This is a celebratory message from Confluent, marking its 1,000th employee milestone and reflecting on its rapid growth and progress over the past five years. The company has come a long way since its humble beginnings as a tiny office with a clear vision to build an infrastructure platform for event streaming. Confluent's success is attributed to its people, products, and community, which have enabled it to scale its business while innovating and adding value to customers. With 60% of the Fortune 100 relying on Apache Kafka and Confluent Cloud, the company is poised to continue growing and making a significant impact in the event streaming space. The milestone is also seen as an inflection point for data streaming platforms, with Confluent being named Microsoft's 2024 OSS on Azure Global Partner of the Year.