Top 20 Episodes
The most popular episodes by all-time downloads.
1
89:43Episode 98
The Developer Tools playbook, with Adam Frankl - VP of 4 DevTools unicorns
Adam Frankl has been VP at four Developer Tools unicorns, including JFrog, Neo4J and Sourcegraph.
Adam is the author of the Developer Facing Startup and recently launched the Developer Facing Startup Founders Academy: a program that helps founders launch and grow their developer tools.
In this conversation, Adam Frankl discusses the critical role of a Technical Advisory Board (TAB) in the success of developer-facing startups.
He emphasizes the importance of understanding developer needs, effective interviewing techniques, and the necessity of building credibility and community. Adam outlines a structured approach to gathering insights from developers.
He also highlights the significance of storytelling in marketing and the need for founders to engage deeply with their user base to discover and address their problems effectively.
Takeaways:
Adam is the author of the Developer Facing Startup and recently launched the Developer Facing Startup Founders Academy: a program that helps founders launch and grow their developer tools.
In this conversation, Adam Frankl discusses the critical role of a Technical Advisory Board (TAB) in the success of developer-facing startups.
He emphasizes the importance of understanding developer needs, effective interviewing techniques, and the necessity of building credibility and community. Adam outlines a structured approach to gathering insights from developers.
He also highlights the significance of storytelling in marketing and the need for founders to engage deeply with their user base to discover and address their problems effectively.
Takeaways:
- A Technical Advisory Board is essential for startup success.
- Founders must prioritize understanding developer needs.
- Effective interviews should focus on the problem, not the product.
- Social proof is crucial for building credibility.
- Developers are influenced by their peers and community.
- The 'Dream Sequence' outlines the developer adoption process.
- Storytelling is key to engaging potential users.
- Founders should continuously engage with their user base.
- Identifying key personas is vital for targeted outreach.
- Developers are not leads; they require a different approach.
Links:
- Developer Facing Startup Founders Academy https://developer-facing-founders-network.mn.co/
- Adam Frankl's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamfrankl/
- The Developer Facing Startup https://www.amazon.co.uk/Developer-Facing-Startup-market-developer-facing/dp/B0D4KJNSPP
Keywords:
Technical Advisory Board, Developer Startups, User Research, Developer Needs, Social Proof, Community Building, Founder Responsibilities, Developer Adoption, Interview Techniques, Startup Success
Technical Advisory Board, Developer Startups, User Research, Developer Needs, Social Proof, Community Building, Founder Responsibilities, Developer Adoption, Interview Techniques, Startup Success
2
45:08Episode 132
Raycast founder Thomas Paul Mann - quality, YC and AI
Thomas Paul Mann is the cofounder of Raycast. I use Raycast every day as a replacement for Spotlight. For me, shortcuts are the most useful feature. I put curl requests I commonly use as well as random things like email snippets. It's a massive time saver and really well built.
Raycast is a genuinely well built product so Thomas talks quality, getting feedback and how they ship features.
We also talk about their unique YC experience and how they've been building AI into Raycast.
Raycast is a genuinely well built product so Thomas talks quality, getting feedback and how they ship features.
We also talk about their unique YC experience and how they've been building AI into Raycast.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
3
38:10Episode 34
Great DevRel Content is a process, not a project with Jason Lengstorf
What we cover
- Creating content is a process, not a project
- Reusing content effectively
- Stay on message!!
- Consistent gentle pressure
- Boring but effective strategies
Where to hear from Jason
4
42:40Episode 136
Eric from Trigger.dev - iterating to 50% MoM growth
Eric Allam is the cofounder of Trigger.dev. Trigger gives you open source background jobs. We talk about how Trigger iterated different versions until landing on something developers really want. And now the growth is crazy. And also, I use Trigger and it's genuinely a great product.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
5
36:02Episode 54
Killing features with Josh Twist, founder of Zuplo
Josh Twist is the founder of Zuplo, an API gateway
- Introducing Josh Twist, the founder of Zuplo. 0:00
- Zuplo vs Azure API management.
- How do you make this fit into the developer workflow? 3:06
- How Zuplo fits into the development workflow.
- How to democratize API management and make it something every business wants to use.
- Best practices for implementing API key authentication.
- Stripe quality API out of the box.
- The power of removing friction in creating a better experience. 8:58
- The power of removing friction from the process.
- How do you create a product that is easy for beginners but still has a powerful experience? 11:31
- Loom is a great example of a product that exists only because it removes friction.
- Building a product is like building a video game.
- How to keep both the developer and the customer experience in mind.
- The formula one analogy for designing a product from scratch.
- What’s going to go into the next generation of Zuplo? 17:27
- How Zuplo keeps things simple and makes decisions.
- Why you have to have a lot of customer empathy and invest in tools. 19:39
- The importance of customer empathy.
- Why Josh made the decision to switch over to OpenAPI.
- Killing features can be hard as a business-to-business company.
- One chart to think about.
- The importance of partnerships and content. 24:29
- Making videos for supabase customers.
- Partnerships with other small businesses.
- How Zuplo got their first customers.
- Zuplo rate limiting feature. 28:02
- Rate limiting in Zuplo and Supabase.
- Developers who are small-scale loving Zuplo
- Making videos
- Removing friction and building an 11-star experience.
Zuplo - https://zuplo.com/
Josh Twist - https://twitter.com/joshtwist
Josh Twist - https://twitter.com/joshtwist
6
43:46Episode 75
Glauber Costa from Turso
Glauber Costa is the founder of Turso - a fully managed SQLite database platform.
Glauber shares how to make great CLIs, the story of Turso's pivot. Their pricing. And the importance of moving fast.
Links:
Glauber shares how to make great CLIs, the story of Turso's pivot. Their pricing. And the importance of moving fast.
Links:
- Turso - https://turso.tech/
- Glauber's Twitter - https://twitter.com/glcst
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
7
37:19Episode 42
PMF is one pivot away with Ant Wilson from Supabase
Ant is the founder of Supabase. Supabase is the open-source firebase alternative and has gone from zero to 47,000+ GitHub stars in a matter of years.
What we cover:
- Ant's Egyptologist dream
- How the Launchpad book showed Ant that building a company is possible
- Product Market Fit is always just a pivot away
- How to talk about Supabase?
- Differences between pre-PMF and post-PMF
- How Supabase stay on top of and prioritise huge volumes of product feedback
- How Supabase positions itself to hobbyists/startups and bigger enterprise companies - DX and scalability.
- Supabase's Twitter strategy
- Trial & error in marketing
- How does Supabase measure marketing?
- Spaced repetition in marketing
- Databases are very sticky
- The future of Supabase
- The difficulties of hiring non-technical people (supabase is hiring!)
- Why Supabase over other tools?
- Is Ant a Liverpool fan?
Links & Resources:
- Ant's Twitter
- Supabase's Twitter
- Supbase
- Supabase jobs
- The Launchpad book
- Kuba's breakdown of Supabase's marketing strategy
- swyx (I can't find the exact tweet)
- Amjad - we think in years
What we cover:
- Ant's Egyptologist dream
- How the Launchpad book showed Ant that building a company is possible
- Product Market Fit is always just a pivot away
- How to talk about Supabase?
- Differences between pre-PMF and post-PMF
- How Supabase stay on top of and prioritise huge volumes of product feedback
- How Supabase positions itself to hobbyists/startups and bigger enterprise companies - DX and scalability.
- Supabase's Twitter strategy
- Trial & error in marketing
- How does Supabase measure marketing?
- Spaced repetition in marketing
- Databases are very sticky
- The future of Supabase
- The difficulties of hiring non-technical people (supabase is hiring!)
- Why Supabase over other tools?
- Is Ant a Liverpool fan?
Links & Resources:
- Ant's Twitter
- Supabase's Twitter
- Supbase
- Supabase jobs
- The Launchpad book
- Kuba's breakdown of Supabase's marketing strategy
- swyx (I can't find the exact tweet)
- Amjad - we think in years
8
52:14Episode 146
I sold my DevTool. ft Paul Anthony Williams from ittybit
This is the first time I'm turning the mic around.
This is the story of StreamPot. A DevTool I launched about a year ago.
It was just acquired by ittybit so I thought I'd bring ittybit's founder Paul on to basically interview me about what went right and what went wrong.
Hopefully you enjoy learning a bit more about the guy usually asking the questions.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Jack Bridger
- StreamPot
- StreamPot GitHub
- Announcement
- Paul Anthony Williams
- ittybit
- FFmpeg
- Hetzner
This is the story of StreamPot. A DevTool I launched about a year ago.
It was just acquired by ittybit so I thought I'd bring ittybit's founder Paul on to basically interview me about what went right and what went wrong.
Hopefully you enjoy learning a bit more about the guy usually asking the questions.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Jack Bridger
- StreamPot
- StreamPot GitHub
- Announcement
- Paul Anthony Williams
- ittybit
- FFmpeg
- Hetzner
9
56:07Episode 123
Guillermo Rauch, founder of Vercel: Developer Experience, AI and v0
Guillermo Rauch is the founder of Vercel. Vercel is a cloud infra platform so easy to use that it’s almost become a category: “I’m building the Vercel of X”.
Vercel also recently launched v0 which is potentially the next evolution of web development - type what you want and it builds it and deploys it for you.
He’s also the creator Next.js, socket.io and a ton of other open source tools and startups. Plus he’s a prolific investor in DevTools.
I’ve missed a ton of his achievements here but essentially, he’s the king of DevTools and you probably know him already.
What we talk about
- Why Guillermo bets on people who ship
- What AI has in common with Prettier
- v0 puts design first
- Saying ‘not yet’ is a boss move
- Why Guillermo thinks devs won’t lose their jobs
- How you can learn product building
- Why you should be careful when hiring from rocketships - not everyone was in the control room
- The value of people having a full stack skill set. And why communication is more important than ever
- Why it’s so important to explain what you do in simple terms
- Tools Guillermo is excited about right now
Links:
- Guillermo Rauch
- Vercel
- v0
- NextJS
- Socket.IO
- Browserbase
- LiveKit
- Languine
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com/
Vercel also recently launched v0 which is potentially the next evolution of web development - type what you want and it builds it and deploys it for you.
He’s also the creator Next.js, socket.io and a ton of other open source tools and startups. Plus he’s a prolific investor in DevTools.
I’ve missed a ton of his achievements here but essentially, he’s the king of DevTools and you probably know him already.
What we talk about
- Why Guillermo bets on people who ship
- What AI has in common with Prettier
- v0 puts design first
- Saying ‘not yet’ is a boss move
- Why Guillermo thinks devs won’t lose their jobs
- How you can learn product building
- Why you should be careful when hiring from rocketships - not everyone was in the control room
- The value of people having a full stack skill set. And why communication is more important than ever
- Why it’s so important to explain what you do in simple terms
- Tools Guillermo is excited about right now
Links:
- Guillermo Rauch
- Vercel
- v0
- NextJS
- Socket.IO
- Browserbase
- LiveKit
- Languine
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com/
10
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
62:33Episode 82
Aaron Francis - how to make videos developers want to watch
Aaron Francis is someone who needs little introduction. Especially if you've ever used Laravel or MySQL.
Aaron built up the highly acclaimed PlanetScale YouTube channel and now publishes content on his own channel and founded Try Hard Studios to help developer tools make amazing video content.
Here are some quotes from Aaron's viewers:
Aaron built up the highly acclaimed PlanetScale YouTube channel and now publishes content on his own channel and founded Try Hard Studios to help developer tools make amazing video content.
Here are some quotes from Aaron's viewers:
- hey man your videos kick ass and i cannot thank you enough for your approach with these. your videos can be watched once and understood... every single one of them... i don't know how you do it, but the way you have picked to teach anything you teach is incredible. you freaking rock! thank you!
- Great stuff! Love that you mix in a bit of fun with the content, it's what got me to subscribe!
- I have been working with MySQL for last 17 years and I never use cursor but your video helped me to understand MySQL cursor. Thank you
- iterally laughing out loud several times. absolute gold.
(partner's like "what are you watching?!" "a guy seeding a database!"
In this episode, we take a deep dive into how Aaron makes videos and what you can learn from his approach.
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Aaron's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@aarondfrancis
- Aaron's Twitter https://x.com/aarondfrancis
- Mostly Technical Podcast - https://mostlytechnical.com/
- Try Hard Studios: https://tryhardstudios.com/
- Aaron's Handwriting robots - https://x.com/aarondfrancis/status/1438888219471491074?lang=en
11
50:29Episode 133
Sunil Pai on AI agents, Cloudflare and React
This episode is with Sunil Pai. He works at Cloudflare after his startup PartyKit was acquired. Previously he was on the React core team at Meta.
He's a great guy. And obsessed with AI agents.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Sunil Pai on X
- Sunil Pai's site
- Building agents with Cloudflare
- PartyKit
- Durable objects
He's a great guy. And obsessed with AI agents.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
- Sunil Pai on X
- Sunil Pai's site
- Building agents with Cloudflare
- PartyKit
- Durable objects
12
39:51Episode 85
James Hawkins - co-founder & CEO of PostHog
James Hawkins is the cofounder and CEO of PostHog. PostHog is a platform to analyze, test, observe, and deploy new features.
This is the second time James has been on and the episode is mostly about how they run PostHog.
It's a pretty unconventional approach - probably because James thinks very deeply about how organizations should operate.
What we discuss:
This is the second time James has been on and the episode is mostly about how they run PostHog.
It's a pretty unconventional approach - probably because James thinks very deeply about how organizations should operate.
What we discuss:
- How PostHog hire
- His approach to one-on-one meetings
- The role of engineers in product development
- The impact of open source projects on PostHog's success
- A surprising secret to success (fun)
- Importance of listening to developers
Links:
- James's Twitter https://x.com/james406
- PostHog https://posthog.com/
- The Mental Workload of Hoovering https://jefhawkins.com/blog/mental-workload-of-hoovering
- Ray Dalio's Principles https://www.principles.com/
- James's first interview https://podcast.scalingdevtools.com/episodes/working-with-enterprise-clients-with-james-hawkins
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
13
47:07Episode 125
How to name your startup: David Placek - named Vercel, Azure & Blackberry
David Placek from Lexicon - the man who named Vercel and Azure - explains the importance of selecting a name that goes beyond simply describing what a product does. He shares what you can do to come up with a great name.
We cover:
- Common Naming Pitfalls: Discusses why names that merely describe a product or service fail to capture imagination and differentiation.
- The Strategic Impact of a Name: Explains how a well-chosen name can deliver significant returns on investment by reinforcing brand behavior and market positioning.
- Sound Symbolism and Cognitive Science: Covers research into how letter sounds (for example, the “V” in Vercel) influence perception and contribute to a name’s effectiveness.
- The Naming Process: Details the rigorous process behind naming—from trademark searches and legal reviews to global linguistic evaluations and whiteboard sessions with clients.
- Advice for Early-Stage Founders: Encourages startups to first define their market behavior and the change they intend to create. The right name will emerge from a clear strategic vision.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
14
37:26Episode 60
Developer copywriting mistakes to avoid, with Zach Goldie
Zach Goldie is a DevTools messaging consultant
- Ship code faster is an empty statement. 0:00
- How do you position yourself against the competition? 1:56
- The problem with free monitoring tools. 6:43
- Explain why fast is a good thing. 11:44
- Curse of knowledge and how to overcome it. 16:42
- The problem with copy length and word count. 21:37
- How do you know if a page is good? 27:05
- Pitching self-serve to users. 32:42
Links:
- Zach's Twitter https://twitter.com/DitchingData
- Zach's site https://www.zachgoldie.com/
- Benefit layers https://dx.tips/benefit-layers
- Zach's Twitter https://twitter.com/DitchingData
- Zach's site https://www.zachgoldie.com/
- Benefit layers https://dx.tips/benefit-layers
15
47:37Episode 139
Steve Ruiz, founder of tldraw - taste, creativity and obsession
Steve Ruiz is the founder of tldraw - a whiteboard SDK / infinite canvas SDK. We talk creativity, taste and obsession. And marketing to developers.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
16
19:34Episode 120
Four tips for early stage DevTools
In this episode, I pull out some of the key DevTools lessons I've learned in the last 120 interviews.
Including:
- The importance of deeply understanding the problem you're solving by talking to developers directly, as emphasized by Adam Frankl.
- Ant Wilson's advice on experimenting with different go-to-market strategies and channels rather than relying on conventional wisdom.
- Zeno Rocha's emphasis on the importance of the last mile—packaging and presentation. He shares how spending more time on documentation and onboarding materials helped his open-source project gain massive traction.
- Gonto's perspective that "it's better to be different than better," and how creativity, uniqueness, and understanding developer habits are key to successful marketing.
- My personal reflections on overcoming fear and discomfort in go-to-market efforts.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs. https://workos.com.
17
50:48Episode 138
Luke Harries from ElevenLabs - Maximize your launches
Luke Harries leads growth at ElevenLabs. ElevenLabs builds incredible AI voice models. Luke dives into why launches matter so much, the origin story of ElevenLabs and why a hackathon can change your life.
Links:
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
P.s. I used Eleven Labs without any edits for the transcript/subtitles.
P.s. I used Eleven Labs without any edits for the transcript/subtitles.
18
49:19Episode 127
Temporal founders: Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev
Maxim Fateev and Samar Abbas from Temporal join us to discuss how their durable execution platform ensures processes complete reliably at scale.
We discuss:
- How Temporal gained enterprise adoption with companies like Airbnb, HashiCorp, and Snapchat.
- Why Temporal compensates salespeople based on customer consumption.
- Temporal’s role in Snapchat’s story processing and Taco Bell’s Taco Tuesday scalability.
- How Temporal earns enterprise trust through security, reliability, and scalability.
- The structure of Temporal’s sales team and their focus on long-term customer success.
- Exciting trends in AI and low-code/no-code development.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
19
42:15Episode 151
Rita Kozlov from Cloudflare: competing with the hyperscalers
Rita Kozlov is the VP of Developers and AI at Cloudflare. We talk about how Cloudflare focuses on building disruptive, efficient technologies like their Workers platform to gain long-term competitive advantages.
They use their own developer platform to ship fast, and hire people who deeply care, with a culture of curiosity and transparency that drives continuous innovation.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
They use their own developer platform to ship fast, and hire people who deeply care, with a culture of curiosity and transparency that drives continuous innovation.
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.
Links:
20
51:36Episode 134
DevTools Marketing with Jason Lengstorf
This episode is a deep dive into DevTools marketing with Jason Lengstorf, founder of CodeTV.
Links:
Links:
This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.