Security and Freedom with Ev Kontsevoy of Teleport

The Business of Open Source

Today I sit down with Ev Kontsevoy, the CEO and co-founder of Teleport, a software company that began as an open source project. Teleport is an identity aware multi protocol access proxy that Ev was inspired to create because of the inherent frustrations with security he experienced in his career. Ev talks about how Teleport began as an open source tool and then grew into enterprise. I ask Ev what things he has done differently from his first start-up, Gravity, and we discuss how the open source community culture has bled into the company culture at Teleport. We end by talking about the SaaS version of Teleport and the ways in which the open source version funnels business into the commercial version.

Highlights:

• Security frustrations that led to the founding of Teleport (1:17)
• Ev talks about Teleport’s vision and how it began as an open source project (6:33)
• Ev talks about Teleport’s first customer and a separate open source project, Gravity (12:09)
• How Ev’s experience with a prior start-up changed his approach to Teleport (18:24)
• Ev discusses the culture and community at Teleport (21:16)
• How Teleport chooses which features to keep open source and which ones to offer as commercial (24:38)
• The SaaS version of Teleport (26:55)
• The different audiences for the different iterations of Teleport (28:08)

Links:

Ev Kontsevoy

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kontsevoy/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kontsevoy
• Company: goteleport.com