We built dbzero because we believe modern application stacks have become unnecessarily complex. They often limit developer creativity by imposing rigid data models, while still requiring a lot of extra infrastructure for scalability, caching, event processing, and more. dbzero provides a foundation layer where, when needed, these capabilities can be added with just a few dozen lines of Python. By removing the burden of an external database, it encourages experimenting with new data structures and even different programming paradigms—optimizing for the problem instead of the tooling. dbzero is already in production on several real-world projects in e-commerce and healthcare. In one case, it delivered a 250× speedup over an existing Java + PostgreSQL–based solution. That improvement didn’t come from raw technology speed alone, but from the freedom to choose data structures and execution models that best fit the domain.