Ajay Kulkarni

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 that was where the success stories were companies like Hortonworks and Cloudera.

Really big on-prem companies.

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 also, I also had this inkling that like, 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 like 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'd like to say about myself and my co-founders is that we're very good students of the game.