The Story Behind EventCatalog

Why We Started Building

I was an architect working with event-driven systems, and I hit a wall that many of you will recognise: our events had become a free-for-all. Finding what events existed, who owned them, what they contained - it was painful. Documentation was scattered across Confluence pages, README files, and tribal knowledge locked in people's heads.

I tried existing solutions. AsyncAPI was great for documenting individual services, but it still didn't solve the discovery problem. I needed something designed specifically for finding and understanding architecture at scale. So I built it.

What started as a simple catalog of events has grown into something much bigger. With incredible community support, EventCatalog now helps teams document domains, services, schemas, and the relationships between them. It's become the documentation tool I wished existed.

Why We're Bootstrapped

EventCatalog is fully bootstrapped. No VC money, no outside investors telling us what to prioritise.

This is intentional. With venture capital comes top-down pressure: aggressive growth targets, arbitrary revenue milestones, and often a focus on the wrong things. The roadmap becomes about what investors want, not what users need.

By staying bootstrapped, we keep our destiny in our own hands. We can build the team we want to build, focus on the product we want to create, and make decisions based on one thing: what's best for the people actually using EventCatalog.

The only influence we want is from our users, customers, and community.

Why We're Open Source (Forever)

EventCatalog will always be open source. This isn't a marketing strategy - it's a core belief.

I'm a true believer in the open source ethos. There's something powerful about building in the open, letting anyone inspect the code, contribute ideas, and shape the direction of the project. It keeps us honest and accountable.

Open source also means you're never locked in. Your architecture documentation belongs to you. You can self-host, fork, extend, and integrate however you need. We think that's how software should be.

Where We Are Today

Since that Christmas in 2022, EventCatalog has grown beyond what I imagined:

• 28,000+ catalogs created worldwide
• 2,500+ GitHub stars from the community
• Enterprise customers in healthcare, banking, and transport
• Teams of all sizes using it to document their architectures

Companies like Nike, AWS, GOV.UK, M&S, Eurostar, and many others trust EventCatalog to document their systems. That's humbling and motivating in equal measure.

Where We're Going

My vision is for EventCatalog to become the documentation tool for software architecture - not just event-driven systems, but all of it.

We're building for humans and AI. We focus on software architecture primitives and patterns, not implementation details. The goal is a tool that can sync and automate alongside your day-to-day workflows, while also capturing the context that only humans can provide about your business domains.

Architecture documentation doesn't have to be boring. With the right tools, the right vision, and the right community, we can make this better for everyone.

Our Values

Open & Honest. Open source isn't just our license - it's how we operate. Transparent about our roadmap, honest about our limitations.

Community First. Everyone should feel welcome. We listen to feedback, prioritise based on real needs, and build together.

Have Fun. Documentation can be a slog. We're trying to change that. Building should be enjoyable - for us and for you.

User-Driven. No investor roadmaps. Features come from the people actually using EventCatalog every day.

A Note to You

If you're reading this, you've probably felt the same pain I felt. Your architecture is growing faster than your documentation. Events, services, and schemas are scattered everywhere. New team members take weeks to understand how things connect.

It doesn't feel like a big problem at first. But as your architecture scales, your documentation doesn't. That gap only gets wider.

EventCatalog exists to close that gap. To bring discoverability to your architecture. To give you a single source of truth that's actually designed for the job - not a generic wiki or a repurposed tool that almost works.

Thank you for being here. Whether you're evaluating EventCatalog, already using it, or just curious - I appreciate you taking the time to learn about what we're building and why.