What Happens When Everyone Can Build Software

In this episode of the Lightcone, the hosts sit down with Paul Copplestone, co-founder and CEO of Supabase. Since starting in the YC summer batch of 2020, the company has exploded to 13 million users and over 50 million databases under management. Supabase is now positioning for a future where everyone can write their own software, billions have access to personal databases and agents are driving much of the demand. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:18 Growth and 4x Revenue 02:35 Three Eras of Supabase 04:34 “Builders” vs. Traditional Devs 08:42 Personalized Apps 12:12 Personal Databases & Data Ownership 15:56 Scaling to Billions 17:58 AI Adoption At Supabase 19:58 Lessons Learned Along The Way 27:29 Building For Personal Agents, Dogfooding 30:01 Agent-First Design and Evals 38:42 The Future Of Coding 42:36 Opening Up More Entrepreneurship + Outro

Paul CopplestoneguestGarry TanhostHarj TaggarhostJared Friedmanhost

Oct 30, 202648mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: October 30, 2026
Duration: 48m
Channel: Y Combinator
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In this episode of the Lightcone, the hosts sit down with Paul Copplestone, co-founder and CEO of Supabase. Since starting in the YC summer batch of 2020, the company has exploded to 13 million users and over 50 million databases under management. Supabase is now positioning for a future where everyone can write their own software, billions have access to personal databases and agents are driving much of the demand. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:18 Growth and 4x Revenue 02:35 Three Eras of Supabase 04:34 “Builders” vs. Traditional Devs 08:42 Personalized Apps 12:12 Personal Databases & Data Ownership 15:56 Scaling to Billions 17:58 AI Adoption At Supabase 19:58 Lessons Learned Along The Way 27:29 Building For Personal Agents, Dogfooding 30:01 Agent-First Design and Evals 38:42 The Future Of Coding 42:36 Opening Up More Entrepreneurship + Outro

SPEAKERS

Paul Copplestone
guest
Co-founder and CEO of Supabase.
Garry Tan
host
President and CEO of Y Combinator.
Harj Taggar
host
Partner at Y Combinator.
Jared Friedman
host
Partner at Y Combinator.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Y Combinator, featuring Paul Copplestone and Garry Tan, What Happens When Everyone Can Build Software explores supabase bets agents will make personal databases mainstream infrastructure Paul Copplestone argues AI is turning far more people into “builders,” including non-engineers, which is expanding the market for easy-to-spin-up databases.

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