In this episode, we sat down with Aaron Katz, the CEO of ClickHouse, a company that went from an open-source analytical database into a highly successful cloud service, utilized by Spotify, Netflix, Disney, and many more. Aaron Katz provides intriguing insights into the challenges of transitioning an open-source project into a thriving business, ClickHouse's go-to-market strategy, the role of technical support in pre-sales, and the strategic decision to avoid traditional SDR and CSM roles. 📖 The Unbundling of the Cloud Data Warehouse: CLICKHOUSE Website - Twitter -  Aaron Katz LinkedIn - Twitter - FIRSTMARK Website -  Twitter - Matt Turck (Managing Director) LinkedIn -  Twitter -  LISTEN ON: Spotify - Apple - 00:00 - Intro 00:56 - What is ClickHouse? 04:28 - What are the use cases for ClickHouse? 06:17 - Reducing the latency: why the world shifts to real-time 09:05 - How did ClickHouse evolve from an open-source to a cloud product? 15:01 - "Open source is the future of software" 17:27 - Self-hosted deployments 18:45 - ClickHouse's roadmap 20:51 - Is there a real-time data stack? 22:25 - ClickHouse partners in data ingestion 24:32 - Who are ClickHouse's main competitors? 27:35 - ClickHouse's sales process 36:44 - Is partnerships a good go-to-market strategy? 37:44 - When is the right time for startups to start partnering? 38:22 - Aaron's story of becoming the CEO 43:50 - Team and culture when working on two continents 46:15 - What's next?