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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 Yingjun Wu, CEO and Co-Founder of Rising Wave Labs, a SQL stream processing platform that has raised $40 million in funding. Let’s dive into the insights and experiences Yingjun shared with us.
Yingjun showcases the power of specializing in a specific technology area for over a decade. For B2B tech founders, deeply understanding your field and its future can be a significant competitive advantage. Leveraging this deep expertise enables you to identify and fill gaps in the market more effectively.
Inspired by the ethos of Amazon, Yingjun’s approach to always prioritizing customer satisfaction and needs over beating competitors or rushing to market underscores the value of being customer-obsessed. Founders should focus on solving real problems for their customers, which can lead to more sustainable growth and innovation.
Rising Wave Labs' success illustrates the importance of starting with a clear, strategic vision for your product, especially when innovating in crowded or complex markets. Founders should focus on how their product differs and solves problems in ways current solutions do not, particularly emphasizing real-time solutions for immediate needs.
Yingjun’s emphasis on educating the market about the benefits of stream processing and leveraging community engagement on platforms like GitHub highlights a non-traditional but effective growth strategy. Educating your potential users and engaging with technical communities can significantly amplify your reach and product adoption.
The challenge of prioritizing features and integrations based on customer feedback and requests is critical for maintaining focus and delivering value. Founders should develop processes to continuously gather, analyze, and act on customer feedback to ensure their product evolves in alignment with user needs.
Co-Founders of Cortex
Anish Dhar and Ganesh Datta, Co-Founders of Cortex: Over $52 Million Raised to Improve Developer Productivity
CEO & Co-Founder of Aserto
Omri Gazitt, CEO & Co-Founder at Aserto: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Authorization
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
CEO of Fermyon
Matt Butcher, CEO of Fermyon: $26 Million Raised to Power the Future of WebAssembly
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
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
Founder and CEO of Okteto
Ramiro Berrelleza, CEO of Okteto: $18 Million Raised to Build the Future of Cloud Development
CEO and Founder of Netdata
Costa Tsaousis, CEO and Founder of Netdata: Over $30 Million Raised to Power the Future of Infrastructure Monitoring
CEO & Founder of Parallel Domain
Kevin McNamara, CEO & Founder of Parallel Domain: $44 Million Raised to Power the Future of Autonomy
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 and Founder of Cosmonic
Liam Randall, CEO and Founder of Cosmonic: $8.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of WebAssembly
CMO of Leadr
Holly Tate, CMO of Leadr: Building the Future of People Development Platforms
CEO & Founder of Unqork
Gary Hoberman, CEO & Founder of Unqork: Over $400 Million Raised to Pioneer the Codeless as a Service (CaaS) Category
Co-founder & CEO of Moesif
Derric Gilling, CEO of Moesif: $15 Million Raised to Build the Future of API Analytics
Co-Founder & CEO of Allstacks
Hersh Tapadia, CEO of Allstacks: $16 Million Raised to Build the Value Stream Intelligence Category
CEO of Macrometa
Chetan Venkatesh, CEO of Macrometa: $38 Million raised to Build the Hyper Distributed Cloud for the Next Generation of Applications
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 Vimcal
John Li, CEO & Co-Founder of Vimcal: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Calendar Productivity
CEO and Co-Founder of Anjuna
Ayal Yogev, CEO and Co-Founder of Anjuna: $42 Million to Build The Future of Confidential Computing
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 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 of Qovery
Romaric Philogene, CEO of Qovery: $4 Million Raised to Help You Deploy Your Apps on AWS in Seconds
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 and Founder of Svix
Tom Hacohen, CEO and Founder of Svix: $10.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of Webhooks
CEO of Ably Realtime
Matthew O’Riordan, CEO of Ably Realtime: Over $82 Million Raised to Build the Future of Realtime Experience Infrastructure
CEO and Co-founder of Unleash
Egil Østhus, CEO of Unleash: $16.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Feature Management
Founder and CEO of Duro Labs
Michael Corr, CEO of Duro Labs: $4 Million Raised to Power the Future of Hardware Engineering
Co-Founder & CEO of Mage
Tommy Dang, CEO of Mage: $6.3 Million Raised to Build a Modern Replacement For Airflow
CEO of Socket Supply
Paolo Fragomeni, CEO of Socket Supply: $3.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of P2P Computing
CEO of InfluxData
Evan Kaplan, CEO of InfluxData: Over $170 Million Raised to Build the Leading Time Series Provider
CEO and Founder of Ngrok
Alan Shreve, CEO and Founder of Ngrok: $50 Million Raised to Help Devs Deploy SItes, Services, and Apps
David Siegel of Glide
David Siegel, CEO of Glide: Over $20 Million Raised to Power the Future of No-Code Application Development
CEO and Co-Founder of Sleuth
Dylan Etkin, CEO and Co-Founder of Sleuth: $25 Million Raised to Make Engineering Teams More Efficient
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 of Verica
Casey Rosenthal, CEO of Verica: $17 Million Raised to Build the Future of Chaos Engineering
Co-Founder of Einblick
Tim Kraska, Co-Founder of Einblick: $6M Raised to Build the Visual Data Computing Category
CEO of Bardeen
Pascal Weinberger, CEO of Bardeen: $18 Million Raised to Build the Future of No-Code Automation
CEO & Founder of Formic
Saman Farid, CEO & Founder of Formic: $60 Million Raised to Build the Future of Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS)
CEO and Founder of Warp
Zach Lloyd, CEO and Founder of Warp: $70 Million Raised to Build a Better Terminal
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
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 Octopus Deploy
Paul Stovell, CEO and Founder of Octopus Deploy: Over $170 Million Raised to Build the Future of Deployment Automation
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 of PostHog
James Hawkins, CEO of PostHog: $21 Million Raised to Build the Future of Product Analytics
Co-Founder of Costimize
Stoyan Zulyamsky, Co-Founder of Costimize: $5 Million Raised to Revolutionize Cloud Finance Management
Co-Founder & CEO of Loft Labs
Lukas Gentele, CEO of Loft Labs: $5 Million Raised to Build the Virtual Kubernetes Category
Founder and CEO of Sedai
Suresh Mathew, Founder and CEO of Sedai: $18 Million Raised to Automate Cloud Management for Critical Decisions
CEO of Coder
Robert Whiteley, CEO of Coder: $85 Million Raised to Power the Future of Developer Productivity
Co-Founder of Graphite
Tomas Reimers, Co-Founder of Graphite: $22.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Code Reviews
CEO of Notifi
Paul Kim, CEO of Notifi: $12 Million raised to Build the Future of Web3 Communication Infrastructure
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
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 Chronosphere
Martin Mao, CEO of Chronosphere: $250 Million Raised to Build the Future of Observability
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
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
CEO & Co-Founder of Authzed
Jacob Moshenko, CEO & Co-Founder of Authzed: $15.9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Authorization Infrastructure
Founder & CEO of Mobot
Eden Full Goh, Founder & CEO of Mobot: Over $17 Million Raised to Power the Future of Mobile App Testing
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
Co-Founder, CPO & CEO of Locofy.ai
Honey Mittal, CEO of Locofy.ai: $3 Million Raised to Build the Future of Frontend Development
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
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
CEO and Founder of Formation
Sophie Novati, CEO and Founder of Formation: $9 Million Raised to Build a Virtual Fellowship Program for Software Engineers