Supabase CEO on the "painful" decisions that built a $5B company

Equity

TechCrunch

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4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vibe coding has taken the tech industry by storm, and it's not just the Lovables and Replits of the world that are winning. The startups building the infrastructure behind them are cashing in too. Supabase, the open-source database platform that's become the backend of choice for the vibe-coding world, raised $100 million at a $5 billion valuation just months after closing $200 million at $2 billion. But co-founder and CEO Paul Copplestone has a surprising strategy: he keeps turning down million-dollar enterprise contracts, betting instead that vibe coding will birth the next generation of companies. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort sat down with Copplestone to explore Supabase's rise and what it means for the database race. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Why Copplestone believes "the death of Oracle won't take a generation" The technical moonshots Supabase is funding to make Postgres even more scalable How he decides which enterprise deals to turn down, and why it still "feels very painful" Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a paid ad by Fidelity Private Shares.
0:03.2	A messy or missing cap table might not just slow you down.
0:05.8	It could cost you your next fundraising round.
0:08.2	Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of
0:12.2	startups.
0:12.8	I'm Rebecca Boulon.
0:13.8	And today, with the holiday week shaking up our usual news schedule, we're bringing
0:17.9	you a conversation between TechCrunch Venture Editor Julie Bort and
0:21.3	Paul Coplestone. Regular listeners will know that vibe coding has taken the tech industry by storm.
0:26.6	And it's not just creating breakout players like lovable and replet, but also the startups that are
0:31.0	providing the picks and shovels. Coppestone is the CEO and co-founder of SupaBase, the open source
0:36.3	database platform that's become the
0:38.2	back-end choice for the vibe coding world.
0:40.4	Let's hear what Paul has to say.
0:47.2	Hello, Paul.
0:48.2	Welcome to the show.
0:49.1	Thanks for having me.
0:49.9	So you are sort of living the dream of founders.
0:54.0	You started this open source project.
0:56.5	You got into YC.
0:58.0	And now things are going gangbusters.
1:00.7	You find yourself in the center of the vibe coding revolution, so to speak.
	...

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