# “I met my cofounder while gaming” - CEO of Northflank, Will Stewart

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-devtools/i-met-my-cofounder-while-gaming-ceo-of-northflank-will-stewart
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-devtools/i-met-my-cofounder-while-gaming-ceo-of-northflank-will-stewart.md
Podcast: [Scaling DevTools](https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-devtools)
Published: 2025-12-10T11:01:26+00:00
Episode link: https://podcast.scalingdevtools.com/episodes/scaling-devtools-episode-will-stewart-northflank_1-mp4
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/e5fd3f13/b2932216.mp3
Processing state: processed
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/scaling-devtools/episodes/i-met-my-cofounder-while-gaming-ceo-of-northflank-will-stewart
Duration seconds: 2706

## Resource

Northflank CEO Will Stewart explains how a gaming-inspired side project evolved into a robust, polyglot developer platform. He discusses the technical challenges of automating Kubernetes workloads and the strategic importance of building deep trust with enterprise customers.

## Highlights
- Main idea: Northflank functions as a self-service PaaS that abstracts Kubernetes complexity to automate the post-commit lifecycle
- Practical takeaway: Successful DevTools founders should solve problems they personally experience, such as the friction of manual database and CI/CD setup
- Failure mode: Avoid blindly following every customer feature request; instead, filter feedback through your long-term product vision
- Strategic insight: Managing technical debt and infrastructure deprecation (e.g., Mesos to Kubernetes) behind the scenes is vital for maintaining user trust
- Market trend: The rise of specialized 'neo-clouds' for AI workloads is driving a massive shift toward Kubernetes-centric compute orchestration

## Topics

Kubernetes, DevTools, Platform as a Service, Cloud Infrastructure, AI Workloads, Software Deployment, Startup Scaling, Container Orchestration

## Chapters
- 1:00 — The Northflank Vision: An introduction to Northflank's core principle: a self-service platform for deploying critical workloads like microservices and databases on any Kubernetes cluster.
- 4:30 — From Gaming to Engineering: The story of how a teenage gaming project led the founders to pursue computer science degrees to build a professional-grade platform.
- 7:50 — The Evolution of Infrastructure: Tracing the transition from game server hosting and Mesos to the modern era of containerized orchestration.
- 18:00 — The Value of Solving Real Pain: Why the founders focused on automating the 'awful' parts of infrastructure, like Jenkins pipelines and manual database provisioning.
- 24:45 — Balancing Vision and Feedback: How to handle customer requests without losing sight of the core product roadmap and long-term stability.
- 28:05 — Managing Infrastructure Deprecation: The importance of handling complex migrations, such as Istio service meshes, transparently so users don't feel the friction.
- 41:35 — The Future of AI Workloads: How the explosion of AI, GPUs, and inference training is creating new opportunities for developer platforms.

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## Transcript

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