Simon Willison
Independent open source developer creating tools for data journalism, exploration, and AI-assisted programming. Creator of Datasette (data exploration tool) and LLM (command-line utility for language models).
Founding Story
Simon Willison's current independent work began in earnest around 2019-2020 during his JSK Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, where he focused on 'Improving the impact of investigative journalism through open source tools.' The Datasette project itself was created in November 2017 while he was working at Eventbrite, born from his need for better data exploration tools during his time at The Guardian newspaper in 2009. After leaving Eventbrite post-fellowship, he committed full-time to building open source tools for data journalism and exploration.
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Leadership
Founders
Simon Willison
Co-creator of Django Web Framework (2003-2004 with Adrian Holovaty at Lawrence Journal-World). Co-founder of Lanyrd (2010, Y Combinator W11, acquired by Eventbrite 2013). Engineering Director at Eventbrite (2013-2019). JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford (2019-2020). Board member of Python Software Foundation (2022-present). GitHub Star and GitHub Accelerator participant (2023). B.Sc. Computer Science from University of Bath (2005). Previous roles include Yahoo Technology Development (2005), Software Architect at The Guardian (2008-2009), and early work at Gameplay and Incutio.
Executive Team
Simon Willison
Independent Developer / Founder
Co-creator of Django, Engineering Director at Eventbrite (2013-2019), JSK Fellow at Stanford (2019-2020), Python Software Foundation board member (2022-present)
Business Model
Revenue Model
Multiple revenue streams: Weekly blog sponsorship (managed by Freeman & Forrest), GitHub Sponsors ($10/month tier for monthly newsletter/briefing, higher tiers available), consulting and training services, Datasette Cloud SaaS subscriptions, and support from programs like GitHub Accelerator (2023), Mozilla MIECO (2023-2024), and Fly.io sponsorship for Datasette Cloud work.
Pricing Tiers
Sponsors receive banner placement across blog and sponsored message at top of newsletter
Paid tier includes curated monthly email digest
Also receive monthly briefing newsletter
SaaS hosting for Datasette with team features and API access
Ad-hoc consulting and training services for companies and organizations
Target Markets
- Data journalists and newsrooms
- Software developers and engineers
- AI/ML researchers and practitioners
- Open source maintainers
- Educational institutions
- Individual developers interested in personal data warehouses
- Data journalism and investigative reporting
- Personal data warehouses and self-tracking
- API creation and data publishing
- AI-assisted programming and development
- LLM experimentation and research
- SQLite database exploration and analysis
- Various newsrooms using Datasette for investigative journalism
- GitHub
- Data journalism community
History & Milestones
Preserved The World Factbook after CIA shutdown, creating freely accessible GitHub repository
Released Showboat, Rodney, and Chartroom tools for AI coding agents
Released LLM command-line tool for accessing large language models
Participated in GitHub Accelerator program with Datasette project
Launched Datasette Cloud SaaS platform
