March’s First Monday turned into one of those nights that sticks with you — an evening dedicated to a simple idea with big implications: in a downturn, the companies that win aren’t just the ones that cut costs, but the ones that turn efficiency into a repeatable growth engine. It’s about making sharper operating decisions, rebuilding momentum, and compounding advantages—without losing speed or ambition.

We were very happy to welcome Barnabas Birmacher, CEO of Bitrise, for a fireside chat moderated by Adam Csuhai, Partner at Lead Ventures. Bitrise was the first Hungarian company to join Y Combinator and has raised $95M+ from top-tier investors including Insight Partners and OpenOcean. What began as mobile CI/CD has grown into a multi-product platform—CI/CD, Build Caching, Release Management, and Insights—built around one core goal: mobile developer efficiency.

In the conversation, we went behind the scenes of Bitrise’s most recent chapter: the efficiency transition that helped them reach profitability while getting back to fast growth, and the operating choices that made it possible. We’ have also dug into founder mode and leadership reset, rebuilding the GTM engine post-downturn, and the kind of efficiency that compounds—from transparency to AI and infrastructure wins—alongside their evolving product strategy, from CI/CD to a broader DevOps suite.