Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

The benefits of longer tenure, using first principles to build durable software – and why founders should be cautious when raising VC money. turbopuffer CEO Simon Eskildsen at AI Engineer's World Fair, in San Francisco, in July 2026, interviewed by Gergely Orosz.

See the accompanying The Pragmatic Engineer deepdive: Pushing software engineering limits with “napkin math” at newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/pushing-software-engineering-limits

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro
02:00 Competitive programming
05:18 Joining Shopify
08:28 Infra at Shopify
10:59 toxiproxy
15:30 The Napkin Math project
20:00 Starting turbopuffer
27:56 How Cursor became turbopuffer's first customer
34:30 Asking Jensen Huang if he vapes
37:51 Why CPUs are suddenly scarce in the cloud
42:31 Simon's VC philosophy
48:30 Six reasons to raise VC money
51:00 Running a fully remote company: campfires and turbocredits