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Alexis Richardson

CEO/Founder -- HIRING creative frontend and backend builders

Alexis Richardson is an accomplished entrepreneur with a track record of creating successful products and companies while actively participating in various tech and diversity initiatives.

He currently serves as the Chairman of TOC for CNCF, a Linux Foundation project focused on microservices and cloud-native applications.

Additionally, Alexis is a co-founder of Coed, a platform that promotes diversity in systems programming.

With a background in quantitative trading for Fixed Income Derivatives at Goldman Sachs and prior experience in research and teaching at Oxford University, Alexis brings a unique blend of finance, technology, and academic expertise to his ventures.

His specialties lie in execution and strategy at the crossroads of Business and Technology, commercial open source, as well as investment, financing, and risk management.

Alexis Richardson holds a Bachelor of Science with Special Attainments in Commerce, Business Administration from Washington and Lee University.

Previously, he has held key roles at Cvent, ranging from Director of Talent Acquisition to Account Executive, showcasing his diverse skill set and leadership capabilities.

Highlights

Feb 5 · linkedin

Hi everyone

I am very sad to announce - officially - that Weaveworks will be closing its doors and shutting down commercial operations.  Customers and partners will be working with a financial trustee whom we shall announce soon.

The company was turning over double digit (>$10M) revenue and had more than doubled the number of new product logos in 2023.  However this sales growth was lumpy and our cash position, consequently volatile.  We needed a partner or investor for long term growth.  Finally a very promising M&A process with a larger company fell through at the 11th hour.  And so we decided to shut down. 

I can only apologize to everyone for this difficult turn.   I could say that this should not have happened, but I know that we are not alone in this market.  Bigger vessels have gone astray.  The Weaveworks team is a special group and it has been a long and tough journey.  I know that everyone has been so motivated to do their very best for our customers, our open source community, and each other.  You have done well and can be proud.  We shall always have a shared story.

Our story has been so exciting - from the first days of containers, struggling to be born.  The day when someone got Kubernetes working for the first time on Azure.  The start of the CNCF.  The day when we wiped out our systems with a keypress.  The first months of the Covid pandemic.  Then investment and our work to figure out GitOps for a lot of great enterprise customers.  And there have been dire moments too but we figured most of them out together. You’ve shared all of this and all deserve every memory of a good place to work, and with the privilege of knowing that all of you are among the best.

The story does not end here - our open source software is used everywhere.  I am working with several large organizations to make sure CNCF Flux is in the healthiest state.  More on that soon.  And I would invite anyone who reads this and wants to know what is next or offer some help, please get in touch with me!  Thank you.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

Alexis Richardson, 5 Feb 2024

Mar 3 · linkedin

Kubernetes is too complicated for most developers to use and operate. Weaveworks developed Flux and GitOps in 2017 to solve this problem ie. deploy and manage our own application stacks on EC2.

I realised we were onto something with GitOps when I saw that new devs could update cloud native apps without knowing Kubernetes, and that we could deliver 24/7 SaaS with only a tiny operations team of SREs.

Today GitOps has become the standard operating model for Kubernetes applications and Flux is the most widely adopted and integrated tool - embedded in AWS, Azure, Tanzu and now Gitlab for example. We see more and more businesses building developer platforms with Flux and our new tool Weave GitOps.

Yesterday I gave a talk about what is coming next! I covered all the things so there are many slides! But I really want you to take a look, read about it, and share or get in touch.

Alexis Richardson
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Location

London, England, United Kingdom