Building Infrastructure Startups: Why Everything Takes Longer Than You Think скачать в хорошем качестве

Building Infrastructure Startups: Why Everything Takes Longer Than You Think

Most founders underestimate how different infrastructure is from typical SaaS. Jordan Tigani has seen both sides. He built Google BigQuery, worked at late stage startup SingleStore, and now runs MotherDuck, a cloud data warehouse built on DuckDB. In this episode, he shares what it actually takes to build, fund, and scale infrastructure products that matter. Infrastructure is not about wiring together open source components and calling it a product. There are no shortcuts to building something robust enough that people will trust it at the bottom of their stack. Jordan explains why real infrastructure requires deep technical contributions, longer timelines, and more capital than typical SaaS—and why VCs who do not understand that will make your life miserable. The traditional playbook says to target enterprises early. Jordan argues the opposite: start with startups. They are more comfortable with bleeding edge technology, have lower barriers to entry, and will not force you to burn engineering resources on enterprise checkboxes before you have built what truly makes your product great. Enterprises can come later once you have proven the core value. Jordan also breaks down the insight that led to MotherDuck. Distributed databases like BigQuery and Snowflake were built for a world where you had to run on multiple machines to get real compute. But modern cloud instances are massive—192 cores and one and a half terabytes of RAM. That changes everything. DuckDB can scale from a phone to a large machine without the coordination overhead of distributed systems, unlocking lower latency, lower cost, and better user experiences. Finally, Jordan talks about the hardest part of selling infrastructure as a startup: convincing people you can scale. The best proof is customers who have done it. Next is data and benchmarks. If you do not have those yet, you help prospects test at scale themselves. And sometimes, early on, all you have is your word and your willingness to make it work. In This Episode • The real differences between building infrastructure and typical SaaS products • Why fundraising for infrastructure requires more capital and more patient investors • How to find product market fit without building every enterprise feature upfront • Lessons from building BigQuery: what to bring to a startup and what to leave behind • Why bottoms up engineering cultures where engineers understand customer and business problems are critical for success • The gap in the market that led to MotherDuck and why scaling down matters as much as scaling up • How to prove you can handle scale when you are still early: the hierarchy of proof from testimonials to benchmarks to hands on support Subscribe for more founder stories, infrastructure insights, and honest conversations about what it takes to build in the hardest parts of the stack. #techleaders #startup #founder #softwaredevelopment #tech #careergrowth #techleadership #cto #engineering #softwareengineering #careeradvice #startups #ai #artificialintelligence #leadership #agenticai #agentic #selfimprovement #motivation #teambuilding