apache-kafka
(6)
Conduktor found Kafka’s bottleneck. It was the queue for permission.
Kafka moves data in real time. The people around it often move at the speed of an approval ticket. Conduktor sells a way to close that gap without surrendering control.
StreamNative Wants the Stream to Outlive the Broker
The Apache Pulsar founders built a company to manage the messages that keep modern businesses moving. Now they are making a more provocative bet: the data should be able to leave the broker behind.
Hojjat Jafarpour Has Spent 20 Years Asking Data to Hurry Up
Long before real-time data became an AI talking point, the DeltaStream founder was studying how information moves. His career is a patient argument that the future arrives continuously - and should be queryable in plain SQL.
Confluent
Confluent is the data streaming company founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka. Its Data Streaming Platform - anchored by fully managed Confluent Cloud and a self-managed Confluent Platform, plus managed Apache Flink for stream processing - lets organizations connect, process, and govern data in motion across clouds in real time. Used by thousands of enterprises including a large share of the Fortune 500, Confluent went public in 2021 (NASDAQ: CFLT) and in December 2025 agreed to be acquired by IBM in a deal valuing it at roughly $11 billion.
Jay Kreps
Jay Kreps is the co-founder and CEO of Confluent, the data-streaming company built around Apache Kafka, the open-source platform he co-created at LinkedIn in 2010. In December 2025, IBM announced a deal to acquire Confluent for roughly $11 billion. He also serves on Anthropic's Board of Directors and wrote the book I Heart Logs.
Max Wang
Max Wang is the Co-Founder and CTO of Workstream, a San Francisco-based HR and payroll platform built specifically for America's hourly workforce. He co-founded China's AngelList equivalent (VC.CN) in 2011, built it to a 50-person team, then crossed the Pacific to co-build Workstream with Desmond Lim and Lei Xu after a 100-interview discovery sprint revealed that hiring hourly workers was a massive unsolved problem. Today, Workstream serves 4,000+ businesses across 24,000 locations, has raised $118 million, and is deploying AI tools - including VoiceAI - to compress hiring cycles from weeks to hours for restaurants, franchises, and deskless-workforce employers.