We only take on 4 clients per month. Join our October cohort. 1 spot left.
Conversation
Highlights
Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech’s most innovative B2B founders. In today’s episode, we’re speaking with Liam Randall, CEO and founder of Cosmonic, a cloud native WebAssembly platform that has raised $8.5 million in funding.
Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:
- Liam’s entrepreneurial journey started early, working fairgrounds and selling fireworks as a child of immigrant parents before pursuing computer science and startups.
- He’s had successful exits, including selling a Kubernetes company to Capital One, and has been an active angel investor, writing the first check for companies like Osquery.
- Liam believes in constantly challenging himself to grow, from taking on physical feats like long-distance swimming to stretching his capabilities as an entrepreneur and investor.
- Cosmonic is pioneering the use of WebAssembly, a portable format for executable code, to help developers build solutions that run across diverse environments with less friction.
- The company sees WebAssembly as a foundational technology for the next era of computing, enabling compute to be positioned closer to data and enriching devices with deliberate autonomy.
- Cosmonic has attracted interest from major enterprises like Adobe, BMW, and telecom providers, who are exploring WebAssembly for its portability and efficiency benefits.
Actionable
Takeaways
Embrace Discomfort as a Catalyst for Growth:
Liam's philosophy of constantly seeking out challenges that make him 20% uncomfortable resonates deeply. He views discomfort as essential for personal and professional growth. Founders can apply this by intentionally operating at the edge of their comfort zone, taking on projects and roles that stretch their abilities. Regularly embracing calculated discomfort builds resilience and adaptability.
Pursue Passion for Sustained Motivation:
A key insight from Liam is the importance of pursuing ideas and technologies that deeply excite you. He emphasizes how genuine passion fuels the motivation to persist through entrepreneurship's inevitable challenges. Founders should critically evaluate if they have a strong intrinsic drive for the problems they're tackling. Orienting around authentic passion creates the conditions for long-term resilience.
Align Strengths and Mitigate Weaknesses:
Liam is remarkably candid about his strengths and weaknesses. He leans into his aptitudes in communication, sales and patience while openly acknowledging areas like organization where he struggles. The takeaway is to build self-awareness of your unique attributes. Double down on natural strengths and find ways to mitigate weaknesses through partnerships, tools and delegation. Assembling teams is an exercise in balancing complementary skills.
Think Beyond the Technology to Jobs-to-be-Done:
In discussing WebAssembly's potential, Liam frames the technology in terms of the jobs-to-be-done it enables for developers. Rather than fixating on technical specs alone, he emphasizes WebAssembly's ability to let developers focus on core business logic by abstracting away common complexities. Founders can adopt a similar mindset - deeply understanding the actual jobs their solution helps customers accomplish and orienting their positioning around those.
Invest in Community Building for Nascent Categories:
Liam highlights how in the early days of WebAssembly, concerted community building was vital for driving adoption and accelerating the development of standards. In nascent technology spaces, investing time to convene key stakeholders, drive consensus on roadmaps, and evangelize can pay big dividends. Founders pioneering new categories should allocate resources to community efforts that create momentum beyond their individual startup.
Recommended Founder
Interviews
Prakash Chandran
Co-Founder and CEO of Xano
Prakash Chandran, Co-Founder and CEO of Xano: $5.4 Million Raised to Build the Next Generation of No-Code Backend Development
Ben Kliger
CEO and Co-Founder of Zenity
Ben Kliger, CEO and Co-Founder of Zenity: $21.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Security and Governance for AI, Low-Code, and No-Code Development
Kevin McNamara
CEO & Founder of Parallel Domain
Kevin McNamara, CEO & Founder of Parallel Domain: $44 Million Raised to Power the Future of Autonomy
Ramiro Berrelleza
Founder and CEO of Okteto
Ramiro Berrelleza, CEO of Okteto: $18 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Development
Pascal Weinberger
CEO of Bardeen
Pascal Weinberger, CEO of Bardeen: $18 Million Raised to Build the Future of No-Code Automation
Sophie Novati
CEO and Founder of Formation
Sophie Novati, CEO and Founder of Formation: $9 Million Raised to Build a Virtual Fellowship Program for Software Engineers
Lukas Gentele
Co-Founder & CEO of Loft Labs
Lukas Gentele, CEO of Loft Labs: $5 Million Raised to Build the Virtual Kubernetes Category
James Evans
Co-Founder and CEO of CommandBar
James Evans, Co-Founder and CEO of CommandBar: $24 Million Raised to Build the Leading AI-Powered User Assistance Platform
John Li
CEO and Co-Founder of Vimcal
John Li, CEO & Co-Founder of Vimcal: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Calendar Productivity
Stoyan Zulyamsky
Co-Founder of Costimize
Stoyan Zulyamsky, Co-Founder of Costimize: $5 Million Raised to Revolutionize Cloud Finance Management
Ron Efroni
CEO and Co-Founder of Flox
Ron Efroni, CEO & Co-Founder of Flox: $28 Million Raised to Empower Developers with Reproducible Environments That Span the Enterprise SDLC
Yingjun Wu
CEO and Co-Founder of RisingWave
Yingjun Wu, CEO and Co-Founder of RisingWave Labs: $40 Million Raised to Make Stream Processing Simple, Affordable, and Accessible
Benjamin Wilms
CEO and Co-Founder of Steadybit
Benjamin Wilms, CEO and Co-Founder of Steadybit: $7.8 Million Raised to Build the Future of Chaos Engineering
Will Wilson
Co-Founder of Antithesis
Will Wilson, Co-Founder of Antithesis: $47 Million Raised to Build the Future of Autonomous Testing
Evan Kaplan
CEO of InfluxData
Evan Kaplan, CEO of InfluxData: Over $170 Million Raised to Build the Leading Time Series Provider
Jacob Moshenko
CEO & Co-Founder of Authzed
Jacob Moshenko, CEO & Co-Founder of Authzed: $15.9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Authorization Infrastructure
Romaric Philogene
CEO of Qovery
Romaric Philogene, CEO of Qovery: $4 Million Raised to Help You Deploy Your Apps on AWS in Seconds
Tim Kraska
Co-Founder of Einblick
Tim Kraska, Co-Founder of Einblick: $6M Raised to Build the Visual Data Computing Category
Holly Tate
CMO of Leadr
Holly Tate, CMO of Leadr: Building the Future of People Development Platforms
Egil Østhus
CEO and Co-founder of Unleash
Egil Østhus, CEO of Unleash: $16.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Feature Management
Gary Hoberman
CEO & Founder of Unqork
Gary Hoberman, CEO & Founder of Unqork: Over $400 Million Raised to Pioneer the Codeless as a Service (CaaS) Category
Mike Malone
CEO and Founder of Smallstep
Mike Malone, CEO and Founder of Smallstep: $26 Million Raised to Build the Future of Certificate Lifecycle Management For DevOps
Lasse Andresen
CEO and Founder of IndyKite
Lasse Andresen, CEO and Founder of IndyKite: $10 Million Raised to Empower Teams to Move Beyond Legacy Identity and Access Management
Tom Tovar
CEO and Co-Founder of AppDome
Tom Tovar, CEO and Co-Founder of AppDome: Over $26 Million Raised to Build the Future of Mobile App Security
Paolo Fragomeni
CEO of Socket Supply
Paolo Fragomeni, CEO of Socket Supply: $3.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of P2P Computing
Tom Hacohen
CEO and Founder of Svix
Tom Hacohen, CEO and Founder of Svix: $10.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of Webhooks
Yadhu Gopalan
CEO and Founder of Esper
Yadhu Gopalan, CEO and Founder of Esper: $100 Million Raised to Build the Future of Android Device Management
Tommy Dang
Co-Founder & CEO of Mage
Tommy Dang, CEO of Mage: $6.3 Million Raised to Build a Modern Replacement For Airflow
Zach Lloyd
CEO and Founder of Warp
Zach Lloyd, CEO and Founder of Warp: $70 Million Raised to Build a Better Terminal
Anish Dhar
Co-Founders of Cortex
Anish Dhar and Ganesh Datta, Co-Founders of Cortex: Over $52 Million Raised to Improve Developer Productivity
Paul Kim
CEO of Notifi
Paul Kim, CEO of Notifi: $12 Million raised to Build the Future of Web3 Communication Infrastructure
James Hawkins
CEO of PostHog
James Hawkins, CEO of PostHog: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of Product Analytics
Mike Long
CEO and Founder of Kosli
Mike Long, CEO and Founder of Kosli: $3.5 Million Raised to Deliver Secure Software Changes at Scale and Deploy to Production with Speed
Vinay Jain
Founder of MadMen AI
Vinay Jain, Founder of MadMen AI: $4.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI-Powered Marketing Platforms
Dylan Etkin
CEO and Co-Founder of Sleuth
Dylan Etkin, CEO and Co-Founder of Sleuth: $25 Million Raised to Make Engineering Teams More Efficient
Honey Mittal
Co-Founder, CPO & CEO of Locofy.ai
Honey Mittal, CEO of Locofy.ai: $3 Million Raised to Build the Future of Frontend Development
Casey Rosenthal
CEO of Verica
Casey Rosenthal, CEO of Verica: $17 Million Raised to Build the Future of Chaos Engineering
Paul Stovell
CEO and Founder of Octopus Deploy
Paul Stovell, CEO and Founder of Octopus Deploy: Over $170 Million Raised to Build the Future of Deployment Automation
Joshua Aaron
CEO of Aiden
Joshua Aaron, CEO Aiden, $3 Million Raised to Build the Future of Software Packaging and Deployment
Yana Welinder
CEO and Founder of Kraftful
Yana Welinder, CEO and Founder of Kraftful: Over $3 Million Raised to Help Product Builders Create Better Products and Communities
Andrew Wolfe
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bloomfilter
Andrew Wolfe, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bloomfilter: $7 Million Raised to Power the Future of Process Mining
David Siegel
David Siegel of Glide
David Siegel, CEO of Glide: Over $20 Million Raised to Power the Future of No-Code Application Development
Costa Tsaousis
CEO and Founder of Netdata
Costa Tsaousis, CEO and Founder of Netdata: Over $30 Million Raised to Power the Future of Infrastructure Monitoring
Tomas Reimers
Co-Founder of Graphite
Tomas Reimers, Co-Founder of Graphite: $22.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Code Reviews
Derric Gilling
Co-founder & CEO of Moesif
Derric Gilling, CEO of Moesif: $15 Million Raised to Build the Future of API Analytics
Ori Keren
CEO and Co-Founder of LinearB
Ori Keren, CEO and Co-Founder of LinearB: Over $70 Million Raised to Build the Future of Software Delivery Management
Matthew O’Riordan
CEO of Ably Realtime
Matthew O’Riordan, CEO of Ably Realtime: Over $82 Million Raised to Build the Future of Realtime Experience Infrastructure
Michael Corr
Founder and CEO of Duro Labs
Michael Corr, CEO of Duro Labs: $4 Million Raised to Power the Future of Hardware Engineering
Marcin Wyszynski
Co-Founder and CPO of Spacelift
Marcin Wyszynski, Co-Founder and CPO of Spacelift: Over $22 Million Raised to Build the Future of IaC Management
Robert Whiteley
CEO of Coder
Robert Whiteley, CEO of Coder: $85 Million Raised to Power the Future of Developer Productivity
Eden Full Goh
Founder & CEO of Mobot
Eden Full Goh, Founder & CEO of Mobot: Over $17 Million Raised to Power the Future of Mobile App Testing
Matt Butcher
CEO of Fermyon
Matt Butcher, CEO of Fermyon: $26 Million Raised to Power the Future of WebAssembly
Ravi Parikh
CEO and Co-Founder of Airplane
Ravi Parikh, CEO and Co-Founder of Airplane: Over $40 Million Raised to Build Better Developer Infrastructure For Internal Tooling
Suresh Mathew
Founder and CEO of Sedai
Suresh Mathew, Founder and CEO of Sedai: $18 Million Raised to Automate Cloud Management for Critical Decisions
Martin Mao
CEO of Chronosphere
Martin Mao, CEO of Chronosphere: $250 Million Raised to Build the Future of Observability
Alan Shreve
CEO and Founder of Ngrok
Alan Shreve, CEO and Founder of Ngrok: $50 Million Raised to Help Devs Deploy SItes, Services, and Apps
Hersh Tapadia
Co-Founder & CEO of Allstacks
Hersh Tapadia, CEO of Allstacks: $16 Million Raised to Build the Value Stream Intelligence Category
Gil Feig
CTO of Merge
Gil Feig, CTO of Merge: $75 Million Raised to Help B2B Companies Build Customer-Facing Integrations via It’s Unified API Platform
Harpreet Singh
Co-Founder and CEO of Launchable
Harpreet Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of Launchable: Over $12 Million Raised to Build the Future of Software Testing
DeVaris Brown
CEO and Co-Founder of Meroxa
DeVaris Brown, CEO and Co-Founder of Meroxa: Over $19 Million Raised to Empower Engineering Teams with Better Stream Processing
Chetan Venkatesh
CEO of Macrometa
Chetan Venkatesh, CEO of Macrometa: $38 Million raised to Build the Hyper Distributed Cloud for the Next Generation of Applications
Omri Gazitt
CEO & Co-Founder of Aserto
Omri Gazitt, CEO & Co-Founder at Aserto: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Authorization
Johnny Dallas
CEO and Co-Founder of Zeet.co
Johnny Dallas, CEO & Co-Founder of Zeet.co: $6M Raised to Power the Future of CI/CD & Deployment