Nikolay Samokhvalov is the founder of Postgres.ai, a company that develops tools for PostgreSQL optimization, scalability, and change management. He has been using SQL for over 20 years and started learning it at the beginning of the 1990s, after seeing his father's old IBM computer. Nikolay believes in starting with large-size environments to experiment with SQL and notes that learning SQL using small tables is a mistake. He emphasizes the importance of modern SQL and recommends resources such as PostgreSQL documentation, SQL standard texts, and Modern SQL for those looking to update their knowledge. Nikolay also promotes his company's tool, Database Lab Engine, which helps engineers optimize query performance and database migrations without downtime.