Product Market Fit
Finding product-market fit, pivoting, and iterating to sustainable growth.
61:27Episode 172
Christopher Burns - creator of c15t: the developer-first cookie banner
This episode is with Christopher Burns, the creator of c15t and founder of consent.io, an open-source, developer-first, ethical provider of privacy infrastructure. Chris explains why most cookie banners are not compliant, and if the EU is going to come after you for it. We talk about how he found product market fit and grew the company, and we also debate London vs SF for startups.
Links:
• Chris' Linkedin
• c15t
• Consent
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:
• Chris' Linkedin
• c15t
• Consent
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
41:16Episode 169
Kyle Cheung from Greybeam - jumping over bathroom stalls.. as marketing
Kyle Cheung, co-founder of Greybeam, shares how his team built a tool that reduces Snowflake costs by 70-95%, without migration, drawing from multiple pivots over two years. The discussion covers their quirky marketing tactics and advice on fundraising as storytelling.
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:
• Kyle's Linkedin
• Greybeam
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:
• Kyle's Linkedin
• Greybeam
48:42Episode 168
Matt Klein - cofounder of Bitdrift: meeting developers where they are and early days of AWS
In this episode, Matt Klein (Bitdrift, Envoy) reflects on building EC2 in the early days of AWS, the reality behind AWS’s origins, and what Amazon’s customer obsession looks like from the inside. He then dives into creating Envoy at Lyft, the challenges of open source at scale, and spinning Bitdrift out of Lyft to focus on mobile observability. He shares how to meet developers where they are and what it takes to find product market fit.
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:
• Matt's Linkedin
• Bitdrift
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:
• Matt's Linkedin
• Bitdrift
39:20Episode 164
How RevenueCat tore up the sales playbook, with Rik Haandrikman
Rik Haandrikman talks about sales incentives and growth at RevenueCat, and their creative approach to conferences. He explains why their sales team focuses on helping customers evaluate the product in their own way, how aligning incentives shapes company culture and how they make the most out of rare, compelling events.
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:
• RevenueCat jobs
• Rik's article
• Rik's X
• RevenueCat's X
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:
• RevenueCat jobs
• Rik's article
• Rik's X
• RevenueCat's X
73:10Episode 162
When sales and product led growth meet, with Railway's Angelo Saraceno
In this episode, Angelo Saraceno from Railway shares his experience balancing the technical challenges of building a developer-focused product with the realities of enterprise sales. They discuss how understanding customer needs beyond just features is crucial to growing a startup sustainably. Whether you're a founder or developer, this conversation offers valuable insights into turning good products into successful businesses without losing sight of the bigger picture.
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:
• Railway
• Railway's blog
• John McMahon's book
• Angelo's Slack automation article
• Angelo's website
• Angelo's Linkedin
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:
• Railway
• Railway's blog
• John McMahon's book
• Angelo's Slack automation article
• Angelo's website
• Angelo's Linkedin
57:21Episode 141
Tony Holdstock-Brown, CEO of Inngest: orchestration, traction and not using LinkedIn
Tony Holdstock-Brown is the CEO and founder of Inngest, a tool to run AI and backend workflows at scale.
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:
- Inngest
- Tony's (inactive) LinkedIn
- Traction book
Note: the studio lost video footage about 20 minutes in. Sorry about that. Audio is fine though.
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:
- Inngest
- Tony's (inactive) LinkedIn
- Traction book
Note: the studio lost video footage about 20 minutes in. Sorry about that. Audio is fine though.
66:48Episode 140
Shipping 22 products to find the true product - Utpal from Digger.dev
Utpal Nadiger is the cofounder of Digger.dev. Digger built a popular open source IaC orchestration tool. Their new product Infrabase is an AI DevOps agent that scans IaC code in your pull requests.
We talk about SF, resiliency and pivoting.
Links:
We talk about SF, resiliency and pivoting.
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.
Why/how we lipsynced:
The (amazing) studio accidentally had Utpal's camera switched off for the first 20 minutes. So I lipsynced the audio onto the latter part of the video. You can probably notice if you look closely. And also his gestures don't always look congruent because of the lipsyncing. But overall, incredible tech from Tavus - much better than a blank screen in my opinion!
Why/how we lipsynced:
The (amazing) studio accidentally had Utpal's camera switched off for the first 20 minutes. So I lipsynced the audio onto the latter part of the video. You can probably notice if you look closely. And also his gestures don't always look congruent because of the lipsyncing. But overall, incredible tech from Tavus - much better than a blank screen in my opinion!
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:
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:
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.
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:
- Prisma (https://www.prisma.io/)
- Prisma Postgres (https://www.prisma.io/postgres)
- Feldera (https://feldera.com/)
37:49Episode 107
Gonto - Auth0 Employee #6 shares developer marketing secrets
Gonto (Martin Gontovnikas) was the 6th employee at Auth0 and helped them grow fast and sell for $6.5billion to Okta.
Now he is the founder of Hypergrowth Partners and helps DevTools grow fast.
We discuss:
Now he is the founder of Hypergrowth Partners and helps DevTools grow fast.
We discuss:
- What Auth0 did to become so valuable so fast
- What the best founders do (Guillermo Rauch)
- Different is better than better
- People follow people not brands
- Why bleeding edge matters
Resources
- Why Technical SDRs are the Future of DevTools
https://playbooks.hypergrowthpartners.com/p/product-advocates-technical-sdrs - Gonto's website https://gon.to/
- Gonto's Twitter https://twitter.com/mgonto
- Hypergrowth Partners https://www.hypergrowthpartners.com/
- Code to Market https://codetomarket.fm/
- Guillermo Rauch https://x.com/rauchg
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.
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:
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:
- Rise of the AI Engineer https://www.latent.space/p/ai-engineer
- Latent Space Podcast https://www.latent.space/
- swyx's Twitter https://x.com/swyx
- swyx's website https://www.swyx.io/
- swyx's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnswyxwang/
- smol.ai https://smol.ai/
- DevTools Angels https://github.com/sw-yx/devtools-angels
- DX.tips https://dx.tips/
- DevRel's Death as Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon https://dx.tips/zirp
- AI Engineer Summit https://www.ai.engineer/summit/2023
- AI Engineer World's Fair https://www.ai.engineer/worldsfair
- Coding Career Handbook https://www.learninpublic.org/
- Shawn's previous appearance on Scaling DevTools https://podcast.scalingdevtools.com/episodes/swyx
- Eisenhower Matrix https://asana.com/resources/eisenhower-matrix
- Thor from Supabase https://x.com/thorwebdev
- Solaris AI coworking space in SF https://www.solarissf.com/
- Browserbase https://www.browserbase.com/
- Indent https://indent.com/ and Fouad https://x.com/fouadmatin
- How to do hackathons https://dx.tips/hackathons
- How to do conferences https://dx.tips/conf-guide
- How to hire DevRel https://dx.tips/mailbox-first-devrel-hiring
- Climbing the ladder of abstraction with Amelia Wattenberger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAy_GHUAICw
Check out the Enterprise Ready Conf from WorkOS https://enterprise-ready.com/
42:40Episode 100
Ant Wilson - Cofounder of Supabase (100th Episode!)
This is our 100th episode!
And we're thrilled to welcome back fan favourite Ant Wilson - the cofounder and CTO of Supabase.
And we're thrilled to welcome back fan favourite Ant Wilson - the cofounder and CTO of Supabase.
They discuss the evolution of Supabase, the importance of open source, and effective marketing strategies.
Ant shares insights on community engagement, the significance of developer-centric branding, and the challenges of navigating the enterprise landscape.
We also touch on the rise of AI and vector databases, emphasizing the power of open source in development. The conversation concludes with reflections on the journey and future aspirations.
Thank you to everyone who made it our 100th episode!
Ant shares insights on community engagement, the significance of developer-centric branding, and the challenges of navigating the enterprise landscape.
We also touch on the rise of AI and vector databases, emphasizing the power of open source in development. The conversation concludes with reflections on the journey and future aspirations.
Thank you to everyone who made it our 100th episode!
Takeaways
- Open source can significantly enhance hiring opportunities.
- Building a strong brand requires understanding your audience.
- Open source provides a competitive edge against incumbents.
- The importance of stability and security for enterprise clients.
- Time in the market builds trust with potential customers.
Links
- Supabase https://supabase.com/
- Ant Wilson's Twitter https://x.com/antwilson
- pgvector https://supabase.com/docs/guides/database/extensions/pgvector
- Greg Richardson https://x.com/ggrdson
- Previous episode with Ant https://podcast.scalingdevtools.com/episodes/product-market-fit-is-one-pivot-away-with-ant-wilson-founder-of-supabase
Keywords
open source, developer tools, marketing strategies, community engagement, AI, vector databases, enterprise solutions, product development, tech podcast
45:27Episode 96
Clerk's Hockey Stick growth, with Colin Sidoti
In this episode, we're joined by returning guest Colin Sidoti - the cofounder and CEO of Clerk.
Clerk is a comprehensive user management platform.
What we cover:
- The origin story and South Park Commons
- Clerk's dramatic growth since the first episode - what changed? What did they do right?
- 7% growth per week
- Tiny details that improve the developer experience
- How to you know if a change is better - watching people's faces as they try it
- The difficulties of bringing new joiners up to speed in a very high context environment
- Obsessions of founders
- Zuckerberg's obsession and South Park Commons talk
- Nick Parsons appreciation: why it's hard to hire good developer marketing people
- The uniqueness of marketing developer tools
- Buying a van and parking it outside YC
- Local marketing campaigns in San Francisco
Links:
- Clerk https://clerk.com/
- Colin's Twitter https://x.com/tweetsbycolin
- Nick Parsons' Twitter https://x.com/nickparsons
- Jakob's tweet https://x.com/jakeplusev/status/1827791946380877828
- Malte Ubl's blog https://www.industrialempathy.com/
- Zuck's talk at South Park Commons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02fBBoZa9l4
Clerk is a comprehensive user management platform.
What we cover:
- The origin story and South Park Commons
- Clerk's dramatic growth since the first episode - what changed? What did they do right?
- 7% growth per week
- Tiny details that improve the developer experience
- How to you know if a change is better - watching people's faces as they try it
- The difficulties of bringing new joiners up to speed in a very high context environment
- Obsessions of founders
- Zuckerberg's obsession and South Park Commons talk
- Nick Parsons appreciation: why it's hard to hire good developer marketing people
- The uniqueness of marketing developer tools
- Buying a van and parking it outside YC
- Local marketing campaigns in San Francisco
Links:
- Clerk https://clerk.com/
- Colin's Twitter https://x.com/tweetsbycolin
- Nick Parsons' Twitter https://x.com/nickparsons
- Jakob's tweet https://x.com/jakeplusev/status/1827791946380877828
- Malte Ubl's blog https://www.industrialempathy.com/
- Zuck's talk at South Park Commons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02fBBoZa9l4
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.
34:51Episode 81
What does your company brand promise? Dani Grant from Jam.dev
Dani Grant is the founder of Jam.dev - bug reporting that developers love.
In this episode we discuss:
- Product development & user retention
- Iterating to product market fit
- Branding - what it is/why it matters
- Prioritising product features based on feedback
- AI powered debugging
Links:
- Jam.dev https://jam.dev/
- Dani’s Twitter https://twitter.com/thedanigrant
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.
33:39Episode 78
Digger.dev - Pivoting four times, OpenTofu & ThePrimeagen
An interview with Igor Zalutski & Utpal Nadiger from Digger.dev.
Digger is an Open Source Infrastructure as Code management tool that helps orchestrate Terraform and OpenTofu within your CI/CD system.
We talk about:
Digger is an Open Source Infrastructure as Code management tool that helps orchestrate Terraform and OpenTofu within your CI/CD system.
We talk about:
- What changed since Jack worked with Digger
- How they pivoted four times to find PMF
- How do you know you have something
- OpenTofu & ThePrimeagen
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:
- https://digger.dev/
- Igor - https://twitter.com/igorzij
- Utpal - https://twitter.com/NadigerUtpal
35:46Episode 76
Alex Bouchard from Hookdeck. Competition is a good sign
Alex Bouchard is the cofounder of Hookdeck. Hookdeck is an event gateway for asynchronous applications.
What we discuss:
- What is Hookdeck?
- Category vs pivot
- Gartner categories
Links:
- Alex: https://twitter.com/AlexBouchardd
- Hookdeck https://hookdeck.com/
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.
What we discuss:
- What is Hookdeck?
- Category vs pivot
- Gartner categories
Links:
- Alex: https://twitter.com/AlexBouchardd
- Hookdeck https://hookdeck.com/
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.
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.
33:03Episode 66
Scaling a developer conference to 5,000 attendees with Ivan Burazin of Daytona
Ivan Burazin is the cofounder of Daytona
What we cover:
- Scaling a 5,000 attendee conference
- How to drive change in big organizations
- Top down vs bottoms up approaches to growth
Daytona is an enterprise-grade GitHub Codespaces alternative for managing self-hosted, secure and standardized development environments.
Ivan Burazin - https://twitter.com/ivanburazin
Daytona - https://www.daytona.io/
What we cover:
- Scaling a 5,000 attendee conference
- How to drive change in big organizations
- Top down vs bottoms up approaches to growth
Daytona is an enterprise-grade GitHub Codespaces alternative for managing self-hosted, secure and standardized development environments.
Ivan Burazin - https://twitter.com/ivanburazin
Daytona - https://www.daytona.io/
41:23Episode 65
Pivoting a million dollar startup - DevCycle (Jonathan Norris, Brad Van Vugt & Andrew MacLean)
DevCycle is a feature flag management tool.
DevCycle was founded in 2014 originally as Taplytics (an A/B testing tool) by Jonathan Norris, Aaron Glazer, Andrew Norris and Cobi Druxeman, raising $7.8m. Despite creating a million dollar business, in 2022, they raised $5m and pivoted to DevCycle.
In this episode, we cover their pivot and how they think about developer experience.
DevCycle was founded in 2014 originally as Taplytics (an A/B testing tool) by Jonathan Norris, Aaron Glazer, Andrew Norris and Cobi Druxeman, raising $7.8m. Despite creating a million dollar business, in 2022, they raised $5m and pivoted to DevCycle.
In this episode, we cover their pivot and how they think about developer experience.
32:55Episode 63
The hard things about dev tools with Felix Magedanz from Hanko
Felix is the founder of Hanko. Hanko is the Open source auth and passkey infrastructure for developers.
We talk about:
- The challenges of pivoting
- Layoffs
- The intangible goal of developer love
Check out Hanko: https://www.hanko.io/
We talk about:
- The challenges of pivoting
- Layoffs
- The intangible goal of developer love
Check out Hanko: https://www.hanko.io/
29:20Episode 49
Great Developer Experience with ngrok founder Alan Shreve
Alan Shreve is the founder & CEO of ngrok.
ngrok is a simplified API-first ingress-as-a-service that adds connectivity, security, and observability to your apps in one line
What we cover:
- Creating a simple experience for users.
- Designing for the 90% use case vs. the 10%.
- How did the idea for ngrok emerge?
- How the first iterations of the product came about.
- The internal struggle to create simple interfaces.
- How do you test your library design?
- One of the best ways to test library design.
- Amazon's one-click checkout.
- Chasing simplicity vs complexity in a complex system.
- Product processes to help chase simplicity.
- How does NGrok measure and track user growth?
- Time to value, kpi, time to value.
- Empowering developers to do their jobs.
- How does a hobbyist use case expand into a commercial use case?
- How do you think about the problems that ngrok solves?
- How do you get an application online with minimal configuration?
- What’s the takeaway for other developers or founders?
Links:
- ngrok: https://ngrok.com/
- Alan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/inconshreveable
- Thanks to Danger Casey https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware for organising this
- swyx article https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime
- Joel Spolsky talk https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/elegant-software-joel-spolsky
- ngrok: https://ngrok.com/
- Alan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/inconshreveable
- Thanks to Danger Casey https://twitter.com/CaseySoftware for organising this
- swyx article https://www.swyx.io/self-provisioning-runtime
- Joel Spolsky talk https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/elegant-software-joel-spolsky
28:53Episode 45
How SigNoz grew to 12k GitHub stars with Pranay Prateek
Pranay Prateek is the founder of SigNoz - Open Source Observability with Traces, Logs and Metrics in a single pane.
Topics covered:
Topics covered:
- How SigNoz has grown to 12k stars
- How did you get started with the open source model?
- And have there been any teething challenges.
- Apart from growth, have there been any other benefits?
- What is the path to monetization (question from Utpal Nadiger)?
- Could you talk about your technical writer program?
Links:
- SigNoz https://signoz.io/
- Pranay's Twitter https://twitter.com/pranay01?s=20
34:06Episode 44
Developer Marketing with Adam DuVander
Adam DuVander is an expert in developer marketing and the author of two books: Developer Marketing Does Not Exist and Technical Content Strategy Decoded.
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of developer marketing, specifically focusing on early-stage companies building tools for developers and how to create engaging content for your audience.
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of developer marketing, specifically focusing on early-stage companies building tools for developers and how to create engaging content for your audience.
What we cover:
- Adam's journey from journalism to developer marketing
- The importance of developer marketing for early-stage companies and its role in product growth
- Identifying your target audience and understanding their pain points
- How to create content without directly promoting your product, yet staying relevant to your target audience
- The concept of becoming a media company within your niche and providing value through content
- The importance of engagement metrics over vanity metrics for early-stage companies
- The Jedi Developer Mind Trick: how to showcase the value of your product without directly promoting it, especially for early-stage companies
- Examples from successful early-stage companies like LogRocket and Stoplight
- How to measure the success of your content and know if it's working for your early-stage company
- Tips on choosing the right topics that resonate with your audience and relate to your product
- Adam's new book, Technical Content Strategy Decoded
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
30:48Episode 41
Growing with open source projects - Josh Thurman from Uffizzi
Josh is a Navy Seal turned founder of Uffizzi. Uffizzi provides environments as a Service and works with open source projects like Backstage.
Topics
- Pivoting between ideas
- Working with open source projects to improve products and build credibility
Links:
Topics
- Pivoting between ideas
- Working with open source projects to improve products and build credibility
Links:
20:05Episode 31
Giving developers what they want with Deepak Prabhakara
Deepak Prabhakara is the CEO and Co-founder of BoxyHQ. BoxyHQ enables you to add plug-and-play enterprise-ready features to your SaaS product.
What we cover
- An introduction to BoxyHQ
- Getting BoxyHQ out there in the world
- The BoxyHQ Open Source model
- What developers want
- Progression and growth
- Content update
- Content distribution
- Keeping an eye out on Twitter terms
Where to hear from Deepak
- Twitter: @boxyhq
- GitHub: https://github.com/boxyhq
- https://boxyhq.com/
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
- Twitter: @ramiro__nd
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramiro-nd/
- https://supabase.com/
29:28Episode 27
Product Led Growth with Thomas Peham & Julius Hemingway from Storyblok
Thomas Peham is the VP of Marketing and Julius Hemingway is an Analyst Relations Manager at Storyblok. Storyblok harnesses a headless, API-driven CMS architecture empowering developers to build anything, publish everywhere, and integrate with any technology stack.
What we cover
- What do you do at Storyblok?
- Growing up fast
- Product market fit
- Advice for startups
- Collaborating with partners
- What opportunities do you see out there, working with analyst companies?
Where to hear from Thomas & Julius
16:27Episode 26
Growing in a community - with Colin Sidoti, founder of Clerk.dev
Colin Sidoti is the CEO of Clerk.dev. Clerk helps developers build user management. They provide streamlined user experiences for your users to sign up, sign in, and manage their profile.
What we cover
- Hasn't auth been solved already?
- Growth and new customers
- Pitching Clerk
- Communities
- User journey
Where to hear from Colin
19:44Episode 23
Is Open Source the ultimate bottom-up growth strategy? With James Hawkins from PostHog
James Hawkins is the CEO & Co-founder of PostHog. PostHog is an open-source product analytics suite, built for engineers.
What we cover
What we cover
- PostHog - implement without ever getting up from your desk
- How PostHog have cracked being bold and transparent
- Small cross-functional teams at PostHog
- Two people in Sales > $100Million of revenue
- Working with enterprise clients
Where to hear from James
- @james406
- https://posthog.com/
- The handbook - https://posthog.com/handbook
15:26Episode 22
The importance of distribution with Brandon Gubitosa from Plural
Brandon Gubitosa is a Senior Content Marketer at Plural. Plural is a software development company that is on a mission to help DevOps teams access and deploy open-source solutions that are recognised as top-tier.
Scaling DevTools is the podcast that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one. Created by Jack Bridger, founder of BitReach. BitReach helps DevTool companies reach more developers. In scaling DevTools, Jack explores how startups sell to developers, build tools and become successful.
Scaling DevTools is the podcast that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one. Created by Jack Bridger, founder of BitReach. BitReach helps DevTool companies reach more developers. In scaling DevTools, Jack explores how startups sell to developers, build tools and become successful.
What we cover
- An introduction to Plural and it’s growth
- Distributing content
- Why startups under distribute content
- Using metrics to help define if something should be pursued
- How to decide on a compelling piece of content
- Leveraging open source communities to drive growth
- Content agency Vs In-house
Where to hear from Brandon
Where to hear from us
- Twitter: @JackSBridger
- https://blog.bitreach.io
- Newsletter: https://www.bitreach.io/
17:39Episode 14
Painkillers before vitamins with Juri Strumpflohner
Juri Strumpflohner is the Director of Developer Experience at Nrwl Technologies. Nrwl works with global enterprises to provide remote consulting, training, and engineering. Nx is Nrwl’s open source product which provides advanced tools that help scale enterprise development.
What we cover
- The story, Nrwl, and Nx?
- Solve the problems you see
- Open source business model
- How Nx got to 2million downloads per week
- Hiring for growth
- Taking over an existing open source proejct
Where to hear from Juri
14:58Episode 11
Marketing seeds that led to $5k MRR with Tiiny.host
Phil is the founder of Tiiny.host. Tiiny.host is a web hosting application that allows you to simply host & share your web project.
What we cover
(00:28): What has growth been like at tiiny.host?
(00:28): What has growth been like at tiiny.host?
(04:44): Why does the world need a new hosting provider?
(10:50): How did you decide to position tiiny.host?
Where to hear from Phil
- Twitter: @_baretto
- https://tiiny.host/
20:16Episode 3
Bootstrapping DevTools with Michael Christofides
Michael Christofides is the co-founder of pgMustard, a Postgres tool that speeds up your journey from knowing which query is a problem to working out what can be done about it. The aim of pgMustard is to build a small, sustainable business that is the best at what it does. pgMustard recently celebrated their 100th subscriber - so they are well on their way! Michael also consults, talks at conferences and writes about Postgres performance.
What we cover
(00:41): Could you tell us a bit about where pgMustard is right now and what your focuses are at the moment?
(01:22): Could you tell us a bit about what you're currently doing in terms of growth and, what's keeping you up at night at the moment with pgMustard?
(02:47): One of the things that I’ve noticed when I go to the pgMustard website, is that you’re very ethical. There’s no small print, everything is as kind as it could be. Is that something you’ve consciously gone after?
(04:22): Let's say some founders are considering this. Has there been any tangible benefits that could persuade them to become whiter than white?
(01:22): Could you tell us a bit about what you're currently doing in terms of growth and, what's keeping you up at night at the moment with pgMustard?
(02:47): One of the things that I’ve noticed when I go to the pgMustard website, is that you’re very ethical. There’s no small print, everything is as kind as it could be. Is that something you’ve consciously gone after?
(04:22): Let's say some founders are considering this. Has there been any tangible benefits that could persuade them to become whiter than white?
(06:52): You have previously worked as a Head of Customer Success at a big, what could be described as a DevTools, startup GoCardless. Do you think this is where some of your approach came from?
(09:42): Stepping back from pgMustard, what has and hasn't worked in terms of growth?
(14:09): Are there any kind of general lessons that you would give to maybe yourself starting again? Or another DevTools founder?
(19:54): How can people learn more about you and about pgMustard?
Guest links