The Guest – Sebastian Stadil, CEO at Scalr
Sebastian Stadil is the Co-founder and CEO of Scalr, a San Francisco-based cloud computing company specialising in automation and collaboration software for Terraform. Scalr is actively used by Fortune 500 companies and high growth businesses to help scale their Terraform usage safely while giving DevOps teams autonomy.
Sebastian is also the founder of SVCCG, Silicon Valley’s second largest user group, and sits on the cloud advisory boards at Google and Microsoft. He has been developing products and services that leverage AWS and other cloud providers since 2004.
Entrepreneurship, Growth, and Fundraising in Today’s Tech Sector
What are the unique dynamics of tech entrepreneurship in different regions, particularly comparing experiences in the Bay Area and Europe? Find out the benefits of being in the heart of tech hubs like San Francisco for networking and accessing resources and funding, emphasizing the invaluable role of in-person connections and the mindset of founders. Ultimately, we delve into the complex interplay between location, fundraising, and the growth trajectory of tech companies, offering a nuanced perspective on the evolving landscape of entrepreneurship.
Some of the topics covered in this episode include:
- The current state of the tech industry and the tech hubs that host most companies
- The future of tech hubs, in a remote-first world
- Understanding VCs and getting access to funding
- Emerging technology trends that will shape the sector
Q: What do you think attracted you to get into entrepreneurship and launch a business in the first place?
Well, there’s two things. One, there’s something that attracted me to Silicon Valley, and there’s also something that pushed me away from Paris. Back in 2005/2006, entrepreneurship was very much frowned upon in France. Even though I had stated that I wanted to create my own company, make a change in the world, and have a lot of impact, invariably, I would be asked, why don’t you just work at IBM or Google… Then there were forces attracting me to the Palo Alto Bay area, like seeing such an amazing concentration of minded people and being able to bond, being able to share experiences, I felt instantly at home.
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