Overview of From open source hits to OpenAI (Interview)
This Changelog Media interview follows Max Stoiber’s path from prolific open source creator to startup founder, acquisition veteran, and now product leader at OpenAI. The conversation weaves together his history with projects like Style Components and Spectrum, the founding and sale of Stellate, his leadership growth lessons, and how AI is changing what it means to build software today.
Career Journey: From Open Source to Big Tech
Early open source wins
- Max describes himself as someone who likes building things for other people.
- His early popularity came from solving his own frustrations and sharing the solutions publicly.
- Notable projects mentioned:
- React Boilerplate
- React PowerPoint
- styled-components
- He emphasizes that the successful projects were only a small fraction of the many open source repos he created.
Spectrum and GitHub Discussions
- Spectrum began as a way to help the Spec.fm podcast community move beyond Slack and into a public, searchable discussion space.
- Max joined as a co-founder after helping debug a styled-components issue.
- Spectrum was eventually acquired by GitHub and evolved into GitHub Discussions.
- He notes some wistfulness that the original real-time community vision changed, but says the GitHub outcome still made sense.
Gatsby and the drive to build again
- After GitHub, Max joined Gatsby, but found the experience chaotic and frustrating.
- That period pushed him to found another company where he could build with less drama, more intention, and more personal growth.
Stellate and the Shopify / Guild exit
- Stellate grew out of a real technical need: caching GraphQL traffic efficiently at the edge.
- The company found strong product-market fit, but the total market for GraphQL caching was too small for venture-scale growth.
- Max ultimately orchestrated a dual acquisition:
- Shopify acqui-hired the team
- The Guild acquired the product and IP
- He frames that process as a responsible way to take care of customers, employees, and the technology itself.
Shopify to OpenAI
- At Shopify, Max ran engineering for Liquid storefronts and helped ship Horizon, a major release for the online store platform.
- He then made a difficult move to OpenAI, motivated by the chance to work on something used by his kids and parents, not just developers.
Technical Themes and Product Insights
Why GraphQL worked for Stellate
- GraphQL’s explicit field selection made it possible to build a highly effective cache.
- Stellate could split queries into components, cache them separately, and return partial results intelligently.
- Max says this produced one of the best API caching systems he has seen, though only for GraphQL, not generic REST.
AI is changing the shape of software work
- Max believes AI has made code much cheaper to produce.
- The value is moving toward:
- better abstractions
- better architecture
- better system design
- He says he now spends more time reviewing the “boxes” and interfaces than the implementation details.
- He also notes he has shipped many PRs at OpenAI without writing code himself, instead directing agents like Codex.
Agents, auth, and identity
- The discussion with WorkOS touches on the coming need for:
- authentication for agents
- authorization and permissions
- identity for non-human actors
- Max argues that as agents proliferate, these systems will need to scale far beyond human-centric software assumptions.
Leadership and Team Building Lessons
Growth as a founder
- Max argues that companies are often limited by the growth of the founder.
- He sees startup life as a pressure cooker that forces self-awareness and personal development.
- He says the best founders are highly self-aware and able to adapt themselves to the needs of the company.
The importance of critical feedback
- One of his biggest leadership lessons was realizing he avoided hard feedback because it felt risky.
- That reluctance was limiting company culture.
- He adopted a framework called COINS:
- Context
- Observation
- Impact
- Next steps
- He uses it to give feedback about behavior without attacking the person.
- He now teaches this approach to teams, including at Shopify.
OpenAI: The App Directory and MCP Apps
What he works on now
- Max is working on the ChatGPT app store / plugin directory.
- The goal is to make ChatGPT more useful by connecting it to the tools and services people already use.
MCP apps and embedded UI
- He explains that OpenAI is working with the MCP ecosystem so apps can provide:
- tool calls
- resources
- embedded UI inside ChatGPT
- Examples mentioned include:
- Zillow
- Expedia
- These apps can render interactive HTML/CSS/JavaScript UI within ChatGPT.
Platform direction
- The directory is open, but every submission is reviewed for safety and quality.
- Max sees this as a new platform layer where companies can build experiences that go beyond a normal website or app.
Key Takeaways
- Share useful work: Open source can change careers and ecosystems in ways that are hard to predict.
- Build for real problems: Max’s biggest wins came from solving his own pain points first.
- AI changes the work, not the need for judgment: Code is easier to generate, but architecture and taste matter more than ever.
- Leadership is self-work: Better teams often require the founder to become more self-aware and more direct.
- Acquisitions can be constructive: Stellate’s exit was structured to protect customers, employees, and IP rather than just maximize a single outcome.
Notable Quotes and Ideas
- “I like making things for people.”
- “Companies are limited by the growth of the founder.”
- “I now spend most of my time reviewing the abstractions.”
- “The shape of help may not be code anymore.”
- “Say the thing” — his shorthand for giving honest, necessary feedback.
Sponsor Mentions
The episode also includes sponsor segments from:
- Coder
- WorkOS
- Notion
- Fly.io
These ads are separate from the interview but frame the show’s focus on modern developer tooling, AI agents, and platform infrastructure.