E137 - Bob van Luijt - Disrupting Giants: Building Open-Source Platforms & Communities

Don't be afraid of giants.





At some point, they have to sleep.





In this episode, we chat with Bob van Luijt, diving into his
journey of facing challenges, conquering obstacles, and finding
success.





Let's get started on a conversation that's all about building
open-source platforms, communities, and disrupting tech giants.





Meet Bob van Luijt


Bob’s Role as an AI Leader at Weaviate





Bob van Luijt is the CEO and Co-founder of Weaviate. Weaviate is
a cloud-native, real-time vector database that allows users to
bring machine-learning models to scale. They believe that the
next wave of software infrastructure is AI-first and that a
strong open-source community is a basis for creating high-quality
software.





Bob’s Other Work in Technology and AI





Currently, Bob is also a Chairman for the Creative Software
Foundation, a nonprofit located in The Netherlands with a sole
focus on open source and creative software. He has a great love
for all things related to tech, machine learning, digital
business, open-source, fashion, and music.





Before founding Weaviate, Bob founded Kubrickology, a consultancy
agency that uses emerging technologies to design and develop
innovative solutions for everyday problems. Here, he worked with
companies like ING Bank and Vodafone Ziggo. At the age of 15, Bob
started freelance software engineering for a variety of
e-commerce websites for SME companies in The Netherlands.





Open-Source, Community, and Generative AI


In this exclusive analytics podcast episode, Bob shares:





His experience studying music and how it's helped his current
career

Shifting from IoT to vector databases

Why it was difficult for people to grasp the concept
immediately

The disruption theory

Why big companies like Google aren't doing what startups do

His current role as the CEO and co-founder of Weaviate

Why he built Weaviate as open-source

His perspective on copycats

The secret to building an open-source community

Use cases for Generative AI in the community

Generative Feedback Loops






If you are an aspiring developers or organisation leader aiming
to embark on a similar path in the realm of open-source, this is
the episode you do not want to miss.