time in high school, in 1995, 1996, and thinking “I don’t know what this is, but this is fun.”

Yeah.

And I was a pre-med at that point, applying to colleges, and I switched to computer science, went to MIT… And I guess the rest, yeah, is history. MIT is where I met my co-founder, by the way… So that’s how we know each other for 28 years.

That’s wild, to know a co-founder of 28 years. I mean, the history, and the level of trust and maybe somewhat antitrust… I don’t know if that’s the case, but –

It’s not antitrust, but you know what it is? It’s –

Vulnerability is what I mean by that.

When he and I started working together at this point, probably 10 years ago, I remember thinking “I know what I like about Mike, and I know what I don’t like about him. And so I want to work with this guy”, you know?

That’s interesting.

And I’m sure he felt similarly. I think it’s a little bit of like a – I’m not sure I want to call it a spousal relationship, but almost, you know? You’re like “Hey, I like you for who you are, the whole package, even though sometimes that package annoys me… And I’m sure you’d say the same thing about me.”

Well, Mike is not here, so we can’t speak for him, but I’m assuming he might say something like that…

[laughs]

So CEO of Tiger Data… You were under a different name, a different moniker before… I do want to go there, but I kind of want to zoom back out a second, just to kind of identify who you are, but more so how you got here. You mentioned MIT, a long road, 28 years, knowing Mike, met him at college, university… What was the journey from there to go into, I suppose, your career, and what are some of the things you’ve done that you really feel have defined or identified who you are today?

Yeah, I think I’ve tried to always follow the thing that kind of tugs my heartstrings… To be like “Hey, I don’t know why, but this is interesting”, and really to listen to that. That’s why I ended up at MIT… My high school guidance counselor tried to dissuade me from going, and I was like “Nah, I wanna go. I’m gonna go, you know?”

“I’m gonna do this.”

And it was hard, but it was great. I graduated during the dotcom collapse. So at that point tech was not hiring, which just sounds crazy at this point, you know… And I ended up on Wall Street as a bond analyst. But very quickly, after a couple of years, I ended up back in Palo Alto, working for a startup, and I’ve been working at startups since.

What year was that, roughly? That back to Palo Alto.

Oh, back to Palo Alto? 2004.

Okay. I know exactly what I was doing that year. I was so wayward then… That was the beginning of my developer career, I would say. Not that this is my story, but just so you kind of understand the cloth there, the timing… That was the same year my daughter was born. She is now 21, so that’s 21 years ago for you, almost 22 as of this January, if that was the case for you too…

[00:08:05.28] Congrats, that’s incredible.

Thank you. I was in Canada at the time. Oddly enough, I’m an American, I’m United States… Served our military… I don’t say that as like a nationalist necessarily [unintelligible 00:08:17.14]

Where did you serve?

In the Army. But just to say that I’m not Canadian. Not that I’m against Canadians… I’m just not Canadian, so I want to be clear about that. Some people think because I lived in Canada for a bit, they’re like “Are you Canadian?” I’m like “No, no. I don’t say aboot.”

Probably because you’re so friendly. People are like “Oh, you must be Canadian…”

Well, yeah, maybe that’s it. But I was fresh… So I didn’t go to college, or to MIT, or to a computer science school, or get a degree in that… I learned by messing with GeoCities that same year. And that’s so funny to even think about… I started playing with WordPress, got a job, and almost got fired from a company called IT Weapons. Still around, in Canada, itweapons.com. One of the most formative moments in my career - I got hired into a sales role I could not do well, because their sales style was so different from what I was used to. And I was terrible at that job. And I knew I was so close to getting fired… And I took it upon myself to be like “Nah, man… You’re not getting rid of me.” Almost like you were with your guidance counselor, “I’m gonna do this.” And so I defined the business development role for the company, and started to add value beyond what they thought that I could add… And they never really told me directly that I was minutes away from getting fired, but I knew it, I knew it in my soul… But I also saw the turnaround, and the benefit there, and it was pretty awesome. So anyways…

I know – I like that story, because I feel like that is something you don’t know you have until it’s tested.

Yeah.

Which is the, “Hey–”

I didn’t even know I had it, Ajay. I had a wife and a brand new daughter coming in those moments, so that timeframe for me… I could not not survive. I had to find a way.

I think it’s some combination of grit, but also just like an FU mentality… [laughs] It’s like “Oh, no, no, no –”

Yeah, I was like “Listen, I belong here. I love this company… I’m gonna do something about it, I’m gonna figure it out.” So I’ve always been good at connecting the value dots, I would say. You can call it sales if you want to, and I think that’s the easy, in quotes, word you can use… But I really think I have this uncanny ability to – and I’ve just grown into it in my career, and I’ve leaned into it… Where I’ve been able to connect the dots between things that just aren’t normally connected, and express and redefine and help shape that value in those connected dots.

That’s great. I like that story.

Let’s go back to you, though… This is not about me, but I thought we’d at least encapsulate what was happening in 2004 between our lives… So - much different perspectives. But similar, I would say we’re – I’m not a co-founder or a CEO of a tech startup, but certainly a tech brand… Changelog.com has been around, we’re an institution at this point; 18 years, Ajay. We started in 2009.

I mean, in the tech industry, that’s like a hundred years or so.

That is. We’re a Wikipedia basically, but not really. I’m just kidding. Wikipedia is the eighth, ninth, tenth [unintelligible 00:11:29.20] one of those two things, or three things…

Something like that, yeah.

So…

I’ll tell you what’s been the theme in my career, is that - when I was on Wall Street, it was a really interesting, an eye-opening experience… Because I was around some really smart people. I was a quant, around people who all had PhDs, some had multiple PhDs, really hardworking… It was a meritocracy. It wasn’t like a lot of, you know, FaceTime. I mean, you would work, but it was… And I was paid really well, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it. And I was like “You know what? I feel like this is not who I am.” And I felt like I was someone who needed to build, and needed to create. And I actually – I remember going soul-searching, like “Hey, should I go into consumer packaged goods? Should I go into–”

[00:12:16.06] At one point I thought about starting a record label, because I’m like “I like music, and I like business, so maybe I’ll start a record label.” I remember buying a book about it, and doing research… And at some point I started a chocolate company… And I kind of realized - and it’s kind of obvious in hindsight, that “Dude, if you want to build something to make an impact, tech is the best way.”

Yeah.

I mean, even more so now, but even back then… And so I think that’s what kind of brought me to tech, and I think that’s what keeps fueling me, is like… Yeah, just the ability to have a positive impact in the world, and on other people. And it’s not always fun, it’s not always easy, but I think that’s probably the main thing that’s been driving me, at least since that insight.

Hmm. Can you expose some scars, some hard years, some bad choices that you can not reflect on, that are formative to who you are today? Kind of like what I did with you a little bit.

Yeah… So you mean like life choices?

Yeah, where are the forks in the road that you’re like “Man, that’s the moment where I learned this hard lesson”, or that’s the moment – I know you mentioned Mike, and 28 years, so maybe that’s one of those forks, but… Just those moments where you look back now – and it’s kind of funny, because in the moment sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees, right? And we think like this choice or this thing happening is the end of the world, or is the biggest choice ever. And it may be in that moment, but when you get past it, you sort of get past it with hindsight… And that’s why it is truly 20/20, because you look back with so much clarity. What were some of those moments for you when it was unclear, a choice you had to make, but now it’s like, it’s clearly defined who you are today.

As a mistake or a good choice?

You pick. Whichever direction you wanna go.

I feel like mistakes are more interesting.

Scars, bloody knuckles… You know, sometimes mistakes can be either/or, sometimes the positive choice we make can be either/or, a scar or a bloody knuckle.

I mean, look, I think you probably know this - entrepreneurship is a series of mistakes. And the key is just like not letting the company die, despite your mistakes. There’s many I’ve made over the years: bad hires, bad strategic decisions… I’ll tell you one actually that started even before then… I used to work at this company - and I won’t mention [unintelligible 00:14:42.17] because I’m not trying to throw anyone under the bus… But I used to work at this company where I was in charge of an engineering team, and somehow I thought I was on track to get more responsibility, and somehow there was this internal uproar, and I realized people didn’t like me. And it was an uproar, and I ended up getting sidelined. And that hurt for a couple of reasons. Number one, I’m kind of a sensitive guy… Yeah, I’m an entrepreneur, but I’m like “Look, dude, if you genuinely don’t like me”, I’d be like “Why?” I’m curious, because I’m like “Did I do anything to offend you?” But also, I was just caught off guard. And what I realized is that part of that was my fault. Part of that was I think I came across more dictator-like than I intended, but part was, I would say, maybe indirectly my fault, where there were some decisions that were made where I took the heat for it, where it wasn’t actually a decision that I made.

[00:15:58.24] I guess, I don’t know, maybe – I guess, long story, I think I changed my style, but I also realized that you have to look out for yourself, and your manager, whoever, that they will not necessarily look out for you. But also, conversely, I’ve tried to be the type of manager who looks out for people. I don’t know if that’s an interesting story, Adam, but like… [laughs]

Well, so let’s zoom into maybe how are you changed as a result? What did you do to – where I’m trying to go to is how did you get here? …in terms of not just where you’re at in this moment, but like the person you are leading the company you are. What are some of the things that were in your past, or in your choice line, that has now helped Ajay today be Ajay to lead?

Yeah, I would say that I’ve made – I’m not sure you want to call them mistakes, or just, I’ve had learning experiences over the years… And I think that I’ve formed who I am today. I think the key theme - and this is not all of them, but I think one key theme is I have learned how to trust myself. I remember early on I would make some hires, for example, in sales, that didn’t gut feel right to me… But I was new to enterprise sales, I was new to the database business. And in hindsight, my gut was right. My gut was right that “Hey, the general –” I like to say “In a fast-moving industry, expertise is a liability.” So in the database world, as the databases were moving from enterprise sales and on-prem to like cloud and PLG, the people who could sell this would be totally the wrong people for this. And I kind of felt that, but I couldn’t articulate it… And I made a few hires that I had to let go, and that’s my fault. That’s on me. But I think that’s one thing that taught me that “Hey, you got this far for a reason. Listen to your gut. And if you can’t articulate it, then try to take the time to articulate it.”

I think more recently… Look, I have a conversational style that myself – both Mike and I, we talk about this… It’s called cooperative overlapping. It essentially means that we interrupt a lot. But we interrupt because that’s how we talk. Like, if you interrupt me, I feed on that. And one thing we realize is that – well, at one point there was some people on my executive team who were like “We need to interrupt less.” And I remember thinking – my first thought was “You’re right, we should interrupt less.” And my second thought was “No, this is who we are…” [laughs] Like, we got this far for who we are, you know? And at a company either you ask the founders to change, or you ask the whole company to change, you know?

Yeah.

And what I realized is that there are people in the company who liked who we are. They liked that we interrupted, you know? And so I got to the point, I was like “Yeah, you know what–” You know, we talk about California mentality versus New York mentality… New York mentality is “Hey, I’ll be kind to you, but I may not be nice. I’ll be gruff on the street, but I’ll help you.” And that’s just the New York way. And if you’re in New York, you have to realize that, that when people are too busy to talk to you, they’re not being rude; they’re actually trying to be respectful of your time. So yeah, I think – I don’t know, I feel like over the years not trusting my own instinct has… I mean, you live with the consequences. And so I think I’ve learned that “Hey, just trust your instinct, because whether you win or lose, it’s on you.”

[00:19:42.18] Yeah. One thing I wrote down a while back… This is actually 2012. September, 2012. And it was the question of “Where does a company’s culture come from?” And essentially, it’s boiled down to what you just said there, which is a founder’s values and principles define the company’s culture. And so these things, they kind of – they’re top down in a way, but if you don’t have, I guess, fortitude in who you are and why you are the way you are to push back when somebody says “Hey, maybe that’s not cool”, and you’re like “I can kind of see that, but at the same time, it’s kind of who I am. And here’s why I’m delivering my message this way, or why the way I speak this way.” And it’s less about interrupting, but more about that cooperative – what did you call it, cooperative overlap? Is that right?

Cooperative overlapping. I think that’s the technical term.

Yeah. And so it does put a name to it to tame it. So it’s not interruption, it’s meant to be a courteous interrupt to probably provoke deeper conversation, or to provoke more collaboration and involvement, right? Isn’t that probably the reason for –

No, totally, but I think it’s also a function of like “Don’t try to shore up your weaknesses, try to lean on your strengths.” So I am an intense person. When I was younger, I would feel bad about it, because some people were like “Oh… Well, you’re intense.” But now I’m like “No, it’s just who I am.” And some people love that about me. And there’s some things I can do really well because I am intense, you know? It’s who I am. If you don’t like that, cool. We don’t have to work together.

Similarly, I talk a little fast. I remember at one point I was giving a presentation, and some of my peers were like “Oh, why don’t you slow down? You’re talking really fast.” And I slowed down, and they were like “No, this is worse. It was better when you talked fast, because your energy was there”, you know? And I was like “You know what? Yeah, I talk fast, and maybe I might muddle some words sometimes, but that is who I am. That’s how my energy comes through.” And just lean on that. I often talk – I talked about it with Mike, it’s like, we both have weaknesses, we both have flaws… And in the past, I would have been like “Oh, we have to work on these.” And now I’ve said, “You know what? Don’t try to teach a fish to climb a tree, you know?” If you’re a fish, swim better, you know? Don’t be like “Oh, I can climb a tree.”

Just keep swimming, right?

Just keep swimming, yeah. And so, it’s –

Dory’s got the best advice.

Dory… Yeah, that’s right. Keep swimming. But it’s just like, figure out who you are… Yeah, and lean into it. I mean, people talk about this in athletics, how once upon a time, maybe 50-60 years ago, the idea of the ideal athlete was someone who was just balanced in every possible way. Not too tall, not too short, not too strong, not too weak… And now they realize that - no, you actually want the genetic freaks, you know? That’s where you get the alpha, you know? You’re someone who’s like – if your wingspan is like…

The Michael Phelps with like massive wingspan. Gosh…

Yeah, dude. Totally. Michael Phelps is like - what, 6’4”, 6’5”, I think?

He’s huge, yeah.

And there’s this marathon runner who I think is like 5’7”. And I remember reading an article that talked about how they wear the same pants. Because the marathon runner is all legs. And Michael Phelps is all torso.

Yeah.

And you’re like “Yeah–”, you know? You don’t get good at a sport by being balanced in everything. You find the thing where you have the edge, and you lean into that, you know?

Yeah. One thing you mentioned was this – it seems like you’ve got some history in enterprise sales, enterprise database, you mentioned PLG, product-led growth… Help me understand some of your backstory when it comes to I guess just databases in general. How did you get into that world? What was that world for you, and how has it changed to now?

[00:23:52.18] Yeah, I mean, I’ve been using databases since the late ‘90s, I guess, ever since I started getting into computer science. I started using probably MySQL in 2004, Postgres in 2011, I think, thanks to Heroku… So I’ve always been involved in databases.

I think what’s interesting to me is when we started this company, which was then Timescale, we entered a world where the success stories were companies like Hortonworks and Cloudera. Really big on-prem. And that was not my background at all. I’d never been a salesperson, never worked with enterprise salespeople… Now I know what these terms mean, but back then capacity planning, quota coverage, territories - they meant nothing to me. And we slowly had to learn it. But I also had this inkling that “Hey, you know what? I feel like the database industry is changing. It’s changing from that old model to something that looks more like SaaS.” And SaaS is less about enterprise sales, more about building a great product. And I knew how to do that. And so I think that was part of the journey, it was starting off as a user, getting into an industry not really realizing how the business worked… But then, again, I think following my instinct to be like “Hey, I think this industry is shifting.”

One thing I like to say about myself and my co-founders is that we’re very good students of the game. And so we were new to open source licensing, and then quickly became open source licensing experts. I would say we were new to PLG and sales, but I think now we’re – I’m not sure if we’re experts, but I think we’re probably top quartile or whatever for that.

You know, I think about the way databases have changed, and the way the sales of them have changed. Largely, it’s as if – if you’re not an open-source database, you’re not worth your weight in gold, because it’s a black box; things can change. Even the term - and this may cut deep to you, potentially - is Postgres-compatible. I think Timescale has never been Postgres-compatible. It’s always been Postgres-native…

That’s right.

…but some out there choose that Postgres-compatible, and that’s because they wanna do business differently, they wanna license differently… And I think the PLG model has obviously – one, I feel as a developer if I can’t go and play with your tool, even not so much in a free capacity, but the ability to explore it and learn it, and then trust it… That’s the way. That’s the way of the developer. You’ve got a side project, you’ve got an itch you wanna scratch, you wanna try this different thing… And if you’re not going that route, it’s kinda hard to really instantiate change in your organization. You may go from one database to another, or you have an idea, and if you can’t go and explore it and carve it out for yourself and present it to your team, that’s the way of PLG; that’s the way of open source.

Yeah, no, it’s fascinating, because I think databases, like software, used to be something where the key decision-maker was the CIO or CTO, and that deal was done in a steakhouse or on a golf course. That’s how it used to be. And with the shift to SaaS, and then to shift to cloud for databases, that decision moved to “No, it’s a developer sitting at their computer, just making the choice based on some combination of what they read, what their peers told them, and what their own visceral experience was.” And I think that’s been fascinating for me, because - I mean, I think it’s totally changed. I mean, the core job that a database does has not changed, but I think the way you build the business has totally changed from being more sales-led to being more product-led. I think that’s been interesting.

Yeah. What was the original challenge you faced to even consider creating Timescale? What was that moment, and when was that moment?

[00:28:06.29] We started off as a company building an IoT platform, internet of things. And it’s like 2015. Yeah, I mean, back then I’d just spent 10 years in mobile, and I remember thinking “Wow–” Mobile was really exciting, but around 2014 it started to get a little bit boring. Pre and post iPhone it was exciting, but then in 2014 you’re like “Okay, I have enough apps.” I’m like “What’s the next thing?”, and IoT felt like the next wave of computing. And so we started off building what we thought the market needed, which was a data platform for IoT devices. And that idea was moderately successful. We tracked over 100,000 devices, we raised the seed round, built a small team… But we needed a database to store all this data. And we were using a time-series database, we were using a relational database… And I remember at one point we wanted to sort the console by like uptime, but then show all the device metadata… And what should have been a simple SQL join ended up being like a two-week engineering sprint, because you had to connect these two siloed systems. And I remember thinking “Oh, this is awful. This sucks.” And one of our engineers said “Hey, I could build this on Postgres, but it’ll take me a month.” And I was like “Okay, cool. You’re an optimistic engineer, so it’ll probably take you three months.” And 12 months later… [laughs]

Oh, gosh…

…we had this database. And I’m trying to sell this IoT platform… And look, as an entrepreneur you learn to listen to signals of when someone is really engaged. And when someone’s like “Oh yeah, that’s cool”, that’s not cool. But when someone’s like “Wait, wait, wait, hold on… Can you tell me that again?”, you’re like “Okay, there’s something that’s interesting to you.”

So here I am, trying to sell this IoT platform, and I’m meeting with the German head architect of this large shipping logistics company… I’m meeting them in Mountain View, and I’m telling him about this IoT platform. And he’s like “Look, there’s so many IoT platforms out there. What makes yours different?” And I was like “Oh, we built our own database, it does SQL, it scales for time-series…” And then he was like “Wait, wait, hold on… Wait, can you tell me more about that database?” And I think that’s when I realized “Wait, this is solving a – this is actually solving the right problem.” And that’s how it became a database company.

So yeah, long story short, we kind of scratched our own itch and realized other people have the same itch… But again, we are students, we listen really well to the market, we try not to be dogmatic…. And when someone says “That thing’s not interesting, but this thing is”, we’re like “Hey, we’re not here just to build that thing. We’re here to solve a problem. This solves a bigger problem. Let’s explore that.”

Break: [00:30:50.16]

Today you’re not called Timescale, though.

That’s right.

So there’s a name change of recent, which I think is challenging, but it kind of maybe shows the evolution… What’s the evolution of that discovery, that 12-month discovery, scratch your own itch, IoT company, to Timescale to now be Tiger Data?

We started off thinking we were building a time series database for IoT. That’s where we started. And so when we kind of pivoted to become a database company early 2017, we called ourselves Timescale. That seemed like a good name for a time-series database.

I like it.

It’s cool, it’s pretty self-explanatory. And we actually saw there was a big demand in time-series that was more than IoT; some in finance, and events, and then soon crypto, and some other areas… But over time – again, we were going with this journey with the industry. We started off as an enterprise sales motion… At the beginning of the pandemic we went all-in on cloud, stopped selling on-prem, and said “Hey, we’re gonna be a cloud company.” And yeah, at that point we were running databases for customers, and we got to see a lot of data. And I saw “Wow, there are a lot of companies who are like 20 people spending 50k, 100k, 150K with us.” And I remember asking “Hey, what are you doing? What do you use this for?” And I remember one of them was like “Hey, I think of you as a better Postgres. I don’t think of you as just a time-series database. I think of you as my main – you are our main database. You are 50% of our cloud spend. You are our main database, because you are a better Postgres.”

And then we realized what we had built was not just a better time-series database, but a better Postgres. And we kind of expanded that better Postgres theme by adding vector support, and better native AI support… And we got to the point where this year we realized “Hey, we keep calling ourselves Timescale, and people view us as a time-series database”, but we had already become something more than that. It’s as if like amazon.com has started off as books.com. And you’re like “Hey, at books.com we also sell CDs.” People would be like “Yeah, but you’re books.com.” “No, hey, we also sell like socks.” “Yeah, but you’re books.com.” And that’s what Timescale was. Timescale was like “Yeah, you do AI, but AI with time-series, right?” And we’re like “Well, no. AI. You know?”

And I think our first attempt was trying to make Timescale mean more than time-series. Like, you know, when it’s time to scale, I don’t know… [laughs] And I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen the movie Mean Girls, but there’s a line in there that Mike has quoted, where he goes “It’s like trying to make fetch happen. Like, it’s not gonna happen.” Like, we’re trying to make this term stick which wasn’t sticking. And so we’re like “Hey, you know what? We need a new name, because we are Amazon. We’re not books.com.” But we’re not pivoting, we’re actually changing the name to properly reflect who we’d already become.

Yeah.

And Tiger Data was like the perfect name for us, because our mascot’s always been the tiger… Internally, we talk about Tiger time, that’s our all hands. We talk about state of the Tiger; it’s my monthly presentation to the company. New people who joined the company are Tiger cubs… And – yeah, we’ve an internal tiger mascot… And so the name Tiger just worked because it was who we already identified with, and to our existing customers it looked like “Yeah, it’s your same logo. Cool, I get it.” And some new people were a little confused, but we were like “You know what? In 12 months you will not be confused. And this is the right thing to do.” So that’s why we made that change.

Was it scary to get to the point where you’re like “You know what? The only way forward is a name change. Nothing else, just the name.”

You know, it got to the point – which probably means we’d waited too long… It got to the point where it was painfully obvious to us.

Ah, yeah…

And I remember – and I told the team “Look, this is not going to solve any problems, but it is going to remove an anchor that is holding us back.” Like, it’s still on us to kind of move the ship, you know… But it removes an anchor. I think the key thing is you just have to stick to the decision and be like “Yeah, it’s going to be messy. It’s going to be maybe a year of people being like “Who are you again?” And we being like “Yeah, we’re Tiger Data”, you know?

I actually think the name is catching on faster than I expected. I think the name change went as smooth as we could have hoped, and I think people – TimescaleDB I think still has more brand awareness, but I think Tiger Data is catching up.

Yeah.

Yeah… Some people made fun of us, but whatever… [laughs]

Well, haters hate. That’s how it works.

Haters hate, dude, yeah.

Haters do hate. So our audience knows this, you’ve been a sponsor for a bit, too… And I mentioned maybe in the pre-call, maybe in the early part of it, Isabelle is someone who works for you, and we’ve known each other for years, since the MongoDB days… And we would have conversations – and this is when you were Timescale. And this is what I do whenever I sit down with a brand and I think about how can we help them reach our audience in a way that is informative, educational, and just something that helps them be curious and try it, if it’s something that fits in their world, essentially. And I always do this version of an investigation, to some degree. I look at your homepage, I look at your products, what are you doing… And things just didn’t pair up, especially when you mentioned with AI, “Yeah, it’s time-series, but it’s also just Postgres.” And it was hard for me, because I would tell Isabelle, “Hey–” I would write her, “You’ve gotta change that headline on your homepage. It just doesn’t work. Something’s not fitting here.”

[00:40:00.10] And so when I saw the name change reflecting on your mention of “It seemed natural”, essentially… When I saw the new name, the first thing I did was email Isabelle and I was like “Listen, that’s an awesome name. We’ve gotta talk. When can you make time?” kind of thing. Because it had been a few months since I’d talked to her, and that’s what happens when you do a rebrand and change your name; you rethink your model, you rethink your brand, and you come back out with a new plan. And that’s what I saw. And so the moment - just to kind of reiterate, the moment I saw this new brand, Tiger Data, I was like “Mm-hm, that makes total sense. The Tiger’s there, the logo’s awesome… It makes sense.”

I’m glad you felt that way, because I feel like people who knew the company mostly felt that way, which was like – like, we didn’t even change our logo. Our logo stayed the same. We just changed the name. And people were like “Yeah, no, they get it. And by the way, tigers are cool!”

Tigers are cool.

They’re cool, they’re fun…

What I liked too, when you did this, was the logo animated from Timescale to Tiger Data. Logo stayed the same, the mark that you have… I thought that was a nice little subtle touch.

That was our marketing team, yeah.

I also – I’m not a… I think a lot of people like dark mode, and I think your previous site was all dark mode… And you may even offer a dark mode version of your site… I don’t know, because I see the stark white version of it… It doesn’t bother me. Like, the yellow and the white and the black… Whoever was in charge of that process did a great job… Thinking through the core of who you are, and how do you come back [unintelligible 00:41:44.11] not being completely different, but being different at the same time.

Yeah. I mean, it was a team effort, but the marketing team drove that. Kudos to them… But I think it definitely gives you some thought on “Hey, does the name really matter?” And I think where I’m landing right now is that the name may not help you, but it can hurt you. I mean, there are two schools of thought. One school of thought is you name yourself books.com, the other school of thought is you name yourself Amazon, which could sell books. And I liked the clarity of Timescale, because it was like, “Hey, time-series.” But in hindsight, it was limiting. While Tiger - dude, Tiger could be anything.

Tigers are cool.

Tigers are cool.

So one of the things that you have now, I think, is this burgeoning idea of agents in our databases, right?

Yes.

And I’m at this point where – there was this arc of acceptance, I would describe it, of “Hey, come on now… AI hype, I’m over it. Too much”, this and that. And I think the game changed when Claude Code changed the game. That’s where I really think it happened. I had been a user of ChatGPT, like many people… [unintelligible 00:43:07.17] the API to do something in ChatGPT and copy it out somewhere else, whether it was written material, whether it was an idea, whether it was a framework in terms of a thought framework… Or maybe even a Bash script, because AI is pretty good at Bash scripting. And then you kind of get to this other side where you’re like “You know what? Wow, agentic is really revolutionary.” And I think Claude Code really changed that game from the new browser or the new destination point for developers… It is still in the IDE, and that’s still taking place today. But I think you’re seeing this shift to the CLI that is just truly revolutionary, that now the terminal - it was never not cool, but it’s cool again. A lot of folks are hanging out there, Claude Code kind of put that on the map in a way… And then a lot of folks decided to follow that direction. And I imagine that’s kind of what you thought too, is like - you’re probably doing a lot of agentic coding, you’re probably playing with side projects, you’re getting curious again… And you’re like “Well, the next best thing is to – how can I just talk to my database? How can I just put an agent in my Postgres?” Talk about that.

[00:44:24.12] Yeah. I think – yes, I had a very similar experience with Claude Code. I remember one of my friends talking about agentic workloads in 2023, and I remember thinking “What are you talking about? Agentic? What does that mean?” And now I use the word “agentic” at least five times a day. And Claude Code was that moment. Claude Code – I mean, ChatGPT was cool, but it was like a party trick. It was kind of cool, it could edit for me…

For developers it was a party trick. I mean, for everyone else it’s pretty dang powerful. But as a developer – and ChatGPT is not the right interface. Chat yes, but not [unintelligible 00:44:59.24]

I remember building – because I was trying to talk to a friend. I was showing it to a friend, and he was like “Oh, can we build an app that tracks pushups?” And I’m like “I don’t know. Let’s try it.” And I think 45 minutes later – Claude had gone out and found the right computer vision library, and other stuff… And I had like a mobile web app that would use computer vision to detect if you’re doing a pushup or not, and it didn’t get it always right, but it got it right maybe 80% of the time… Which was pretty good for 45 minutes of work. And I remember thinking “Dude, I can build anything. Like, I can build anything now.” And I’m with you, I think Claude Code felt like “Wow, this is actually an agent doing work for me, writing code, making decisions… I can steer it, making me more productive…”

I remember going to a social event that night and I couldn’t even talk to people, because I was so excited. Like, I went home early. I was like “I need to go back to Claude Code.”

“I’m not feeling well, y’all. I’ve gotta go.”

I swear to God. Well, I’m trying to talk to people about Claude Code, and they’re like “Are you okay?” I’m like “No, this thing is amazing. You have to try it.”

What kind of party was it? Was it nerds, or was it normal people?

It was part nerds, part normal people.

Okay. Part normal…

But even the nerds were like – I mean, Claude Code had just come out. There was still “Yeah, I use Claude…” I’m like “No, not Claude. Claude Code.” You know when I told you about that experience in 1996, using the internet for the first time? That’s what this felt like. Number one, it felt like “I don’t know what this is, but I want to be a part of this. This is fun.” But also it brought me – and I know a lot of my peers feel this way… It kind of brought out this childish sense of wonder, that I think years of being of an entrepreneur had kind of beaten down… And it kind of brought it back to the surface, to be like “This is fun.” This is fun the way technology should be fun, where you’re just like “I just want to tinker with this. I don’t know what I can build, I just want to build things, explore this new world together.”

[00:47:28.11] And yeah, so I’m really excited… I mean, I think as a company we’re excited, because we see this trend, that like 80% of Claude Code is written by Claude… The majority of new software over the next 12 months will be written by AI… We already have customers who tell us that 70% of their code is written by agents. And you just look at this and you say, “Okay, if that’s happening, then what else is happening?” Well, that means the surface area of software development needs to evolve for agents. And the surface area of databases. So now databases are serving a new user. They’re not serving a human, they’re serving a human using an agent. So then you ask yourself, “Okay, then how does a database need to evolve for that?” Well, number one, it’s less of a GUI… So you remember databases went from on-prem to SaaS, like cloud… But now you’re going from SaaS to, I don’t know, MCP, CLI… It’s like, the interface is totally different. It’s no longer clicking. It’s more like commands… And there’s some other things, too. Like, you want databases to boot instantly, you want to be able to fork, and create sandboxes quickly, in a safe way, in a cost-effective way… You probably want native search, native memory… Yeah, so I don’t know, I’m just excited as like the little kid in me who just loves building things, excited…

For sure.

…but also as a company, it’s like “Yeah, this feels like a problem someone should solve”, and the answer is probably Postgres, and we might as well solve it.

This lyric lands for me in this moment… It’s from – I had to look it up. I don’t know this by memory, but it’s from Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell. “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.” So when you’re in ChatGPT and you’re just ideating the future of what your software thing could be, if that’s where you’re kind of hanging out at, versus that experience of in Claude Code doing the same thing, but it’s making the thing. It’s making the real thing, and you’re seeing the real thing change. And maybe you’re doing Git commits, maybe you’re doing spec-driven or document-driven development and you’re thinking a ton, and you’re writing it down, or it’s writing it for you, or it’s writing the markdown… But the ideas and the vision and the direction is coming from your lived experience, and your wisdom, and places you’ve been, and valleys and cul-de-sacs you’ve been down, and you’re like “Not going there…” And it may try to take you there, but you’re like “No, no, no, hang on. Let’s curve that back. Let’s go here.” But you’re seeing the real thing be made. That to me was, I think, the moment where I was like “That’s pretty wild. The real thing.”

And it can be like “Okay, cool, commit those changes and push them upstream.” And so you’re like “Oh, it’s actually fitting –” Because when I use Replit or Loveable - they’re fine, but I was like “Okay, cool, but I don’t build this way. Maybe other people do, I don’t.” But now I’m like “Yeah, I’d build this way. Yeah, commit the changes, push it upstream. Yeah, cool. Great. Show me the diff. Alright.”

The speed you can move at, I think, is kind of wild. I laugh about this, and I don’t know how often you laugh about this, but I love when it makes a plan and it’s like “Well, this is week one, this is week two, and this is week three.” Meanwhile, four hours later, the thing’s done. Or an hour later, whatever the number is.

That is always funny, yeah.

And I like how it manifests its time ranges, but I’m like, “It’s kind of funny.” It’s still making a plan, or it’s making a plan with you, and the range of its timeframe is – maybe it’s actually accurate to how it should be if it was done with a team of humans, versus a team of one, with an agent and an idea. And I think that’s kind of wild, it’s just the –

Or maybe it’s just under-promising and over-delivering, because that’s what humans like… [laughs]

Yeah, maybe that’s it; maybe it’s psychology. Something’s going on there… Even your mention of – you know, we had a conversation, you and I, a few weeks back, and you mentioned the same thing, you mentioned this childlike play… And that’s kind of the definition of flow. Like, flow state is that – when you’re in that state of flow, that state of play, a lot can happen there. You stay more engaged… It’s kind of addicting, in a way.

I’m a big fan of that idea, the concept of play. When something feels like play, that’s when you know you’re in it. You’re in the flow, you are doing the thing you should be doing.

Yeah.

And if I ever write a book, I think the title will probably be Play…

Nice.

[00:51:57.03] I think that should be the driver. It’s like, look for things that feel like play. Because those are things that really kind of fit who you are. And if you find something that feels like play and it also lets you kind of support yourself or your family - yeah, dude, that’s the jackpot. But the AI story kind of reminded me of something… When the personal computer came out in the late ‘70s, people struggled how to describe it. Probably similar to how we struggle describing ChatGPT and Claude today. And Steve Jobs, who was probably one of the best tech marketers of all time - either he came up with this or Apple came up with this, but they would talk about how a computer is like a bicycle for your mind. Which is kind of a weird – today that feels like a weird analogy… But I get it. Because back then you’re like “Hey, this thing–” This is like pre-spreadsheet, right? “Hey, this thing – we don’t know what the key use cases are, but kind of like how a bicycle lets you get from point A to point B faster, this is just making you better.” And that’s how I feel about Claude Code. And there’s all this discussion about “Hey, our agents are gonna replace us…” I mean, maybe some of the things we do, but for most of the things I think it’ll be like a bicycle. It’ll just help us get from point A to point B faster.

Yeah, I don’t know, I think that’s part of the joy, is being like “Hey, this thing that used to take me a week, or I couldn’t even do before, now and get done in an afternoon, totally throw it away and start again the next day.”

Try to juxtapose the timeframe of IoT company, using Postgres, needing time-series… Engineer, developer, employee, whatever, comes to you and says “I could do this in Postgres. I could do it in a month.” You’re like “Yeah, you’re ambitious. You can do it in three months.” 12 months later, that whole story… Juxtapose that time, to idea, to CLI, and - we haven’t even talked about the CLI yet, but getting to this point of agentic Postgres, and building what it is. How fast did you go from idea to using the thing?

I mean, a lot faster. [laughter]

A week? A day?

I don’t even know, man… I mean, I think this is the theme in the AI land, is “Just ship.” You know?

“Just ship”? Okay…

Just ship. We’re a database company, so we have a slightly higher bar than maybe a classic app… But yeah, just ship. Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely a shift between – it used to be hard to build, but now it’s much easier to build, which probably means that more of the bottleneck then becomes a distribution and awareness… Which is I think something similar to what the iPhone has –

It’s always been the bottleneck though, distribution and awareness; it’s just exacerbated now.

Yeah, but I remember once upon a time, pre-AWS… I mean, you probably remember this too, which is like, to start a company you needed to – you needed a server rack, you need maybe a couple of Sun Microsystems machines, Oracle ADI database… And just to get started was such a high bar that a lot of people couldn’t do it. I was actually gonna say, I think it’s similar to what the smartphone did to photography… Once upon a time, being a photographer was really hard; even if you look at before digital cameras, right? And you’d only take so many shots, you’d have to develop it, it would take time… It was hard to get right… You would have to actually apply physical filters and physical lenses to change the thing… And with the smartphone, everyone became a photographer. And what that meant was that in the past, having great photos would set you apart, but now it’s like, anyone can create a great photo… But how many followers do you have on Instagram? You know? So it kind of, again, shifted the burden from photography skill to distribution. And I feel like we’re gonna go through something similar with software.

[00:56:08.17] How much do you know about, I suppose, the details of the CLI and the MCP server that is in your products? Because I felt it was pretty – when I looked behind the scenes of the open source of that, you know, it’s elegant, the way you’ve married a CLI and an MCP server in a single binary.

That’s right.

That’s pretty wild. I think the design is – I had to borrow it, honestly.

That’s good. Great.

I’ve got a couple of things I’m working on, that are… One is a DNS resolver, and I wanna like talk to the resolver… And so the obvious answer is to have an API. But then you also have to have a CLI that talks to the API. But then I’m like “Well, I’m actually using an agent, so I’m taking a playbook from Ajay, and Tiger Data, and agentic Postgres…” And, well, the same CLI can offer an MCP server running at the same time, and you can talk to it and get back JSON for the agent, or get back CLI response for the human. Like, the design there was so elegant. I wanna know what you know about that design.

I know the team that built it is really smart… I think they looked at a couple of different options. I think the way it works right now is that the CLI will run a local MCP server, which then speaks to a remote one that we have. And the remote one is where we index – you know, our MCP will allow you to do things with Postgres and Tiger, but it also lets you search the Postgres documentation, download best practices… And so we put that on its own kind of remote MCP server. I think MCP in general - it’s such an interesting area, and I feel like a lot of people hate on it because it seems so simplistic… But I think just the idea that – you know, people talk about, in the physical world, the idea of a design affordance. You know this concept? It’s this idea that when you see something – like, when you see this mug and you see this thing, you know you can hold this.

Right.

You know? It’s kind of like a door handle. You’re like “I know I can turn this.” This is one of the reasons why Tesla door handles trip some people off, because they don’t see the handle.

They’re like “What’s going on here?” Yeah, [unintelligible 00:58:29.22]

Actually, I think that’s bad design. But an affordance is when the tool teaches you how to use it, because it’s designed the right way.

Like games, like Mario. The Super-Mario Brothers, the first game - that was why it was…

That’s right.

Level one was level one. It was teaching you how to play level two and three and four.

So this is where – MCP to me is not just an API, it’s essentially a way to expose tools for agents. To essentially think about like “Hey, we used to make these handles for human hands, but now we’re gonna make them for agent hands.” And that is a really growing art… Anthropic, who developed MCP, they’re still learning best practices. I think that’s really interesting… It’s to figure out what proper tool design looks like, how many tools is too many… I think right now tools are mainly a wrapper around APIs, but I think it’d be cool if they were actually doing the job, not just the API.

Yeah, so I think the team’s done some good stuff. There’s some really other – some good stuff that we’re gonna release soon… But I think MCP design – I think this idea of designing for a new user, the agent, is I think a really fascinating area.

Break: [00:59:50.09]

Well, we’ve heard the term dev tools, and now we have agent tools.

That’s right.

That’s how I think about things. And I’ve done a couple toy CLIs just to play with them. One for Proxmox – so I’m a home labber… I don’t know what kind of nerd you are, but I love to home lab. And one of the epicenters of my home lab is some version of a Raspberry Pi somewhere, or an Intel NUC, or maybe a slightly bigger one, which is a NAS, which is usually TrueNAS… And the next best big thing in the network, for me at least, is a Proxmox machine, which is dedicated, where I can do different things, whether it’s a service, or tinker with something, or play with a new version of Linux, or just distro hop, or distro play, however you wanna describe it… But as I’ve explored this world a bit, and I’ve understood what it’s like – I’d never really built many CLIs before. And I was like “Well, the next thing you wanna do there is really just… You wanna enable, now that we have agent decoding, and it’s – it’s almost ubiquitous.” So when you build a tool, or you build a new CLI, or you think about a new way to create an API with a CLI that lets you talk to a service, you can assume, or presume pretty good, with pretty decent accuracy, that the person may be using an agent; likely using an agent, or at least has one nearby, and is working towards being okay with that. Some people are still not okay with that.

So I was like, it only makes sense now that when you design these tools, you can’t just design the old way, which was “Well, I’m designing this, obviously, to solve a human problem, so it’s gonna be a human using it…” Now we have humans that are still there, they’re still the human in the loop or on the loop, depending upon the framework, but that human is leveraging one or many agents, or sub-agents, to automate and to do different things in their tasks, whether it’s designing the plan, whether it’s writing all the code, and they’re reading the code… They’re still doing the code review; maybe they’re doing 20% of the coding, because the agent does 80% of it, or 90% of it, or whatever the number is… Likely, this person has an agent. And so we now have to look at the way we build tooling in a way that’s like “Okay, I used to do it this way, human-only, but now the human has a friend, an agent… I’ve gotta design for both of them”, because that human is expecting their agent to have agency on their behalf, as they command it, to do the task.

A hundred percent.

And the agent speaks a different language, reads a different way, and it interacts with a command line or an API in a different way… And that’s where MCP, or even like Claude plugins come into play. How do you feel about that world? How do you feel about agents in our Postgres? …and now we can actually talk to our database.

I mean, agents will be in everything, because I think it is someone helping you use the thing that you’re using. I mean, you may not have an agent like inside the database itself, but you probably have an agent inside the system that’s running the database. That’s one thing we’re exploring right now on Tiger Cloud, is having agents that help you.

No, but it’s totally right. Again, it’s not replacing the human. It is the human doing the thing they need to do, but now they’re doing it through an agent. And so now you’re saying, “Okay the job to be done is still the same, but the thing doing the job is different.” And so it’s gonna need different things than what the human needed.

Absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, I think some places we’re looking at is like “What are some of the menial tasks in a database that you don’t really wanna do?” Okay, cool. Maybe you start there. But also, what are some tasks that you can’t do? Maybe an agent can, because agents aren’t limited by time and space. They can easily paralyze and run things and shut them down.

[01:06:06.14] When I look at what you’ve done with agentic Postgres, which I think is – I’m not sure if you’re trying to brand that term… I think it is the first time I’ve heard it, and I wonder if that will just become the thing, and it’s a product named like Xerox, or Kleenex… And I won’t be using Tiger Data’s agentic Postgres, I’ll be using somebody else’s, because there are more Postgres database providers out there… Yeah, I wonder if that’s the case. But when I look under the covers of this thing, and what you’ve done, it’s the first time I can look at something and say “Now I can actually talk to the database. Now I can actually sort of command it to go do something and it goes and does it.” It could even be a branch or a fork or whatever terminology you’re using to say “Give me a safe area to play in.” That’s just never been a thing before. And now it kind of is.

Yeah, I mean, this CLI – I mean, I think CLIs have been useful for… They’ve been a thing for a long time. What, 15 years, maybe more?

Yeah.

I mean, I don’t know, if you look at Unix, maybe it’s forever, you know?

They’re on their way back. I feel like CLIs are like the next frontier, in a way, really. I feel like the next year or so we’re gonna have this massive swath… And maybe some will live and some will die, but that’s gonna be the delivery mechanism. So yeah, it’s just –

I think the key thing is the CLI is a clear program that agents can use. So okay, so when we built up Tiger CLI - it’s written in Go; it’s distributed as a single binary. It essentially provides a unified control plane for your database on Tiger Cloud. And so it covers auth, obviously creating, starting, stopping, forking databases, connecting databases… But what’s really, I think, nice about it, like you pointed out, is that it has MCP baked in. So you can run essentially a local MCP server through the CLI, that then your Claude Code or whatever can talk to… And now your agent has access to all these basic commands. It has access to starting, stopping, forking databases, connecting the databases… It also proxies another MCP server that we host, where we have indexed the Postgres and Timescale and Tiger documentation, and now we provide semantic search and text search on there. So again, it’s not just a CLI MCP server, it’s a CLI MCP server that actually makes your agent smarter.

I don’t know, I would say – I’m not sure if this is true, but it probably is… It’s probably the first AI-native CLI for Postgres. It’s not just – I think other Postgres CLIs are just like API wrappers, but this is really thinking about bringing the CLI commands into the agent, but then also giving agents the Postgres context it needs, best practices, documentation, so that it’s instantly like an expert developer.

Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of developers hang out in the command line, but I feel like to some services the CLI was not so much an afterthought, it was sort of “You have to do it”, but not a lot of people would use it as the kind of primary interface. And now that we have agents in the command line, I feel like it’s table stakes. If your service doesn’t have a fleshed out, thought through, well-defined API, so that you can also have a thought out, well-defined CLI… And then maybe MCP lives and maybe it dies because agents can just sort of map around… I know Claude has plugins and things like that so you can sort of use Markdown to teach it, of all things not TypeScript, not Go, not Rust, but Markdown. Like, words.

[01:10:06.22] Maybe MCP - there’s talk about “Is it a fad, is it not?” I’m still not sure, because how sure can you be when things change on the weekly, even on the daily…? But just this idea that now the new frontier for a service is a cloud, is an API, and is a CLI at its best… And maybe MCP lives or dies, but for sure, you’ve got some sort of plugin system that you can teach with a slash command in the CLI that most people are using, if it’s OpenCode, if it’s Claude Code, if it’s Auggie, if it’s AMP… Like, you pick your agent…

That’s right.

…or Codex, even. They’re always last on my list, for some reason… But you know, the moment you give them that slash command, now the agent has access to the CLI… If it’s got great help docs, so –help on all your commands… Now the new frontier is like this really well fleshed out CLI… I feel like that’s where so much attention is going to be going, if not already there.

No, it’s a great point. And I think – and again, hey, is MCP gonna be the end all protocol? I don’t know. But there will be a protocol, and I think that’s the point. That’s the point you’re making, and it’s the point I’m trying to make. And why do you need this protocol? Well, number one, you need a way for the agents to interact with your APIs. But number two, you probably want to give them access without giving them the full keys to the kingdom. You wanna give your agents just enough power, but maybe sandboxed in a certain way. Maybe they can do some things, but not others. And I think this is where MCP, your agentic APIs really play a role.

And then the CLI is another way to do that. The CLI is another way to give essentially a tool to the agent that is properly defined in what it can and can’t do. Yeah, I think it’s really interesting. I think the team’s done some really cool – I think this docs thing… And I’m not sure if I’m beating a dead horse here, but I think what they did with the docs I thought was especially clever, that I haven’t seen anyone else do. It’s like “Hey, we have an MCP server where we have indexed the Postgres documentation and the Tiger documentation, and we’ve indexed it for text search and semantic search, so that your agent can effectively get a PhD in Postgres.” And we’ve done the tests. You can create schemas without our MCP, and then with our MCP, and then have Claude compare the results. And with the MCP, it’s just a much better schema.

I think that’s been really cool, and I think that is – it’s almost a variant of the skills that you see in Claude, but I think that’s another element of agents that I think is underexplored, is the fact that with the right markdown, they can become experts in anything.

Did you see the talk from Barry Zhang and - I think his name’s Mahesh Murag. They’re both from Anthropic… It’s the first time I’ve seen – well, I guess the first time I thought I would see anybody talk on stage for an hour about markdown. They introduced –

[laughs] I think I saw the tweet about it. It was like a packed room, or something…

Yeah, an hour long talk about using markdown. You just wouldn’t expect that. That’s not the language I thought would be front and center. Now, I love reading markdown. I personally prefer markdown. I’ve been an Obsidian user for years now, and so I’m all about flat files, nothing that’s sort of obfuscating my prose from my source… And markdown is that. But it’s the first time I thought I’d ever see somebody on stage presenting a revolutionary new feature that is now used by so many folks now. I’m starting to use plugins… And it’s markdown.

[01:14:03.02] It is wild. In fact, I have a friend working on a markdown editor for vibe coding. Not for note taking, but for like vibe coding. No, it’s a new world, man… Maybe we’ll find – that’s the weird thing with these agents, is that in some ways they are very similar to us. You don’t teach it using machine code, you teach it using text, in markdown.

Words…

Words.

Words, man… Words.

Yeah, it is wild.

I do feel that.

Well, I also think – with your discussion earlier, I had a thought about the terminal, about how more people are using the terminal, living in the terminal… There’s probably a business idea out there - I’m sure someone’s working on it - of building the modern terminal.

I think… Well, my favorite - and I’ll give them a nod, because they are my favorite - is Warp. I think they’ve been… Gosh, I recall talking to them almost five years ago, and it was “The future of the terminal”, I want to say… “The terminal of the future”, I believe, was the title we shipped on that. And Zach Lloyd is – I think he’s a solo founder even, of Warp. And Warp is my daily driver. So that’s what I use when I’m in a terminal, I’m using warp.

Now, I know Mitchell Hashimoto and Ghostty is awesome. I love it. I’m so thankful for what they’re doing, and especially what Mitchell did with the foundation kind of piece to it, to kind of give Ghostty a home forever… But something about Warp just gets me, and so I just like Warp. So I think they may be ahead of the puck in terms of that.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like Warp – did Warp start before this whole AI thing?

Oh, yeah. It’s probably two years before, I want to say. At least two to three years before GPT-3 made people think that emails will forever be written by machines. And we’re like “Nah, it’ll never happen.” You know what I mean? And now, “Can you summarize this into an email form for me? I will edit it, and I will remove what I don’t like”, or whatever… It’s not how I write all my emails, by any means, but a few that require attention, or care, or particulars… Why would I write all that out? I can have a thought, and the thought process with the agent, and then it formulates all the thoughts I’ve just given it into a cohesive form, and I can move along to my podcast with Ajay… Which is actually what I did. I sent an email just before our call, and my agent helped me write it. And I’m cool with that. I read it, I know what the words were in it, because they were all part of a 20-minute back and forth about this or that… And I’m like “Hey, can you package this entire sequence up into an email?” And it did. And I cut out most of it, and edited it to be Adam… That’s cool.

[01:17:14.00] You can even teach your agents to think like you think. Especially in Claude, with these plugins and stuff like that, and the way you can change the prompt behavior to make it more antagonistic to your ideas, and not be like a yes agent. “Yes, Ajay, that was the most brilliant idea ever. Let’s do this.” No, no, no. Push back. So you could do a lot of that with these things, and it’s just…

It’s a bicycle for your mind. With a mind.

Yeah. And now we have it for our database. I think that’s such a wild thing, man. But what’s on the horizon for you? I know that we can’t uncover things that are maybe releasing soon, or… I’m not asking you to spill the beans, but what’s over the horizon? A little bit that’s coming up soon, that you can at least tease? What is that? …for you, for Tiger Data, whatever.

Yeah. Well, so we started off as Timescale, building a database that scaled Postgres for time-series workloads. And then it became a Postgres that scaled for workloads in general, especially analytical workloads. What we got into with agentic Postgres is now serving not just the scale use case, but the start use case. It’s like “Hey, when I am building a new application with my agent, give me a database that just works.” And what you’ll see coming forward is just us continuing to innovate on those two dimensions, start and scale. On start we’re making our MCP even better, and CLI even better, and I’m curious what you think when these changes come out.

We’ve actually been toying on a side project that is like a separate MCP server that is a little bit more than the database… And this is actually being developed by – remember that engineer who said it would take a month and it took him 12 months? [laughs] It’s the same guy doing this one.

Wow.

But he’s moving a lot faster. And we launched a new storage layer called Fluid Storage to enable kind of ephemeral forks… You’ll see more stuff around that. Fast forking, safe forking, sandboxes… More around search, and more at scale.

Yeah, and I think – again, the job we do is “Hey, when you’re a developer and you’re looking for a database, we give you the database that just works.” And it’s built on Postgres, so you know you can trust it… But “just works” means something different at start than it does at scale. At start it means “Hey, it just works with my agent, it makes things easy.” At scale, it means it’s also reliable, and cost-effective, and fast. Yeah, we’re like 170 people, and we’re pushing on all those directions.

That’s a lot of people. I didn’t expect that number. I should have asked you that sooner, but yeah, that’s a lot of folks. Wow, that’s a lot of folks behind you. Pretty wild.

Well, Ajay, it’s been a pleasure diving into where you’ve been, and why you’ve built what you’ve built, and how you’ve built what you’ve built. It’s been fun. Thank you.

Thank you, Adam. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Good to see you.