Fireside Chat: Simon Eskildsen on Building Turbopuffer
Source
AI Engineer
Author
AI Engineer
Published
Why it matters
Founder story: recruited by Shopify in high school via competitive programming
How Turbopuffer built a database on S3 and landed Cursor as first customer
Candid take on VC funding motives, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, and remote culture
Key quotes
“Because you batch. So an f-sync happens on usually a 4K... it's not intuitive. It's actually—I got caught—I just got obsessed with this question.”
Simon Eskildsen
“Yeah, you could do a million vectors for a dollar. And before that, I think the cheapest was maybe $100 per million for something that actually worked.”
Simon Eskildsen
“[Jensen Huang] said, 'Judging by your slide, maybe you should [pivot into vapes].'”
Simon Eskildsen
“I promised Cursor that Justine and I could get their bill to 4K a month... that's the pricing we ship with.”
Simon Eskildsen
“The third reason to raise capital is for the founder's ego... I wish that it was more talked about because you're diluting all of your employees when you do it.”
Simon Eskildsen
Chapters
0:00Introduction and Simon’s early history with computers
3:02The International Olympiad in Informatics and early competitive programming
4:13How Simon was recruited by Shopify while still in high school
8:46Engineering challenges and scaling infrastructure at Shopify
14:56Decision to leave Shopify and the creation of the "napkin math" project
20:40The origin and technical motivations behind Turbopuffer
This fireside chat between Gergely Orosz and Simon Eskildsen explores the technical journey and engineering philosophy behind the database company Turbopuffer. Video Timestamps 0:00 Introduction and Simon’s early history with computers 3:02 The International Olympiad in Informatics and early competitive programming 4:13 How Simon was recruited by Shopify while still in high school 8:46 Engineering challenges and scaling infrastructure at Shopify 14:56 Decision to leave Shopify and the creation of the "napkin math" project 20:40 The origin and technical motivations behind Turbopuffer 24:46 Design challenges of building a database on top of S3 28:41 Cursor becoming the first major customer 35:36 The meeting with Jensen Huang and Nvidia’s push for GPUs 39:01 The competitive reality of cloud infrastructure and CPU scarcity 43:06 Philosophical perspective on venture capital and funding 51:45 Building a remote-first culture with the "campfire" concept Quotes (19:49) "Because you batch. So an f-sync happens on usually a 4K... it's not intuitive. It's actually—I got caught—I just got obsessed with this question." (30:33) "Yeah, you could do a million vectors for a dollar. And before that, I think the cheapest was maybe $100 per million for something that actually worked." (36:56) "[Jensen Huang] said, 'Judging by your slide, maybe you should [pivot into vapes].'" (43:53) "I promised Cursor that Justine and I could get their bill to 4K a month... that's the pricing we ship with." (49:54) "The third reason to raise capital is for the founder's ego... I wish that it was more talked about because you're diluting all of your employees when you do it." ## Speakers ### Gergely Orosz Author / Founder, The Pragmatic Engineer · The Pragmatic Engineer [X/Twitter](https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gergelyorosz/) · [Website](https://pragmaticengineer.com) Software engineer, engineering leader, and author of The Software Engineer's Guidebook; best known for The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter and blog covering software engineering practices, engineering leadership, and the tech industry. Previously held engineering leadership roles at Uber and worked at companies including Skype and Skyscanner. ### Simon Eskildsen CEO and co-founder · turbopuffer [X/Twitter](https://x.com/Sirupsen) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirupsen/) · [Website](https://sirupsen.com) · [Blog](https://sirupsen.com/napkin) Co-founder and CEO at turbopuffer. Formerly Principal Engineer at Shopify, where he helped scale infra from 1K → 1M RPS. — [View on the schedule](https://www.ai.engineer/worldsfair/schedule?session=asn_slot_2026_06_30_main_stage_1230_2026_06_25t07_57_06_000z)
