Zero Prime

Zero Prime

The Zero Prime Podcast with Pete Soderling explores the early stories of top startups as seen through the eyes of their engineer-founders. In each episode we uncover insights on what it takes to start a company as an engineer in the words of the founders themselves. From the most cutting edge infrastructure companies to the newest trends in developer tooling, we introduce you to the engineer-founder personalities behind the up and coming software startups that you can’t afford to ignore.

Recent Episodes

Feb. 13, 2025

E27: From Unix Coder to BI Pioneer: Rob Woollen's Journey Founding Si…

In this episode of Zero Prime, we sit down with Rob Woollen, co-founder and CTO of Sigma Computing, to explore the intersection of engineering and entrepreneurship. Rob shares his journey from writing Unix kernels at HP to ar...

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Dec. 5, 2024

E26: Balancing Open Source and Business with Spencer Kimball (Cockroa…

In this new episode of the 0P podcast, we welcome back Spencer Kimball, co-founder and CEO of Cockroach Labs, to discuss the evolving landscape of software licensing in the cloud era. Spencer shares insights on how companies ...

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Aug. 5, 2024

E25 [DEEP DIVE]: How Metric Trees Are Transforming Businesses with Vi…

In this episode, we introduce a new format for the podcast—a deep dive into a technical topic with an engineer-founder who is an expert on the subject. For our first Deep Dive, I sit down with Vijay Subramanian, the visionary...

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June 7, 2024

E24: Self-Taught to Startup Success: The Unconventional Path of Influ…

In this episode, I sit down with Paul Dix, the founder and CTO of InfluxData to explore his journey from a self-taught programmer to a leader in database systems. We discuss his role in building the NYC Machine Learning meetu...

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May 1, 2024

E23: Inside the Mind of an AI Pioneer: A Conversation with Alex Mashr…

In this episode, I sit down with Alex Mashrabov, the visionary CEO of Higgsfield AI. We journey through Alex's impressive career, beginning with his time at Yandex where he witnessed the early implementations of neural networ...

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April 25, 2024

E22: From BigQuery to Motherduck: The Journey of Jordan Tigani

In this episode, I chat with Jordan Tigani, the dynamic engineer-founder of MotherDuck who previously led Google's BigQuery team and headed up product at SingleStore. Jordan shares the inspiring origin story of MotherDuck, w...

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About the Host

Pete Soderling Profile Photo

Pete Soderling

Founder: Data Council & Zero Prime Ventures

Pete Soderling is the founder of Data Council and Zero Prime Ventures. As a former software engineer, repeat founder and investor in more than 70 data-oriented startups, Pete’s lifetime goal is to help 10,000 engineers start successful companies. Most importantly, Pete is a community builder — from his earliest days of working with the data engineering community starting in 2013, he has witnessed the unique power of specialized networks to bring inspiration, knowledge and support to technical professionals.