Joe Averbukh is Co-Founder and CEO of Instant (YC S22), a modern open-source Firebase alternative that gives frontend developers a real-time, graph-based database with offline capabilities.

Joe studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, began his career building a startup in China, then joined Wit.ai to work on natural language processing APIs before Facebook acquired the company, followed by a stint as a senior engineer at Airbnb.

Inspired by how Facebook's graph-based architecture enabled engineers to ship fast and at scale, Joe set out to democratize that same developer experience for all builders worldwide.

Joe co-founded Instant alongside his best friend Stepan Parunashvili, and prior to Instant the duo shipped multiple ventures together including Jobsearch.dev, ExportHealth, Zeneca, and Consistent.

Instant raised a $3.4 million seed round backed by Y Combinator, SV Angel, and prominent angels including former Firebase CEO James Tamplin, Paul Graham, Greg Brockman, and Jeff Dean, and has since open-sourced its platform to serve thousands of developers.