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 back end 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 from deep-pocketed but demanding customers. He’s betting instead that if he sticks to his own product vision, the world will come to him. So far, he’s been right.
Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Julie Bort sat down with Copplestone to explore Supabase’s rise and what it means for vibe coding, developers, and the database giants who have historically controlled this market.
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”
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Theresa Loconsolo is an audio producer at TechCrunch focusing on Equity, the network’s flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch in 2022, she was one of 2 producers at a four-station conglomerate where she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered live performances and interviews from guests like lovelytheband. Theresa is based in New Jersey and holds a bachelors degree in Communication from Monmouth University.
You can contact or verify outreach from Theresa by emailing theresa.loconsolo@techcrunch.com.