I just interviewed the founder of Mastra, Sam Bhagwat – a TypeScript AI agents framework.
Before Mastra, Sam was the founder of Gatsby, the React framework.
Here are three things I learned from him:
1. Japan has a lot of developers building with AI
Most DevTools I speak to don’t spend much time on the Japanese market. But for Mastra, 20% of their users are in Japan, and two of their founders just got back from a meetup tour in Tokyo.
Sam explains that “dev Twitter still sort of works” in Japan in a way it doesn't in the U.S. Japanese developers continue to use Twitter to enthusiastically share and discuss the tools they enjoy using.
Viral articles about Mastra were also published on a site similar to Dev.to called Qiita.
Maybe it’s worth searching your company name to find out if you’re big in Japan too.
I spent a few months in Japan in 2019 and went to a lot of AI meetups. Even back then, they had a really strong AI ecosystem. I also found another Japanese developer site, Zenn.dev.
2. Writing a book counts as marketing
Sam has written a book called Principles of Building AI Agents. It’s really good and you can finish it in a few hours.
Mastra distributes 1,500 copies per week. They give them out for free and so it’s not cheap. The Amazon SBA books cost $8 each, and copies given out in the Bay Area (where Mastra is based) cost $2 each.
But they’re seeing great results from it. It’s a great example of doing things differently.
3. Changelogs Are Your Best Marketing
I hadn’t really thought about it this way, but shipping fast gets people excited about your open-source project.
It also helps answer questions like:
- Will this framework/project be the winner?
- Will this project exist at all in X years?
- If I find bugs, will they fix them?
Changelogs are a great way to signal velocity, care and attention – and that you will win.
You can check out Mastra’s changelogs here.
You can find the full interview here