466: Reshape Free Products into Revenue-Generators with Ali Ghosdi of Databricks

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan · Jun 30, 2023 · 49m

Ali Ghosdi was a reluctant founder. He planned to become an academic researcher and professor, not lead a successful tech startup. In 2013, alongside six other co-founders, Ghosdi helped build an open-source data product called Apache Spark, a best-of-breed future predicting code. The research project eventually became a business called Databricks. In 2016, he was picked as CEO and helped transform the open-source startup into a technology enterprise with a $38 billion valuation. Databricks boasts investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Nathan and Ali discuss:

Being a…