Karim Alibhai
Customer-obsessed engineer • Founder for life
I help startups go from “works on my laptop” to $100M+ ARR. A decade of MVPs, product-market fit and scaling. Software is just the tool I use to fix important problems.
I help startups go from “works on my laptop” to $100M+ ARR.
- AcuityMD🦄
- Expa🦄
- Medallion🦄
- Dandy🦄
- Foko Retail acq.
- HireFast acq.
- ProductShot acq.
Places I've held a microphone
[2026-11]soon!Running Stateful Analytics on Kubernetes: Lessons from Building a Distributed DuckDB PlatformKubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA (Salt Lake City), with Seth McCombs
[2019-04]JS Performance: State of the ArtForwardJS (Adobe Ottawa)
[2018-07]Building More Resilient Web ApplicationsOttawa JS (Adobe Ottawa)
[2017-02]Break More ThingsWorkshop at Carleton Hacking
[2017-02]Mad Science with TwilioLightning Talks (University of Ottawa)
> waiting for next invite
Things I wrote down
(infrequently, usually after midnight)(infrequently, but with feeling)
- Aug 2023Availability, Resiliency, and Retry StormsHow one tiny database failover turns into a stampede of retries, and the circuit breakers, bulkheads and fallbacks that keep you standing.
- Aug 2023Getting Started with Large Language ModelsThe guide I kept wishing I could send developers asking how to start: embeddings, vector stores, hallucinations and the packages worth using.
- Aug 2023LLM ReadingsMy running list of papers and resources for going past LLM 101. I add to it whenever I find something good.
- Jun 2023On-Premise vs. Cloud: Running a Data Center @ Home with KubernetesWhat I learned running a production data center out of my basement for almost two years, and what Kubernetes made possible (and painful).