A conversation with Dmitriy Akulov, CEO and Founder of jsDelivr, on the future of innovation and the way it will affect how we use the cloud. The answer appears to be simpler than it appears.
Dmitriy Akulov, is a tech innovator and entrepreneur, that is the leading force behind some of the largest names in the tech world including: PerfOps, jsDelivr, and Prospect One. Companies that use jsDelivr include Target, Business Insider, Citi, NBC, NewYorker, Texas.gov, NYC.gov, Toyota, NBA, National Geographic, amongst many others.
Q: How did you get started in your career?
I started by building small and free applications that I released on sourceforge and on my own website. Soon after that I got into the open source space by building a free open source CDN called jsDelivr. That opened many doors for me and allowed me to find relevant projects.
Q: What is your leadership style?
Early on I learned to hire the right people for my leadership style. I hire people that don’t need management and are the owners of their own tasks. Developers tend to fall under two categories. Those that like following step-by-step instructions and those that prefer more creative freedom.
It’s fine hiring the first, but then you also have to consider if you’ll have the time to make this a successful relationship. I prefer hiring the latter. The main issue is identifying these folks during the interview process.
Q: Please tell us a little about your brands and their mission, and your leadership plans to further the brand’s strategic goals?
I have founded multiple companies and projects. Prospect One is the core company that developed everything while maintaining a small team of 5 people and lots of freelancers.
Eventually we created PerfOps, a smart load-balancing solution, that was spun into its own company that later received VC funding.
And the most popular service I own is jsDelivr a free CDN that currently serves more than 70 billion requests per month and is used by millions of websites including: Target, Business Insider, Citi, NBC, NewYorker, Texas.gov, NYC.gov, Toyota, NBA, National Geographic, amongst many others.
My main goal is to develop useful services for the tech industry. Some services are commercial but most are free, and while we don’t utilize advertising we still get benefits from operating our free services in terms of marketing and lead generation. My main mission is to make highly complex services beautiful and simple to use.
Q: Tell us about your role and how your business has changed?
The cloud industry is changing and growing very fast, so fast now that every new technology that gets released feels immature and half baked. It works, but requires a team of experts to set up and maintain it. I believe this is the opposite of where we need to be going. Cloud should be simple and affordable to everyone, not just the enterprises.
That’s why most of my services focus on fixing these usability problems and democratizing different niche services.
Q: What are your views on regulation?
I am against any regulation in the tech sector. Any regulation would slow innovation down and make competing with the big corporations even harder.
Q: Where do you think we are headed?
I think the best thing that will come from utilizing the cloud in everyday life is the push on ISP providers to invest more on their infrastructure to provide better and faster internet connections to all of their customers globally.
Fast, reliable internet for all will change the world we live in.
Founder Dinis Guarda
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