Nikita Shamgunov

Naturally, in a startup, you will have a handful of people that are responsible. Like these are the people you call to if there is a fire. And as the company scales and the user base scales, and now we have 5,000 databases spun up every day on the platform, you're going to get fires. That's just what's going to happen. And then you keep reaching out to the same people.

Naturally, in a startup, you will have a handful of people that are responsible. Like these are the people you call to if there is a fire. And as the company scales and the user base scales, and now we have 5,000 databases spun up every day on the platform, you're going to get fires. That's just what's going to happen. And then you keep reaching out to the same people.

Naturally, in a startup, you will have a handful of people that are responsible. Like these are the people you call to if there is a fire. And as the company scales and the user base scales, and now we have 5,000 databases spun up every day on the platform, you're going to get fires. That's just what's going to happen. And then you keep reaching out to the same people.

My co-founder Stas was one of them. Eventually, you start burning those same people out. And there are ways to address this. And typically, you address it by starting to distribute the workload or... You address it by having stronger team leads and whatnot. From the CEO standpoint, you can think about it as you have a bunch of balls in the air.

My co-founder Stas was one of them. Eventually, you start burning those same people out. And there are ways to address this. And typically, you address it by starting to distribute the workload or... You address it by having stronger team leads and whatnot. From the CEO standpoint, you can think about it as you have a bunch of balls in the air.

My co-founder Stas was one of them. Eventually, you start burning those same people out. And there are ways to address this. And typically, you address it by starting to distribute the workload or... You address it by having stronger team leads and whatnot. From the CEO standpoint, you can think about it as you have a bunch of balls in the air.

If the company is growing exponentially, the number of balls in the air starts growing exponentially as well, and then they will just start falling. In our case, the symptom of that was the stability of the service about a year ago. So 12 months ago, all hell broke loose as the number, the usage on the Neon platform was growing exponentially. And then we started to have outages one after another.

If the company is growing exponentially, the number of balls in the air starts growing exponentially as well, and then they will just start falling. In our case, the symptom of that was the stability of the service about a year ago. So 12 months ago, all hell broke loose as the number, the usage on the Neon platform was growing exponentially. And then we started to have outages one after another.

If the company is growing exponentially, the number of balls in the air starts growing exponentially as well, and then they will just start falling. In our case, the symptom of that was the stability of the service about a year ago. So 12 months ago, all hell broke loose as the number, the usage on the Neon platform was growing exponentially. And then we started to have outages one after another.

And our competitors started to make fun of us on Twitter by, like, referring to us without naming our name. And it was just, like, it was embarrassing. By that time, we were already for self-postgres. Guillermo was sending angry messages to me every time we were having instabilities. The classic from the CEO standpoint is once this is happening, you start building your staff team.

And our competitors started to make fun of us on Twitter by, like, referring to us without naming our name. And it was just, like, it was embarrassing. By that time, we were already for self-postgres. Guillermo was sending angry messages to me every time we were having instabilities. The classic from the CEO standpoint is once this is happening, you start building your staff team.

And our competitors started to make fun of us on Twitter by, like, referring to us without naming our name. And it was just, like, it was embarrassing. By that time, we were already for self-postgres. Guillermo was sending angry messages to me every time we were having instabilities. The classic from the CEO standpoint is once this is happening, you start building your staff team.

That's when I started. I opened up a number of searches and we brought head of engineering, head of product, head of marketing. And then we were like, do we need a head of finance? Do we not need to get insight? I was like, fuck it. We're just going to bring a head of finance as well.

That's when I started. I opened up a number of searches and we brought head of engineering, head of product, head of marketing. And then we were like, do we need a head of finance? Do we not need to get insight? I was like, fuck it. We're just going to bring a head of finance as well.

That's when I started. I opened up a number of searches and we brought head of engineering, head of product, head of marketing. And then we were like, do we need a head of finance? Do we not need to get insight? I was like, fuck it. We're just going to bring a head of finance as well.

The learning there is once you start building a staff team, if you have some folks on the staff team who are professional executives and some who are not, the ones that are not better step up really quickly. Or you will have weird staff meetings going on where the bar for communication and getting things done is different and uneven.

The learning there is once you start building a staff team, if you have some folks on the staff team who are professional executives and some who are not, the ones that are not better step up really quickly. Or you will have weird staff meetings going on where the bar for communication and getting things done is different and uneven.

The learning there is once you start building a staff team, if you have some folks on the staff team who are professional executives and some who are not, the ones that are not better step up really quickly. Or you will have weird staff meetings going on where the bar for communication and getting things done is different and uneven.

Once you flip the switch and start building a staff team, I think you're better off just having a professional staff team. And that's what we did in the beginning of this year. And now the service is super stable. With a capable staff team, you're much better positioned to solve problems in a very robust way.

Once you flip the switch and start building a staff team, I think you're better off just having a professional staff team. And that's what we did in the beginning of this year. And now the service is super stable. With a capable staff team, you're much better positioned to solve problems in a very robust way.