S2 | E3 — Paul Copplestone (Co-founder & CEO at Supabase) on why open source is an unfair advantage; raising $116M to build the tech stack for AI startups/indie developers; living in Southeast Asia.

Paul Copplestone is the co-founder and CEO at Supabase, the “open source Firebase alternative for building web and mobile apps.” If you were wondering what that means or why you should prioritise a listen— in Paul’s words: “if you’re going to build your next startup, you’d probably choose us … and we’ll provide all the tools you need to get started: a Postgres database, authentication system, file storage… the works.”

Today, Supabase is prolific. One of the most commonly called out products by makers on Product Hunt; one of the most redeemed YC “perks” with nearly a third of the most recent Y Combinator batch using it; the back-end infrastructure of choice for many founders setting out to build AI-centric applications.

Paul has come a long way from his family farm near Kaikoura! Before Supabase, he co-founded South East Asian-based home-services startups ServisHero and Nimbus For Work, and participated in Entrepreneur First, Singapore. Today, he & co-founder Ant have raised $116M and lead a globally distributed company with 80 employees over 30+ countries. With their ambition and vision, it’s clear they’re just getting started.

In today’s episode, we discuss:

• Paul’s journey from NZ to Malaysia and now Singapore.

• Building and scaling Supabase as a globally distributed team.

• The impact of AI on software development, and what to use if you’re getting started today.

• Underrated benefits of open source for recruiting, growth, and how to think about product development.

Links:

Supabase:

• Supabase website: https://supabase.com/

• Supabase on Twitter/X (great follow) https://x.com/supabase

• $80M Series B announcement: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/10/supabase-raises-80m-series-b-for-its-open-source-firebase-alternative/

Paul:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcopplestone/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/kiwicopple

• Blog: https://paul.copplest.one/blog/ (so much good stuff in here)

• GitHub: https://github.com/kiwicopple

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:18) Paul’s origin story

(04:05) Founding ServisHero in Malaysia

(06:23) Joining the Entrepreneur First program

(08:58) Why founders should think about setting up their HQ in Singapore

(09:57) Founding Supabase

(11:36) The benefits of open source

(13:43) Insight into Supabase customers and how AI is changing the game

(15:33) How open source helps with recruiting

(18:18) Taking a “product led growth” approach to enterprise customers.

(21:12) When/how Supabase will “cross the chasm” as it matures into a enterprise customer base.

(22:19) How AI is changing devtools

(24:09) Paul’s angel investing thesis

(26:33) Thinking about companies like countries

(28:59) Paul’s favourite blog posts from his personal archive

(31:06) How we can be helpful to Paul!