While working on his master’s thesis for web applications, Tobias Koppers created an optimizer out of necessity, which he called webpack. His thesis complete, Tobias realized how fun it was to iterate with users and bring code splitting and bundling to the masses. Driven by the continuous innovation of the open source community, a few choice partners (like Sean Larkin) and Open Collective sponsorships, Tobias was able to become a full-time maintainer—and webpack is now used by millions of developers around the world. Tobias shares his story and why he recently took a new role at Vercel, now on The ReadME Podcast.