GTM 169: How Airbyte Hit $1B: The Open-Source, Community-First Playbook

Michel Tricot is the co-founder and CEO of Airbyte, the open-source data movement platform he launched in 2020. Before Airbyte, Michel led integrations and served as Director of Engineering at LiveRamp, where he scaled the teams and pipelines that synced massive data volumes. He also helped build rideOS as a founding engineer and Director of Engineering. Michel has spent 15+ years in data infrastructure, with a focus on commoditizing data pipelines and giving teams control and sovereignty over their data.

Discussed in this episode

Why Airbyte launched open source first (catching engineers “at the search”)
Project-market fit vs. product-market fit, and why they’re different
The content engine: founder-led writing, shipping slides, and radical transparency
Turning interest into community: 25k+ Slack, champions, and hiring from within
The near-misses: hiring ahead of PMF, support-heavy community, cloud complexity
Going upmarket: enterprise motion, longer cycles, and team ramp realities
AI wave → agents as “data consumers” and what it means for pipelines
Replatforming for control & sovereignty, not just “more connectors”

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Follow Michel Tricot

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheltricot
X (Twitter):https://x.com/MichelTricot
Website:https://airbyte.com/Airbyte

Host links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/
Website: https://gtmnow.com/

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Podcast Directory: https://gtmnow.com/tag/podcast

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Published on 5 hours ago

Podcast Episode Details

GTM 169: How Airbyte Hit $1B: The Open-Source, Community-First Playbook