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Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries, the show that explores the future of tech with innovative B2B founders. In today’s episode, we’re speaking with Ramiro Berrelleza, CEO and Co-Founder of Okteto, a Kubernetes development platform that has raised more than $18 million in funding.
Key topics discussed in this episode:
Identify the "hair on fire" problems in your target market – the issues that are so pressing that customers will readily adopt solutions, even if they're not perfect. Build your narrative around the urgency and impact of addressing these problems.
While PLG can be an effective strategy for acquiring early adopters and individual users, layering a sales team on top can help you expand within organizations and significantly increase contract values. Strike a balance based on your product's price point and target customer profile.
In the early stages, focus on finding investors, customers, and partners who already believe in the importance of the problem you're solving. They will be your strongest advocates and help you gain momentum, rather than wasting time trying to convince skeptics.
Position your company as part of larger industry trends or technological shifts, such as the adoption of cloud computing, microservices, or Kubernetes. This helps establish credibility and relevance, making it easier for potential customers and investors to understand your value proposition.
Paint a picture of the future you're working towards, where your solution becomes an essential, default part of the ecosystem. Use this vision to guide your strategy, rally your team, and inspire customers and partners to join you on the journey.
CEO of Socket Supply
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CEO of Ably Realtime
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CEO and Co-Founder of Anjuna
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Founder and CEO of Duro Labs
Michael Corr, CEO of Duro Labs: $4 Million Raised to Power the Future of Hardware Engineering
Co-Founders of Cortex
Anish Dhar and Ganesh Datta, Co-Founders of Cortex: Over $52 Million Raised to Improve Developer Productivity
Co-Founder of Costimize
Stoyan Zulyamsky, Co-Founder of Costimize: $5 Million Raised to Revolutionize Cloud Finance Management
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
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
CEO and Founder of Warp
Zach Lloyd, CEO and Founder of Warp: $70 Million Raised to Build a Better Terminal
CEO of PostHog
James Hawkins, CEO of PostHog: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of Product Analytics
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
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
CEO of Chronosphere
Martin Mao, CEO of Chronosphere: $250 Million Raised to Build the Future of Observability
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
David Siegel of Glide
David Siegel, CEO of Glide: Over $20 Million Raised to Power the Future of No-Code Application Development
Founder & CEO of Mobot
Eden Full Goh, Founder & CEO of Mobot: Over $17 Million Raised to Power the Future of Mobile App Testing
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
Co-Founder, CPO & CEO of Locofy.ai
Honey Mittal, CEO of Locofy.ai: $3 Million Raised to Build the Future of Frontend Development
CEO of Bardeen
Pascal Weinberger, CEO of Bardeen: $18 Million Raised to Build the Future of No-Code Automation
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
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
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
Founder and CEO of Sedai
Suresh Mathew, Founder and CEO of Sedai: $18 Million Raised to Automate Cloud Management for Critical Decisions
CEO of Fermyon
Matt Butcher, CEO of Fermyon: $26 Million Raised to Power the Future of WebAssembly
CEO and Founder of Formation
Sophie Novati, CEO and Founder of Formation: $9 Million Raised to Build a Virtual Fellowship Program for Software Engineers
Co-Founder & CEO of Allstacks
Hersh Tapadia, CEO of Allstacks: $16 Million Raised to Build the Value Stream Intelligence Category
CEO and Co-Founder of Sleuth
Dylan Etkin, CEO and Co-Founder of Sleuth: $25 Million Raised to Make Engineering Teams More Efficient
CEO & Co-Founder of Aserto
Omri Gazitt, CEO & Co-Founder at Aserto: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Authorization
CEO of Macrometa
Chetan Venkatesh, CEO of Macrometa: $38 Million raised to Build the Hyper Distributed Cloud for the Next Generation of Applications
CEO & Co-Founder of Authzed
Jacob Moshenko, CEO & Co-Founder of Authzed: $15.9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Authorization Infrastructure
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
CEO and Founder of Netdata
Costa Tsaousis, CEO and Founder of Netdata: Over $30 Million Raised to Power the Future of Infrastructure Monitoring
Co-Founder & CEO of Mage
Tommy Dang, CEO of Mage: $6.3 Million Raised to Build a Modern Replacement For Airflow
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
CEO of Qovery
Romaric Philogene, CEO of Qovery: $4 Million Raised to Help You Deploy Your Apps on AWS in Seconds
CEO & Founder of Unqork
Gary Hoberman, CEO & Founder of Unqork: Over $400 Million Raised to Pioneer the Codeless as a Service (CaaS) Category
CEO and Co-Founder of Vimcal
John Li, CEO & Co-Founder of Vimcal: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Calendar Productivity
CEO and Founder of Ngrok
Alan Shreve, CEO and Founder of Ngrok: $50 Million Raised to Help Devs Deploy SItes, Services, and Apps
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
Co-Founder of Graphite
Tomas Reimers, Co-Founder of Graphite: $22.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Code Reviews
CEO of Coder
Robert Whiteley, CEO of Coder: $85 Million Raised to Power the Future of Developer Productivity
Co-Founder of Einblick
Tim Kraska, Co-Founder of Einblick: $6M Raised to Build the Visual Data Computing Category
CEO and Founder of Svix
Tom Hacohen, CEO and Founder of Svix: $10.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of Webhooks
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
CEO and Founder of Cosmonic
Liam Randall, CEO and Founder of Cosmonic: $8.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of WebAssembly
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
CEO of Aiden
Joshua Aaron, CEO Aiden, $3 Million Raised to Build the Future of Software Packaging and Deployment
CEO and Founder of Esper
Yadhu Gopalan, CEO and Founder of Esper: $100 Million Raised to Build the Future of Android Device Management
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
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
CEO and Co-founder of Unleash
Egil Østhus, CEO of Unleash: $16.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Feature Management
CEO of Notifi
Paul Kim, CEO of Notifi: $12 Million raised to Build the Future of Web3 Communication Infrastructure
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
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
Co-Founder & CEO of Loft Labs
Lukas Gentele, CEO of Loft Labs: $5 Million Raised to Build the Virtual Kubernetes Category
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
Co-founder & CEO of Moesif
Derric Gilling, CEO of Moesif: $15 Million Raised to Build the Future of API Analytics
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
CEO of InfluxData
Evan Kaplan, CEO of InfluxData: Over $170 Million Raised to Build the Leading Time Series Provider
CEO of Verica
Casey Rosenthal, CEO of Verica: $17 Million Raised to Build the Future of Chaos Engineering