Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:11:31 · Paul Copplestone, Harj Taggar
[00:11:31] S0: We see a lot of that one where it's finance and health, basically, the two, like, ones where you want your own Yeah. Data. Yeah. So we see a lot of people doing that and syncing all the devices Yep. To to a single database is kind of a Yeah. Magic skill, and you can, like, prompt it to, like, build these correlations across [00:11:49] S2: So correlations are really bad. Again, if you just take the health example, it's like, yeah, all of that data is in my two phase database, but then it also has access to my calendar, so it knows things. It's like, your weight went up recently, but, like, you were traveling, so that's okay. Like, you can just, like, get back on track Yeah. Next week, and it just has, like, this context that's really valuable. [00:12:10] S0: I also found that as I started to use the personal agents, like, I'm getting a little bit paranoid that I'm putting all of, like, all of the, like, routines and everything, and the CRM is becoming, like, boxed into one agent. And so now I'm slowly extracting it out into one so that if I wanna attach different agents on top, then I know that, like, I can use any any agent. So the CRM is another really critical one. [00:12:36] S2: Yeah. That's why you guys are so valuable. It's like, actually, like, it's like the... It's sort of like the store record or to the the the database is actually the thing that's valuable. Like you don't you want to own your own database and then build all the applications or agents on top of it versus having that all in like someone else's database. Mhmm.
00:12:36 · Harj Taggar, S3
[00:12:36] S2: Yeah. That's why you guys are so valuable. It's like, actually, like, it's like the... It's sort of like the store record or to the the the database is actually the thing that's valuable. Like you don't you want to own your own database and then build all the applications or agents on top of it versus having that all in like someone else's database. Mhmm. [00:12:54] S3: Which is a totally wild idea. Like if you just think about the history of databases, it used to be the case that, like, the world had only a relatively small number of very large databases run by, like, large companies. And I remember, like, when Supabase got started, you kinda had this idea that they should be, like, really easy for everyone to, like, make a database. And it almost, like, didn't make sense at the time why so many people would wanna do that. Because unless you can write code, what can you do with a database? And there's not... Just not that many people who can actually, like, write code and build a personal CRM like that. Like, it's just, like, too much work for most people pre AI.
00:12:54 · S3, Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, Paul Copplestone
[00:12:54] S3: Which is a totally wild idea. Like if you just think about the history of databases, it used to be the case that, like, the world had only a relatively small number of very large databases run by, like, large companies. And I remember, like, when Supabase got started, you kinda had this idea that they should be, like, really easy for everyone to, like, make a database. And it almost, like, didn't make sense at the time why so many people would wanna do that. Because unless you can write code, what can you do with a database? And there's not... Just not that many people who can actually, like, write code and build a personal CRM like that. Like, it's just, like, too much work for most people pre AI. [00:13:28] S2: Another example actually where Supabase is really valuable for me is the other section I have is just a file upload. It sounds very simple, but any file I can forward via email, just dump it in this UI, and then my agent like figures out what that is and how it's relevant to my life and like what to do with it. But that's all being stored on Supabase. And so yeah, in general it's just like Supabase is actually gonna end up having like all of the data about my life in a single place. I would never have thought about wanting a personal database a year ago, because it wouldn't have made any sense. But now, that's actually the most valuable thing. [00:14:05] S1: Yeah, you have an S3 compatible Supabase files thing, [00:14:07] S0: and Yeah. [00:14:08] S1: All my stuff is in that. [00:14:09] S0: Oh, really? Nice. Yeah. [00:14:10] S2: Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:10 · Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, Paul Copplestone, S3
[00:14:10] S2: Yeah. Yeah. [00:14:11] S1: It's default in g brain. [00:14:14] S0: Great. Thank you. Do you [00:14:15] S3: think this is the future, Paul, where, like, basically everyone in the world, not every developer, every person will have a Supabase database that has stuff about their life in it, their health, their finances, their relationships. [00:14:29] S0: Yeah. We'd love that. I mean, I I certainly think that it'll be the case that everyone in the world with access to AI will become a builder of some sort. Like, you can build anything. You can customize it. You wanna make tweaks to some app, some UI, then you don't have to be beholden to to someone. Of course, like, we think of ourselves as an index company. We... When we came into YC, we just focused on YC companies. We wanted to win all YC customers. And, like, now that was because we knew that we had to be there on day one when businesses were getting started. The mission didn't change. Just the aperture has, like, increased significantly. Now as more builders come online, we know that we need to service them, which is actually a whole different problem to solve, but kind of an exciting one. [00:15:17] S3: Significantly meaning, like, 10,000,000 x.
00:15:17 · S3, Paul Copplestone
[00:15:17] S3: Significantly meaning, like, 10,000,000 x. [00:15:21] S0: Yeah. Like... So what? We launch now a million databases every single week, but, I mean, if you do some basic arithmetic, let's say, with ChatGPT, I think they said they've got 1,200,000,000 weekly active users. And let's say all of them want to launch something every month that's 1,200,000,000 databases a month. And so that's, like, the scale that we're moving towards architectures that we need to have that we can actually cater for for that scale, which is something that has never had to happen before on the database realm. [00:15:56] S3: Can you even do that with Postgres? Or you're gonna have to build your own database engine to scale to 1,000,000,000 new databases per week? [00:16:02] S0: I think, yeah. Well, if we could negotiate better with AWS, then maybe we could, but it turns out that everyone wants computers at the moment. [00:16:12] S3: And
00:16:12 · S3, Paul Copplestone, Harj Taggar
[00:16:12] S3: And [00:16:12] S0: and actually, I like, I don't know if you need like, such a Ferrari for a lot of these workloads. We made an acquisition recently, Turso. They've got a architecture that's compatible with Postgres, and actually, it's compatible with SQLite as well. I think SQLite's a phenomenal database. And so we'll provide this tier, which we call Supabase Spark, which is basically for for these getting started workloads. The idea won't be the same. You get started with the same experience. You can scale up to petabytes. So our tagline's gonna prototype to petabytes. And we, as a company, need to make sure that we can provide for everyone. And if they do scale up and their business keeps growing, then we make sure that they have a great time. [00:16:59] S2: Yeah. That's something I was curious about how you think about this actually is like the classic sort of software company you start with, you know, maybe early stage startups, like in a YC batch, and then you sort of have one eye towards the enterprise. And I feel like especially if you're a database company like pre AI, like conventional wisdom as well, you wanna be Oracle so you gotta get to the enterprise as quickly as you can because that's where all the money is and so you start building out like enterprise features. You sort of leaning into SQLite is sort of going the opposite direction. Like, how do you how do you think about it? Like, are you sort of looking both ways?