All episodes/Topics

Launches

Product launches, Product Hunt strategies, and go-to-market tactics.

45:06Episode 167

“I met my cofounder while gaming” - CEO of Northflank, Will Stewart

Will Stewart is the CEO and co-founder of Northflank, the developer platform. He shares how a teenage gaming side project turned into a self-service developer platform that runs complex workloads on Kubernetes across any cloud. He talks about meeting his co-founder online, fundraising and hiring remotely and why they took years to launch. He offers some interesting insights on dealing with bugs, product vision and changelogs.

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:

   •  Northflank
   •  Will's Linkedin

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
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:
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.
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.
45:50Episode 119

Søren Bramer Schmidt - founder & CEO of Prisma

Søren Bramer Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Prisma, joins us to discuss the journey of building one of the largest developer communities in DevTools. 

Søren shares how Prisma's deliberate strategies have shaped its growth, feature prioritization, and the launch of new products like Prisma Postgres. 

We also explore the challenges of managing a vast user base and how Prisma is adapting to shifts in application development.

We discuss:
  • How intentional partnerships with educators and influencers fueled Prisma’s early growth.
  • Strategies to engage the GraphQL community and gain visibility on platforms like Hacker News.
  • Managing a large developer community while balancing innovation with stability.
  • The evolution from Graphcool to Prisma ORM, including lessons from early pivots.
  • Launching Prisma Postgres and how community feedback influenced its development.
  • Implementing a simple, usage-based pricing model and reducing infrastructure costs through self-hosting.
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/

Links:
38:13Episode 115

Tessa Kriesel - the DevTools sprint

Tessa Kriesel is the founder of builtfor.dev, where she helps DevTools founders with GTM.

In this episode we talk about how she helps founders improve their go to market strategy in a short sprint.

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. https://workos.com/
42:19Episode 105

Paul Klein, CEO & Founder of Browserbase

Paul Klein is the founder and CEO of Browserbase - one of the fastest growing DevTools in 2024.

Browserbase is a headless browser API focused on helping AI Agent startups.

We dig into:
  • Why browser automation?
  • How Browserbase hit "VC-market-fit"
  • Visionary is revisionist-history 
  • Tips for hiring your friends
  • Why buying a jacket is like buying a devtool
  • Building an in-person DevTool in San Francisco
  • Making priorities (what Paul doesn’t care about).
Where to find Paul and Browserbase:
References
To support Scaling DevTools, please check out the Enterprise Ready Conf from WorkOS https://enterprise-ready.com/
76:17Episode 103

Shawn Wang (swyx) - founder of smol.ai, Latent Space, AI Engineer, DX.tips

Shawn Wang (aka swyx) is the founder of smol.ai (AI news curation), and the cohost of Latent Space (popular AI Engineer podcast).

Plus, Shawn started the AI Engineer movement with his essay Rise of the AI Engineer and organized two incredible AI engineer conferences in the past twelve months - AI Engineer World's Fair and AI Engineer Summit

And Shawn has angel invested in DevTools like Airbyte, Railway, Supabase, Replay.io, Stackblitz, Flutterflow, Fireworks.ai while running the DevTools angels community.

Besides this, Shawn curates DX.tips (DevTools magazine) and in a past life wrote the Coding Career handbook, championed learn in public, cofounded Svelte Society and was previously Head of Developer Experience at Temporal, and a Developer Advocate at AWS and Netlify.

Also, before this, Shawn had a very successful career in investment banking, trading, building data pipelines and performing quantitate portfolio management. I think this brings him a very unique perspective - I've always admired his ability to zoom out and see the big picture and the trends.

Even though Shawn is now all-in on AI, he's still one of the go-to authorities on DevTools go-to-market.

As you can tell, Shawn is someone I deeply admire. So I'm glad he came back.

What we discuss:
  • Organizing the AI Engineer Conferences
  • Rise of the AI Engineer
  • Intentionality and principles (yes we even talk about Alcoholics Anonymous)
  • The AI CEO
  • Invisible deadlines
  • Ilya believing in AGI more than most people at OpenAI
  • Are developers going to be obsolete? 
  • Thor convinced swyx to invest in Supabase
  • Building DevTools that work well with LLMs
  • Angel investing in DevTools - why and how
  • Is DevRel dead?
  • How to hire DevRel
  • Why DX.tips exists
Links:
Check out the Enterprise Ready Conf from WorkOS https://enterprise-ready.com/
30:30Episode 95

David Mytton - Arcjet and console.dev

David is the CEO of Arcjet. Arcjet is a tool that helps developers protect their apps once they go into production. It offers Bot detection, rate limiting, email validation, attack protection, data redaction.

David is also the creator of the console.dev newsletter and podcast. It's where thousands of developers discover developer tools. 

In this episode we discuss how David thinks about creating content. Why he believes go-to-market is more difficult than product and how he works on creating great developer experience. 

Links:
- Arcjet https://arcjet.com/
- David Mytton - https://davidmytton.blog/
- Console https://console.dev/

AI DevTools hackathon this weekend in SF:
- Event page https://lu.ma/devtools-hackathon
- More info https://www.devtoolshackathon.com/
23:36Episode 70

How to launch on Product Hunt with Flo Merian

Flo Merian is a developer marketer who has run successful Product Hunt launches for numerous developer tools.

Flo is also a maintainer of the Developer Marketing community and curates LaunchWeek.dev

Flo is a Product Marketer at Clerk - a user management tool 

Links:
  • https://twitter.com/fmerian
  • https://marketingto.dev/
  • https://launchweek.dev/
  • https://github.com/fmerian/awesome-product-hunt
29:47Episode 58

Dax from SST - content that has nothing to do with your tool can still convert

Dax Raad is building SST - an open-source framework that makes it easy to build serverless apps.
  • What Is SST? 0:00
    • The theory in January was to make content that has nothing to do with SST and still convert people. Dax validated the theory within the first hour.
    • Dax tells us a little bit about SST, a framework for building applications on AWS, and how it works.
  • The importance of marketing and content. 2:42
    • The focus now has to be on marketing. 
    • The top of the funnel is when someone has no idea who you are.
  • Pitching the idea to his boss. 5:16
    • Dax pitched the idea and Fred Schott was immediately down. He spent a day just watching every single episode of Between Two Ferns and wrote down all the patterns of jokes.
    • He learned a lot from the first one, and is doing another one today at 230.
  • How much goes into the show? 8:04
    • The original show is fully done and edits, and that is true of the one that video was made. The video was not close to what actually happened, but it was his response to the video.
    • The original is very specific and it's funny how specific the jokes are.
  • The importance of having a unique angle. 10:40
    • For most companies, announcing an integration is not the most exciting thing to announce.
    • The bar is incredibly low, and the expectations are super low.
  • Invest more in marketing and content. 12:35
    • They are looking to hire a comedian or someone who makes good content on YouTube.
    • They are planning a series A, and are looking for people who are talented and can help them.
  • Educational vs entertaining content. 14:57
    • The only way to capture someone like you is through a different angle.
    • The theory in January was to make content that has nothing to do with SST and still convert people into trying out SST.
    • Finding an angle that is genuine for yourself.
  • How he got over the hump of clickbait. 17:54
    • He went through the same hump that everyone goes through when trying to publish content on youtube.
    • He was sent a video by a guy who was very successful on youtube and he was explaining why he does what he does.
  • The importance of having a good content. 20:51
    • Youtube is an amazing place. People will watch it if it's good.
  • Marketing is a huge lever. 23:20
    • They are a very small company. They are able to do a lot given their small size and they are going to continue to be a small company, so they need to find ways to find leverage anywhere they can.
    • They are excited about what they can invest in.
    • Dax would love to work with someone who is good at filmmaking and editing to keep it engaging and keep it fun. He also thinks about shows that are authentic.
    • Key takeaways for anyone listening, remember that if you're building a company you do need to do marketing.
Links:
- SST https://sst.dev/
- Dax's twitter https://twitter.com/thdxr
- Between Two Nerds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I2Xep0GTQY&ab_channel=SST 
41:40Episode 57

From mobile app to mobile developer tool with Gabriel Savit from Runway

Gabriel Savit is the founder and CEO of Runway - a tool to coordinate and automate mobile app releases.
  • Introductions 0:00
    • Introduction to Gabe
    • Underlying themes of runway mobile release management.
  • What’s it like to work with mobile teams? 2:19
    • Challenges for mobile teams to keep tabs on.
    • The third party ecosystem problem.
    • The origin story of the team.
  • The process of running a release was something that resonated immediately. Different teams set this up differently. 8:23
  • What was the next step after you gathered the feedback? 10:38
    • The first round of interviews to validate the problem space.
    • How the interviews were conducted.
    • The feedback loop is not always closed.
    • The next step after gathering the feedback.
  • How do you get an MVP out quickly? 15:31
    • Starting with one integration, one part of the process.
    • The first few pilots.
  • How did you get your first customer to buy in? 18:24
    • Onboarding the first customer or first user.
    • Getting the first cohort involved.
    • Aligning with the overall vision of the platform.
  • What is the go to market motion? 33:14
    • Go-to-market motion, demo, sync, sign up, demo.
    • Self-service, keeping the entry point open.
  • What’s the future direction of the platform? 36:18
Links:
- https://twitter.com/gabrielsavit
- https://runway.team/ 
21:40Episode 28

Building a brand with Ramiro Nuñez Dosio from Supabase

Ramiro Nuñez Dosio is a Growth Marketer at Supabase. Supabase is a platform designed to help devs streamline the creation of modern apps.

What we cover
  • The Supabase marketing approach
  • Launch weeks at Supabase
  • Keeping focus
  • Marketing processes
  • How to measure success
  • How to distribute content
Where to hear from Ramiro
6:13Episode 8

Developer tool launches with Nico Botha

Nico Botha is the founder of Ship SaaS, a Next.js Saas boilerplate that allows you to ship your SaaS in no time. Nico is also co-founder of Supermeme.ai ****an AI meme generator. ****


What we cover
(00:28): What made you start Ship SaaS?
(01:06): How did you go about getting your first customer?
(01:29): Do you have any advice for someone starting to build a tool for Developers?
(02:06): When you describe justifying your tech stack and developers asking lots of questions, how can someone ensure they prepare their tool for that kind of scrutiny?
(02:54): Could you dig a little more into how you plan to grow Ship SaaS and your plans for the future?
(03:38): How have you currently been thinking about SEO?
(04:52): Did you specifically set out to rank for that key term? Or were you just creating content that you thought would be useful?
(05:12): One of your other projects is Supermeme, a tool for generating memes using AI. How do you think memes can play into Developer marketing?
Nico's links:

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