How to Build 10x Cheaper Object Storage, with Simon Eskildsen, CEO at Turbopuffer скачать в хорошем качестве

How to Build 10x Cheaper Object Storage, with Simon Eskildsen, CEO at Turbopuffer

In this episode of Barrchives, Barr Yaron sits down with Simon Eskildsen, co-founder and CEO of turbopuffer, to explore how he went from infrastructure challenges at Shopify to launching a groundbreaking vector database company. Simon shares his journey from recognizing the inefficiencies of traditional vector storage solutions to creating TurboPuffer, a revolutionary database designed specifically for AI-driven applications. He details key moments of insight—from working with startups struggling with prohibitive storage costs, to realizing the untapped potential of affordable object storage combined with modern vector indexing techniques. --- This episode is broken down into the following chapters: 00:00 – Intro: Simon Eskildsen, Founder of TurboPuffer 00:26 – The “aha” moment: Simon’s transition from Shopify and startup consulting to founding TurboPuffer 03:13 – Turning “strings into things”: The power of vector search 05:51 – Why vector databases? Economic drivers and technology shifts 07:35 – Building TurboPuffer V1: Key architecture choices and early trade-offs 10:44 – Challenges of indexing: Evaluating exhaustive search, HNSW, and clustering 17:23 – Finding product-market fit with Cursor: TurboPuffer’s first major customer 20:05 – Defining TurboPuffer’s ideal customer profile and market positioning 23:43 – Gaining conviction: When Simon knew TurboPuffer would scale 25:39 – TurboPuffer V2: Architectural evolution and incremental indexing improvements 32:12 – How AI-native workloads fundamentally change database design 35:41 – Key trade-offs in TurboPuffer’s database architecture (accuracy, latency, and cost) 38:07 – Ensuring vector database accuracy: Production vs. academic benchmarks 41:03 – Deciding when TurboPuffer was ready for General Availability (GA) 42:27 – The future of vector search and storage needs for AI agents 45:03 – Building customer-centric engineering teams at TurboPuffer 47:12 – Common storage hygiene mistakes (or opportunities) in AI companies 49:42 – Simon’s personal growth as a leader since founding TurboPuffer Subscribe to the Barrchives newsletter: https://www.barrchives.com/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/37O8Pb0... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Twitter: https://x.com/barrnanas LinkedIn:   / barryaron