How to Build 10x Cheaper Object Storage, with Simon Eskildsen, CEO at Turbopuffer

In this episode of Barrchives, Barr Yaron sits down with Simon Eskildsen, co-founder and CEO of turbopuffer, to explore how he went from infrastructure challenges at Shopify to launching a groundbreaking vector database company.

Simon shares his journey from recognizing the inefficiencies of traditional vector storage solutions to creating TurboPuffer, a revolutionary database designed specifically for AI-driven applications. He details key moments of insight—from working with startups struggling with prohibitive storage costs, to realizing the untapped potential of affordable object storage combined with modern vector indexing techniques.

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This episode is broken down into the following chapters:

00:00 – Intro: Simon Eskildsen, Founder of TurboPuffer

00:26 – The “aha” moment: Simon’s transition from Shopify and startup consulting to founding TurboPuffer

03:13 – Turning “strings into things”: The power of vector search

05:51 – Why vector databases? Economic drivers and technology shifts

07:35 – Building TurboPuffer V1: Key architecture choices and early trade-offs

10:44 – Challenges of indexing: Evaluating exhaustive search, HNSW, and clustering

17:23 – Finding product-market fit with Cursor: TurboPuffer’s first major customer

20:05 – Defining TurboPuffer’s ideal customer profile and market positioning

23:43 – Gaining conviction: When Simon knew TurboPuffer would scale

25:39 – TurboPuffer V2: Architectural evolution and incremental indexing improvements

32:12 – How AI-native workloads fundamentally change database design

35:41 – Key trade-offs in TurboPuffer’s database architecture (accuracy, latency, and cost)

38:07 – Ensuring vector database accuracy: Production vs. academic benchmarks

41:03 – Deciding when TurboPuffer was ready for General Availability (GA)

42:27 – The future of vector search and storage needs for AI agents

45:03 – Building customer-centric engineering teams at TurboPuffer

47:12 – Common storage hygiene mistakes (or opportunities) in AI companies

49:42 – Simon’s personal growth as a leader since founding TurboPuffer

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