July 8, 2020

(Early stage) Jon Edvald, founder and CEO of Garden.io on: Evolution of Software Development and How to Raise Your First Million Dollars

(Early stage) Jon Edvald, founder and CEO of Garden.io on: Evolution of Software Development and How to Raise Your First Million Dollars

My guest this week is Jon Edvald who is the CEO and co-founder of garden.io, makers of an open-source Kubernetes development and testing platform. During his 12+ years in software development, Jon has held engineering leadership roles with Clue and QuizUp

Show Notes


  • [0:50] - What does Garden.io do?
  • [2:16] - How did you go from being technical to becoming an entrepreneur
  • [3:45] - How do you balance your desire to be technical with the other aspects of running a business?
  • [5:47] - How has software development changed since you started?
  • [8:30] - When does it make sense to have an open source offering?
  • [14:00] - Is selling to devops different in US vs Europe?
  • [15:11] - How did you determine the pricing for your commercial offering?
  • [17:03] - How did you raise your first million dollars?
  • [19:18] - How did you determine focus in your early stages and what were some of the mistakes made?
  • [22:13] - Where do you go for mentorship and advice?
  • [23:47] - Challenges and strategies that have worked for you in the current pandemic in terms of growing your business
  • [27:04] - Tell us about the latest Garden commercial offering you just launched


Links:

Book recommendation: Inventing the Future