David Cramer
Co-founder at Sentry, open-source enthusiast, and software engineer
San Francisco, California
Summary
David Cramer is a self-taught, high-school dropout who rose from managing a Burger King to co-founding Sentry, a multi-billion dollar open-source application monitoring company. His journey highlights a strong belief in learning by doing, creating opportunities through persistent open-source contributions, and rejecting conventional wisdom in his career path. firstround+1
David has a deep passion for open-source software, not as an ideology, but as a practical means to solve problems and create career opportunities. He started Sentry (initially django-db-log) as a side project in 2008, contributing to dozens of small projects and extensions to the Django framework, which ultimately helped him secure roles at companies like DISQUS. cra+2
As a co-founder at Sentry, David has held key leadership roles including CTO, CEO, and currently CPO. He was instrumental in scaling Sentry from an open-source side project to a leading platform valued over $3 billion, driving its product vision, technical strategy, and business model, including navigating its licensing strategy (BUSL) to ensure sustainability. firstround+3
David is a strong advocate for developer experience and infrastructure engineering. His early career at DISQUS and Dropbox focused on these areas, and Sentry itself was born out of his desire to make his own work and debugging less frustrating, solving real-world needs for developers. cra+1
David is actively engaged in discussions about the tech industry, often sharing strong opinions on topics like work ethic, hiring, AI gateways, and the sustainability of open source. His Twitter activity reflects a direct and opinionated perspective on current industry trends and challenges. nitter
Work
Projects
Writing
Sentry: From the Beginning
October 1, 2023A personal account of the origins of Sentry, from a simple IRC question to building the cloud service, emphasizing the value of open source and solving one's own problems.
Let's Talk About Open Source
August 3, 2023Discusses Sentry's licensing strategy, specifically the Business Source License (BUSL), and the challenges of balancing open source values with business sustainability. Explains why Sentry transitioned from a permissive BSD license due to commercialization by other companies.