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.

CLICKHOUSE

Website - https://clickhouse.com/

Twitter - https://x.com/clickhousedb

Aaron Katz

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-katz-5762094

Twitter - https://x.com/ceo_clickhouse

FIRSTMARK

Website - https://firstmark.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap

Matt Turck (Managing Director)

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck

(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?