Ant WilsonCo-founder & CTO

Everything else is secondary. If a customer says, “I don’t know how to use this,” drop fundraising and drop everything. Fix that one thing first.

I always wanted to start a company. I am from Liverpool, did a master’s in software engineering, and tried to start companies for about 10 years. Nothing worked for a long time, but I kept going.

As a kid I wanted to be an archaeologist, but it did not feel real. Later I met friends who actually did it. That made me think these paths are real and gave me confidence to take the plunge into founding.

Supabase is your backend cloud. We are a database at the core with auth, file storage, and real time. Think Vercel or Netlify for front end; we are the backend. We started as an open source alternative to Firebase, but with SQL and transactions.

We met in Singapore at Entrepreneur First. Seven of us shared a cheap place split seven ways. It was constant ideas on weekends. We are both builders and could ship from idea to production very fast.

We solved our own problem. My co-founder hit scaling limits on Firebase and wanted Postgres. We built Firebase-like parts on top of Postgres. When we said “open source Firebase alternative,” people got it at once.

Messaging matters. Our site once said “real time Postgres” and nobody cared. We changed to “open source Firebase alternative” and it was day and night. Same product, better words.

First line in every contract: you are frontline support. CFO, intern, anyone. If you see a customer in pain on X or Reddit, jump in, help, pull others in. Small actions stack up and build trust.

Be where they hang out and get timing right. You cannot just shout database all day. We use memes and YouTube on topics devs care about, then bring in the product and launches. Be top of mind when they start a new project.

About 80% is community driven. We stay true to being a database company. If a feature ties deeply to the data layer, we pursue it. If it is front end hosting, others already do that great, so we say no.

We are around 150 people in 37 countries. Open source folks are great at async and written culture. They do not need quick calls. Give them a GitHub issue and they build. That has been invaluable.

Build a good business and let investors come to us. We look for people who believe in open source and our impact on developers. If they do not get that, it is not a fit.

Security, stability, and performance. We do not brag about them, but we obsess over them week after week. Staying strong there over years builds confidence and wins bigger customers.

Culture does not spread by itself. Write it down. We codified what worked in our first six months and tell every new hire what it means to work here. People who take ownership without being asked thrive.

Write everything down. Have people in every time zone. Work keeps moving as one team signs off and another signs on. We ended up with 24/7 coverage and low latency worldwide from the start.

We are not prescriptive. Some devs say a lot of their TypeScript is AI assisted. Haskell or Elixir folks might avoid it. Use what makes you productive. Just do a good job.

Start building relationships now. Those people become co-founders and early teammates. If I started again, I would throw away preconceptions, focus on customer feedback, and work hard to get honest “what is bad” answers so we can fix them fast.