Product Development
Building developer tools, engineering decisions, and product strategy.
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
11:42Episode 171
The Amazon Web Services origin story (part 1)
This is the story of how Amazon Web Services - arguably the most successful developer tool of all time - got started.
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.
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.
48:46Episode 170
Adam Frankl returns to answer my TAB questions
Adam Frankl has been the first Marketing VP at three dev-facing unicorns. He returns to the podcast, to reveal the things that DevTool startups must get right in the early days, in order to be successful. We also discuss Jack's experience implementing Technical Advisory Boards (TABs) with a new startup, and the hurdles startups face with outreach, sustaining member enthusiasm across calls, and the art of framing the problem correctly. Adam shares ongoing AI experiments to streamline TAB insights and stories that hook 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:
• Adam's Linkedin
• The Developer Facing Startup
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:
• Adam's Linkedin
• The Developer Facing Startup
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
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
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
64:07Episode 166
DevRel is unbelievably back - with swyx
In Shawn "swyx" Wang's third appearance on the podcast, we talk about his recent interview with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan about AI in biomedical research, and the goal to understand and eventually eradicate all diseases. We also talk about how DevRel is unbelievable back, the challenges of uphill DevRel, the dynamics of the current AI investment bubble, and the new projects he is working on.
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:
• Uphill DevRel article
• DevRel is unbelievably back article
• Particle/wave duality article
• The Economics of Superstars
• AI Engineer conference videos
• Swyx'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:
• Uphill DevRel article
• DevRel is unbelievably back article
• Particle/wave duality article
• The Economics of Superstars
• AI Engineer conference videos
• Swyx's Linkedin
35:07Episode 165
Growing Marimo's YouTube channel, with Vincent D. Warmerdam
Vincent D. Warmerdam from Marimo shares how they grew their YouTube channel for their Python notebook, using regular Shorts to reach thousands of new viewers each week. He talks about the importance of being genuinely excited about what you’re building and how consistent, authentic content can help both founders and creators connect with their audience. He gives practical advice and real-world insights for anyone interested in DevRel or growing a DevTool channel.
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:
• Vincent's blog
• Vincent's X
• Marimo
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:
• Vincent's blog
• Vincent's X
• Marimo
24:11Episode 163
Baseten CEO and co-founder Tuhin Srivastava on inference and feedback loops
The episode features Baseten CEO and cofounder Tuhin, who shares Baseten’s journey from a small team in the pre-GenAI era to scaling rapidly and raising $150M in Series D funding. The discussion delves into building robust inference infrastructure for AI applications, navigating market shifts, and developing tools that prioritize speed, developer experience, and customer feedback loops.
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:
• Baseten
• Tuhin'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:
• Baseten
• Tuhin's Linkedin
43:41Episode 159
How PlanetScale write content, with Ben Dicken
Ben Dicken is a developer educator at PlanetScale, he's an incredible writer and teacher, who's made some amazing technical articles that developers actually love reading. We get into his reasons for working so hard on these articles, his process, and how he makes content that genuinely helps engineers understand complex ideas.
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:
• Ben's X
• B-trees and database indexes article
• IO devices and latency article
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:
• Ben's X
• B-trees and database indexes article
• IO devices and latency article
21:01Episode 158
Technical Advisory Boards - the most important action DevTools founders can take?
In this episode, we explore Adam Frankl's concept of a Technical Advisory Board, and how it helps DevTools founders learn directly from potential users. I share personal experience organizing one-on-one interviews to find out real customer problems and gives tips for recruiting members. We explore how to set up the meetings, analyse feedback, and get the most value from the process.
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:
• The first tab call
• How to recruit TAB members
• After the first set of TAB calls
• Adam's Linkedin
• Adam's book
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:
• The first tab call
• How to recruit TAB members
• After the first set of TAB calls
• Adam's Linkedin
• Adam's book
24:24Episode 155
Better documentation with the Diátaxis Framework
Creating docs that actually work means knowing what to write, how to write it, and where it belongs. In this episode, we break down the diataxis documentation framework—a simple but powerful system that splits docs into four clear types: tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, and reference. We look at examples of tools that have implemented diataxis to write their documentation with clarity and purpose.
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:
• Diataxis
• Sequin
• Layercode
• Logdy
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:
• Diataxis
• Sequin
• Layercode
• Logdy
44:22Episode 154
Karan Vaidya, founder of Composio: MCP use cases & Elon retweets
Karen from Composio shares how developers are using MCP to connect tools like Slack, Notion, and Gmail with AI agents, growing from nearly zero to 100,000 users in 6 months. They capitalized on key moments when new AI tools, such as Grok versions and Claude releases, came out, creating examples and demos that resonated strongly across social media and got them retweeted by Elon Musk. Hear how the team learns to use these tools better over time, helping each new release work smarter than the last.
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:
• Composio
• Composio's X
• Karan's X
• Launch Video
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:
• Composio
• Composio's X
• Karan's X
• Launch Video
36:13Episode 153
Studying Lee Robinson, Cursor's new VP of Developer experience
Lee Robinson helped Vercel grow to $200M+ in ARR and scaled the Next.js community to over 1.3 million active developers. I dive into his blog posts to uncover valuable insights and lessons about how he achieved this success, covering topics like docs, community building, developer education, marketing, and product 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:
• Lee Robinson's blog
• Lee Robinson's X
• Peter Yang's interview
• swyx's interview
• Gonto on Scaling DevTools
• Developer Marketing Community
P.s. this is a new style of episode, let me know what you think.
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:
• Lee Robinson's blog
• Lee Robinson's X
• Peter Yang's interview
• swyx's interview
• Gonto on Scaling DevTools
• Developer Marketing Community
P.s. this is a new style of episode, let me know what you think.
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:
44:42Episode 150
Matt Palmer on Replit's speedrun to $100M ARR
Matt Palmer from Replit shares how the company scaled to $100M in ARR from ~$10M in under a year. We talk about the importance of video for teaching the non-linear process of working with AI, the challenge of rewriting documentation for a broader audience using the Diátaxis framework, and how they support a diverse community of users navigating this new AI-driven development landscape.
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:
37:51Episode 149
Logan Kilpatrick from Google DeepMind: Building for 100m developers
Logan Kilpatrick shares how DeepMind's organizational changes helped their resurgance in AI. What needs to happen to reach 100m developers. And why the next six months are more exciting than ever.
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:
43:02Episode 148
Sam Lambert, CEO of PlanetScale: dropping the free tier was a great decision
Sam Lambert is the CEO of PlanetScale - a cloud database provider.
Sam shares:
- Why dropping the free tier was one of PlanetScale's best decisions. But is not for every startup.
- People solving serious problems appreciate serious content and if you can create meaningful content, that's a big advantage.
- CEOs should be transparent and collaborative but assertive. Don't let your company die while enacting someone else's decision
- Express hard-to-convey-benefits via your customers’ experiences
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:
- Sam's Twitter
- Sam's LinkedIn
- PlanetScale
- PlanetScale Postgres
- Caching blog post
- Ted Nyman
- Snowflake
- Vitess
Sam shares:
- Why dropping the free tier was one of PlanetScale's best decisions. But is not for every startup.
- People solving serious problems appreciate serious content and if you can create meaningful content, that's a big advantage.
- CEOs should be transparent and collaborative but assertive. Don't let your company die while enacting someone else's decision
- Express hard-to-convey-benefits via your customers’ experiences
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:
- Sam's Twitter
- Sam's LinkedIn
- PlanetScale
- PlanetScale Postgres
- Caching blog post
- Ted Nyman
- Snowflake
- Vitess
47:16Episode 147
Sam Bhagwat from Mastra: the Gatsby founder building an agents framework
Sam Bhagwat is the CEO of Mastra - a typescript AI agents framework. Sam is also the cofounder of Gatsby, the popular React framework that was acquired by Netlfiy. Sam shares what he learned building Gatsby and how they're applying those lessons to Mastra. Why they're building in TypeScript, not Python. Why 20% of their users are in Japan. And why they're distributing 1,500 physical books per week on 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:
- Mastra
- Sam Bhagwat
- Gatsby
- Principles of Building 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:
- Mastra
- Sam Bhagwat
- Gatsby
- Principles of Building AI Agents
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
42:32Episode 144
Quinn Favret from Tavus: AI video API that saved our episode
Quinn Favret is the founder of Tavus. They do AI video research and products. They saved a Scaling DevTools episodes with their lipsync feature.
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:
- Tavus
- Tavus lipsync API
- Quinn Favret
- Scaling DevTools episode saved by Tavus
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:
- Tavus
- Tavus lipsync API
- Quinn Favret
- Scaling DevTools episode saved by Tavus
50:20Episode 143
Andrew Filev, founder of Zencoder: AI Software Engineering agents
Andrew Filev is the founder of Zencoder. Zencoder is building AI coding agents.
In this episode, we explore the evolution from simple code completion AI to more sophisticated software engineering agents. While tools like GitHub Copilot revolutionized code suggestions, the next frontier involves AI agents that can handle complex engineering tasks and collaborate with each other through emerging protocols.
The discussion dives into agent-to-agent protocols, which enable AI systems to work together autonomously on software development tasks. This advancement suggests a future where AI agents could manage entire development workflows, from requirements gathering to testing and deployment. We also touch on the importance of using slower summer periods strategically - making it an ideal time for engineering teams to evaluate their tooling, processes, and prepare for upcoming development cycles.
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
- Zencoder
- Andrew Filev
- Wrike
- Powered by Claude
- Vercel
- Perplexity AI
- Scale AI
In this episode, we explore the evolution from simple code completion AI to more sophisticated software engineering agents. While tools like GitHub Copilot revolutionized code suggestions, the next frontier involves AI agents that can handle complex engineering tasks and collaborate with each other through emerging protocols.
The discussion dives into agent-to-agent protocols, which enable AI systems to work together autonomously on software development tasks. This advancement suggests a future where AI agents could manage entire development workflows, from requirements gathering to testing and deployment. We also touch on the importance of using slower summer periods strategically - making it an ideal time for engineering teams to evaluate their tooling, processes, and prepare for upcoming development cycles.
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
- Zencoder
- Andrew Filev
- Wrike
- Powered by Claude
- Vercel
- Perplexity AI
- Scale AI
35:54Episode 142
Wordware founders, Filip Kozera and Robert Chandler - non-engineers can build AI workflows
In this episode we talk about Wordware, programming with LLMs, and what it now means to be a developer. Robert and Filip explain how they're building tools that let non-engineers create AI workflows, why the definition of 'developer' is changing in the AI era, and their vision for background agents that automate your work while you focus on creative tasks.
Links:
- Wordware
- Wordware Sauna Waitlist
- Wordware is hiring
- Filip Kozera
- Robert Chandler
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. thanks to Oana Olteanu for making it happen
Links:
- Wordware
- Wordware Sauna Waitlist
- Wordware is hiring
- Filip Kozera
- Robert Chandler
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. thanks to Oana Olteanu for making it happen
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!
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:
48:48Episode 137
ChatGPT didn't kill SEO - Elston Baretto, founder of Tiiny.host
Elston Baretto is the founder of Tiiny.host - the simplest place to put your work online. In this episode we talk about how Elston has been able to grow Tiiny to 70,000+ sign ups per month with content marketing.
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:
- Tiiny.host
- Elston Baretto
- Ramen Club
- Charlie Ward
- Sabba
- Veed
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:
- Tiiny.host
- Elston Baretto
- Ramen Club
- Charlie Ward
- Sabba
- Veed
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:
43:52Episode 135
Kyle Galbraith from Depot: how they hit $1M+ ARR with three people
Kyle is the cofounder of Depot. Depot accelerates your Docker image builds and GitHub Actions workflows.
Kyle shares how Depot were able to grow to $1M ARR and beyond with a very lean team.
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 shares how Depot were able to grow to $1M ARR and beyond with a very lean team.
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:
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
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:
53:52Episode 131
The startup behind ChatGPT voice - Russ d'Sa from LiveKit
Russ D’Sa is the founder of LiveKit. They are an open source tool for real time audio and video for LLM applications and they power the voice chat for ChatGPT and Character AI.
We discuss:
- How lightning works (using ChatGPT/LiveKit)
- How LiveKit started working with OpenAI
- Why Russ turned down an early 20m acquisition offer
- What it’s like to work with the fastest growing company (ever?)
- How to prepare for massive scale challenges
- Russ’s 3 letter twitter handle
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:
- LiveKit
- Russ’s Twitter
We discuss:
- How lightning works (using ChatGPT/LiveKit)
- How LiveKit started working with OpenAI
- Why Russ turned down an early 20m acquisition offer
- What it’s like to work with the fastest growing company (ever?)
- How to prepare for massive scale challenges
- Russ’s 3 letter twitter handle
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:
- LiveKit
- Russ’s Twitter
49:06Episode 130
Chris Evans & Pete Hamilton: Incident.io cofounders
Pete Hamilton and Chris Evans are cofounders of Incident.io. Incident is an incident management tool.
We discuss:
- How they think about brand and how it comes from their deep understanding of incident culture
- Lawrence’s article asking for new macbooks that went viral
- Gallows humor in incidents
- Why incident.io started on Heroku despite being an incident response platform—and why “shipping fast” mattered more than “scaling perfectly.”
- The benefit of building for users who are just like you
- How Incident is using GenAI
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:
- Pete Hamilton on Twitter
- Chris Evans on Twitter
- Incident
- Macbook article
- The flight plan that brought UK airspace to its knees
- How Netflix drives reliability across their organization
Note: this was recorded on 13th December 2024.
54:19Episode 129
David Cramer, founder of Sentry - why you should consider M&A
David Cramer, co-founder of Sentry talks M&As and why they should be utilized more when you don’t achieve huge success. Plus we talk about the importance of good branding.
We discuss:
- The biggest mistake small startup founders make by not exploring potential acquisitions.
- The role of ego in startups
- Product-market-fit
- Hiring entrepreneurial talent and why acqui-hiring is so big.
- The significance of branding beyond just marketing – how it builds trust, recognition, and demand.
- Sentry’s approach to branding, emphasizing authenticity, community, and accessibility.
- What DevTools can learn from Liquid Death and Porsche
- Why brand matters
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:
32:57Episode 128
raylib founder Ramon Santamaria - #2 most popular open-source game-engine in the world
Ramon, creator of Raylib, joins us to discuss his journey from building an educational tool to establishing one of the most popular open-source game engines. As of February 2025, Raylib is the second most popular open-source game engine behind Godot, boasting 25,000 GitHub stars, 13,000 Discord community members, and over 8,000 subreddit members. Ramon has transitioned from lecturing and consulting to focusing on his paid tools built around Raylib.
We discuss:
- How Raylib started as a teaching project to help art students learn programming through simple and intuitive function naming.
- The active community behind Raylib and how Ramon personally engages with new members, contributing to the project's growth.
- Why simplicity and not making assumptions about prior knowledge can create a strong foundation for both beginners and experienced developers.
- The benefits of using a low-level library like Raylib versus higher-level game engines like Unity, particularly for small indie games.
- Ramon's approach to managing his workload as a solo developer, emphasizing organization, automation, and using his own tools to build tools.
- His method of testing new tools by quickly launching them, observing market response, and iterating on the most successful ones.
- The importance of enjoying the process of building an open-source project rather than focusing solely on commercial success.
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:
- Raylib (https://www.raylib.com/)
- Cat and Onion game (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2781210/CAT__ONION/)
- Raylib GitHub (https://github.com/raysan5/raylib)
- Raylib Discord (https://discord.gg/raylib)
- Raylib Subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/raylib/)
- Ramon's Tools (https://raylibtech.com/tools/)
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:
47:07Episode 126
Nikita Shamgunov - founder of Neon: storytelling, pricing and hiring execs
Nikita Shamgunov is the founder of Neon, an open-source serverless Postgres company. Before Neon, Nikita co-founded MemSQL, now SingleStore, which is valued at over a billion dollars. He has also worked as a VC at Khosla Ventures and held engineering roles at Meta and Microsoft. Nikita is known for his strategic thinking and transparency about his decision-making process.
We discuss:
- The importance of storytelling and providing a clear narrative for your company
- When to introduce a sales team and how to build a sales and marketing "machine"
- Pricing strategies, including pricing for storage and compute in the data and analytics space
- The evolution of revenue models in DevTools: from selling seats and storage/compute to selling tokens
- Lessons learned from hiring MongoDB’s VP of Engineering, focusing on improving reliability and building strong team management processes
- The benefits of using a high-quality recruiting firm and avoiding the pitfalls of bad hires
- Balancing competitiveness with respect for competitors to maintain credibility, particularly in the developer tools market
- The idea of “developing your taste” in product development, inspired by Guillermo Rauch from Vercel
- How modern dev tools can monetize through seats, storage/compute, or tokens, with tokens currently being the most profitable
- Why Nikita advises DevTools founders to understand the business model framework and align it with their strategy
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:
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:
57:06Episode 124
Mitchell Hashimoto: Ghostty, libghostty & chasing the human experience
Mitchell Hashimoto - famously the founder of HashiCorp (creators of Terraform, Vault etc.) joins the show to discuss his latest open-source project, Ghostty, a modern terminal emulator.
We discuss:
- Designing dev tools with a focus on human experience.
- Taking on large technical projects and breaking them down into achievable steps.
- Open source sustainability and the role of financial support.
- The impossible goal of building a perfect human experience with software.
- Passion and hiring—why obsession with a topic often leads to the best hires.
- Using AI as a developer and why Mitchell considers AI tooling essential.
- The motivation behind Ghostty and the idea of "technical philanthropy."
- The vision for libghostty as a reusable terminal core for other applications.
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:
- Ghostty (https://ghostty.org/)
- Mitchell Hashimoto on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mitchellh)
- Mitchell’s blog (https://mitchellh.com/)
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/
52:57Episode 122
Jacob Eiting - CEO of RevenueCat: Extreme dogfooding
Jacob Eiting, CEO of RevenueCat, joins us to discuss mobile developers and how they're different, RevenueCat's recent acquisition of Dipsea - and how it helps them dogfood.
We also go hard on content - something RevenueCat is great at.
We also talk about charisma in founders (but don't worry neither of us said rizz)
This was especially fun because I actually used RevenueCat way before I started this show.
We also go hard on content - something RevenueCat is great at.
We also talk about charisma in founders (but don't worry neither of us said rizz)
This was especially fun because I actually used RevenueCat way before I started this show.
We discuss:
- How RevenueCat simplifies in-app subscriptions and why mobile monetization is more complex than it appears.
- Making developers feel like heroes instead of struggling with tedious implementation.
- RevenueCat’s acquisition of Dipsea—a customer with over 100,000 subscribers—and how it benefits both companies.
- The advantages of operating an app at scale to better test and iterate on new RevenueCat features.
- How in-app subscription businesses differ from traditional SaaS in terms of pricing, churn, and optimization.
- The importance of content marketing and transparency in building trust with developers.
- The role of personality and authenticity in developer-first marketing.
- The long-term vision for RevenueCat and how they plan to expand beyond their core subscription infrastructure.
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:
- Jacob Eiting (https://x.com/jeiting)
- RevenueCat (https://www.revenuecat.com/)
- Dipsea (https://www.dipseastories.com/)
38:35Episode 121
Taylor Otwell - founder of Laravel
Taylor Otwell is the creator of the Laravel framework. Taylor has created numerous paid products that have generated millions, such as:
- Laravel Forge (server provisioning/management)
- Laravel Vapor (serverless Laravel hosting with AWS)
- Laravel Envoyer (zero downtime PHP deployments)
- Laravel Nova (Laravel admin panel)
In this interview, Taylor shares why he is now building Laravel Cloud - an infrastructure platform for Laravel apps and why Laravel Cloud needed VC funding.
We also cover:
We also cover:
- The different challenges of bootstrapped and VC funded startups
- How the Laravel ecosystem became so entrepreneurial
- Building products for the average joe developer
- The role of taste and craft in developer tools
- What Taylor and Adam Wathan learned from each other
- Fear and Taylor's comparison with Alex Honnold
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:
Links:
Chapters:
00:00 The Journey of Laravel's Creator
02:48 Transitioning from Bootstrap to VC Funding
06:10 Building Laravel Cloud: A New Challenge
09:04 The Shift in Company Structure and Culture
11:50 Maintaining Quality and Usability in Development
15:09 Community Impact and Collaboration
17:56 Craftsmanship and Design Philosophy
20:45 Navigating Growth and Market Needs
23:54 Advice for Aspiring DevTool Founders
26:48 Future Directions and Innovations in Laravel
Thank you to Michael Grinich for making this happen. Thank you to Ostap Brehin for introducing me to Laravel. Thank you to Hank Taylor for helping me prep.
00:00 The Journey of Laravel's Creator
02:48 Transitioning from Bootstrap to VC Funding
06:10 Building Laravel Cloud: A New Challenge
09:04 The Shift in Company Structure and Culture
11:50 Maintaining Quality and Usability in Development
15:09 Community Impact and Collaboration
17:56 Craftsmanship and Design Philosophy
20:45 Navigating Growth and Market Needs
23:54 Advice for Aspiring DevTool Founders
26:48 Future Directions and Innovations in Laravel
Thank you to Michael Grinich for making this happen. Thank you to Ostap Brehin for introducing me to Laravel. Thank you to Hank Taylor for helping me prep.
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/)
54:00Episode 118
The future of DevRel, with "Danger" Keith Casey
Keith Casey aka Danger Casey is a Senior Product Manager at Pangea - a Security Platform as a Service.
Before Pangea, Keith was Director of Product Marketing at ngrok and worked at Okta and Twilio in a variety of roles - including DevRel. Keith also curates API Developer Weekly.
In this episode we discuss Keith's writings on the future of DevRel.
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:
- original article
- followup article
- How to kill your sdks in one easy step
- Developer productivity and selling to developers
- api developer weekly
- Pangea
- DevRel = zirp phenomenom?
Before Pangea, Keith was Director of Product Marketing at ngrok and worked at Okta and Twilio in a variety of roles - including DevRel. Keith also curates API Developer Weekly.
In this episode we discuss Keith's writings on the future of DevRel.
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:
- original article
- followup article
- How to kill your sdks in one easy step
- Developer productivity and selling to developers
- api developer weekly
- Pangea
- DevRel = zirp phenomenom?
46:17Episode 117
Louis Knight-Webb from Bloop.ai - the YC startup turning COBOL into Java
Louis Knight-Webb is the CEO and co-founder of Bloop.
Bloop helps with modernizing legacy software, particularly focusing on COBOL and mainframes.
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.
Takeaways:
- Mainframes and COBOL are still foundational in many industries.
- Bloop started with a focus on code search but evolved to address legacy code modernization.
- The transition from COBOL to Java is a significant challenge for many enterprises.
- Innovative approaches are needed to effectively translate legacy code.
- Ensuring code quality during migration is crucial to avoid operational disruptions.
- AI can enhance the code translation process but has limitations with legacy languages.
Links:
- Louis Knight-Webb
- Bloop
Chapters:
00:00 The Legacy of Mainframes and COBOL
03:05 The Evolution of Bloop and Code Search
05:58 Challenges in Modernizing Legacy Code
08:48 Navigating the Enterprise Code Landscape
12:11 The Transition from COBOL to Java
15:05 Innovative Approaches to Code Translation
18:02 Ensuring Code Quality and Functionality
20:56 The Future of Development and AI Integration
23:52 Building Relationships in the Enterprise Space
26:45 The Long-Term Vision for Legacy Code Modernization
Bloop helps with modernizing legacy software, particularly focusing on COBOL and mainframes.
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.
Takeaways:
- Mainframes and COBOL are still foundational in many industries.
- Bloop started with a focus on code search but evolved to address legacy code modernization.
- The transition from COBOL to Java is a significant challenge for many enterprises.
- Innovative approaches are needed to effectively translate legacy code.
- Ensuring code quality during migration is crucial to avoid operational disruptions.
- AI can enhance the code translation process but has limitations with legacy languages.
Links:
- Louis Knight-Webb
- Bloop
Chapters:
00:00 The Legacy of Mainframes and COBOL
03:05 The Evolution of Bloop and Code Search
05:58 Challenges in Modernizing Legacy Code
08:48 Navigating the Enterprise Code Landscape
12:11 The Transition from COBOL to Java
15:05 Innovative Approaches to Code Translation
18:02 Ensuring Code Quality and Functionality
20:56 The Future of Development and AI Integration
23:52 Building Relationships in the Enterprise Space
26:45 The Long-Term Vision for Legacy Code Modernization
44:43Episode 116
Guy Podjarny, Snyk and Tessl founder - The future of programming
Guy Podjarny is the founder of Tessl - a startup that is rethinking how we build software.
Guy previously founded Snyk - a dependency scanning tool worth billions of dollars. Before Snyk, Guy founded Blaze, which he sold to Akamai.
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.
In this conversation, we talk about the future of programming and the future of DevTools.
Guy previously founded Snyk - a dependency scanning tool worth billions of dollars. Before Snyk, Guy founded Blaze, which he sold to Akamai.
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.
In this conversation, we talk about the future of programming and the future of DevTools.
- The future of programming will focus on writing specifications.
- Trust in AI tools
- Snyk is an example of how tools can integrate into existing workflows.
- Code can become disposable, allowing for flexibility in development.
- Specifications will serve as repositories of truth in software development.
- Developers will need to adapt their skills to leverage AI tools effectively.
- Community collaboration is essential for the evolution of AI development tools.
- AI simplifies and democratizes the process of software creation
Thanks to Anna Debenham for making this happen.
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:
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/
47:49Episode 114
Sid Maestre from APIMatic: APIs build vs buy
We dig into the the build vs. buy dilemma for APIs, and the role of OpenAPI in effective documentation.
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.
We explore how AI is transforming the landscape of APIs and developer tools, and discuss the future of coding.
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.
We explore how AI is transforming the landscape of APIs and developer tools, and discuss the future of coding.
- The choice between building and buying SDKs depends on company maturity.
- OpenAPI is crucial for generating quality API documentation.
- AI is revolutionizing how APIs are created and consumed.
- Maintaining SDK libraries can be a significant challenge.
- Developer tools must evolve to keep pace with API design changes.
- Trust in AI-generated code is growing among developers.
- The future of coding will likely involve more AI integration.
Links:
51:29Episode 113
Jake Cooper from Railway | Remote work/team culture, minority report sales and building data centers
Jake Cooper is the founder of Railway - an infrastructure platform that let's you build powerful infrastructure in a simple way.
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.
In this episode we discuss:
- Building a remote team with a flat structure
- Railway's sales team doing their best Minority Report impression
- Why leverage matters
- Building their own data centers
- Why it's important to do hard things
P.s. here's news about the tsunami warning
Links:
- Railway
- Jake Cooper
- Angelo from Railway
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.
In this episode we discuss:
- Building a remote team with a flat structure
- Railway's sales team doing their best Minority Report impression
- Why leverage matters
- Building their own data centers
- Why it's important to do hard things
P.s. here's news about the tsunami warning
Links:
- Railway
- Jake Cooper
- Angelo from Railway
38:28Episode 112
Daksh Gupta from Greptile - do marketing differently
In this conversation, Daksh Gupta, the CEO of Greptile - an AI code understanding API - shares:
- Why it’s important to do unique types of marketing, like making an energy drink
- Why most people misunderstand sales
- How companies are buying AI tools and why it will probably change soon
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:
40:01Episode 111
Ankur Goyal from Braintrust
Ankur Goyal is the founder of Braintrust, a year old LLM eval platform that is already used by Figma, Vercel and Stripe and just raised $36m from a16z. It's a rocketship.
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.
Key Success Factors
- Started with a targeted list of ~50 companies already working with AI
- Focused on early adopters and innovators in the space
- Strategy: If they could make the frontrunners happy, others would follow
Links:
- Braintrust
- Ankur Goyal
- Alana Goyal
- Basecase
- Elad Gil
- Martin Casado
Chapters:
* 00:00 Introduction to BrainTrust and Its Success
* 02:52 The Importance of User Research in Product Development
* 06:11 Building Relationships with Key Customers
* 09:05 The Role of Feedback in Product Improvement
* 11:54 The Impact of Mentorship on Entrepreneurial Success
* 15:11 Identifying Market Opportunities in AI Development
* 18:00 Effective User Interviews and Problem Validation
* 20:59 The Evolution of BrainTrust's Product Features
* 23:55 Advice for Aspiring DevTool Founders
* 26:48 Exciting Developments in the DevTool Space
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.
Key Success Factors
- Started with a targeted list of ~50 companies already working with AI
- Focused on early adopters and innovators in the space
- Strategy: If they could make the frontrunners happy, others would follow
Links:
- Braintrust
- Ankur Goyal
- Alana Goyal
- Basecase
- Elad Gil
- Martin Casado
Chapters:
* 00:00 Introduction to BrainTrust and Its Success
* 02:52 The Importance of User Research in Product Development
* 06:11 Building Relationships with Key Customers
* 09:05 The Role of Feedback in Product Improvement
* 11:54 The Impact of Mentorship on Entrepreneurial Success
* 15:11 Identifying Market Opportunities in AI Development
* 18:00 Effective User Interviews and Problem Validation
* 20:59 The Evolution of BrainTrust's Product Features
* 23:55 Advice for Aspiring DevTool Founders
* 26:48 Exciting Developments in the DevTool Space
35:28Episode 110
The story of Pydantic and Logfire | Samuel Colvin
Samuel Colvin - the creator of Pydantic - the most popular data validation library for Python. Used by literally everyone (Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, NVIDIA, even the NSA). He shares the story behind his startup Logfire which just raised $12.5m from Sequoia.
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.
Key takeaways:
- You can just build a different product to your open source project and leverage your brand
- Quality of product matters a LOT (if you can build a popular open source project, can probably build a quality paid product)
- Really helps to be part of a movement. Hard to predict but Pydantic benefited from two (types and LLMs)
- GitHub stars are a vanity metric compared to download numbers
Links:
- Pydantic
- Logfire
- Samuel Colvin
Chapters
00:00 The Genesis of Pydantic
02:46 The Evolution of Software Development
06:02 Building a Successful Open Source Library
08:52 The Impact of Community and Adoption
11:51 Metrics of Success in Open Source
15:08 Transitioning from Pydantic to LogFire
17:59 The Vision Behind LogFire
20:50 The Connection Between Pydantic and LogFire
24:05 Navigating the Challenges of Building a Startup
26:56 The Future of Observability and Databases
P.s. thanks to my friend Abeed for making the episode happen!
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.
Key takeaways:
- You can just build a different product to your open source project and leverage your brand
- Quality of product matters a LOT (if you can build a popular open source project, can probably build a quality paid product)
- Really helps to be part of a movement. Hard to predict but Pydantic benefited from two (types and LLMs)
- GitHub stars are a vanity metric compared to download numbers
Links:
- Pydantic
- Logfire
- Samuel Colvin
Chapters
00:00 The Genesis of Pydantic
02:46 The Evolution of Software Development
06:02 Building a Successful Open Source Library
08:52 The Impact of Community and Adoption
11:51 Metrics of Success in Open Source
15:08 Transitioning from Pydantic to LogFire
17:59 The Vision Behind LogFire
20:50 The Connection Between Pydantic and LogFire
24:05 Navigating the Challenges of Building a Startup
26:56 The Future of Observability and Databases
P.s. thanks to my friend Abeed for making the episode happen!
50:05Episode 109
How not to do Open Source Licensing, with Trigger.dev founders Matt Aitken and Eric Allam
There are more and more open source DevTools startups. I’ve interviewed dozens. But I am still confused about open source licenses. So I decided to ask questions to two people who actually understand them: my friends Eric and Matt - founders of open source background jobs tool Trigger.dev.
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.
What we discuss:
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.
What we discuss:
- Two Key Questions for License Selection
- What are the benefits of permissive licenses?
- What are the main licenses?
- Why shouldn’t you write your own (open source) license?
- What is Copyleft?
- Post Open Source" Movement
{{chapters}}
Trigger:
- Eric Allam - https://x.com/maverickdotdev
- Matt Aitken - https://x.com/mattaitken
- Trigger.dev https://trigger.dev/
- JSON Hero https://jsonhero.io/
Licenses
- MIT License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License - Matt’s “most permissive license”
- Apache-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License - “Like MIT but with trademarks”
- FSL / Fair Source License https://fair.io/ - created by Sentry
- Heather Meeker - Open Source Licencing expert https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermeeker/
- A practical guide to Open Source Licencing https://www.amazon.co.uk/Open-Source-Business-Practical-Licensing/dp/1544737645
References
- Sentry https://sentry.io/welcome/
- Redis https://redis.io/
- Valkey https://valkey.io/
- Clickhouse https://clickhouse.com/
- Background to Continue.dev and PearAI https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/30/y-combinator-is-being-criticized-after-it-backed-an-ai-startup-that-admits-it-basically-cloned-another-ai-startup/
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.
47:12Episode 106
The Homebrew maintainers who built a startup - Mike McQuaid and John Britton from Workbrew
Mike McQuaid and John Britton are cofounders of Workbrew - a tool that gives you the missing features for enterprises running homebrew.
John has previously worked at GitHub and Twilio and is a contributor to Homebrew. Mike has also worked at GitHub as well as being the project lead and longest running maintainer at Homebrew.
We dig into:
John has previously worked at GitHub and Twilio and is a contributor to Homebrew. Mike has also worked at GitHub as well as being the project lead and longest running maintainer at Homebrew.
We dig into:
- How Homebrew can trace its origins to a pub in London
- How Apple actually work with Homebrew
- How Homebrew managed to grow and scale up
- How Workbrew are avoiding misaligned incentives so common in open source
Links for Mike, John and Workbrew
- Mike McQuaid https://mikemcquaid.com/
- John Britton https://johndbritton.com/
- Workbrew https://workbrew.com/
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.
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:
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:
- Twitter/X https://x.com/pauljasonklein?lang=en
- LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkleiniv
- Browserbase https://www.browserbase.com/
References
- Mux acquires Stream Club https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mux-acquires-stream-club-to-enable-developers-to-build-live-streaming-studios-into-their-applications-301449407.html
- Levelsio on VPSs https://x.com/levelsio/status/1827308534645572015
- Charly Poly https://www.linkedin.com/in/charly-poly/?originalSubdomain=fr
- DevTools Pauls: Paul Butler https://x.com/paulgb?lang=en and Paul Copplestone https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulcopplestone
- Solaris office space https://www.solarissf.com/
To support Scaling DevTools, please check out the Enterprise Ready Conf from WorkOS https://enterprise-ready.com/
30:27Episode 104
Fundraising, exiting to Elastic and the future of Product Engineering | Rasmus Makwarth (CEO, Bucket)
In 2017, Rasmus Makwarth sold his previous APM (Application Performance Managment) startup Opbeat to Elastic for an undisclosed amount. Opbeat became Elastic APM, which became a big part of the Elastic Observability solution and Rasmus became Senior Director of Product Management - with a focus on Developer Experience.
Today, Rasmus is the founder and CEO of Bucket.co - a feature flagging tool built for B2B teams. Bucket has raised $5.7m from investors such as Project A and Creandum.
We dig into:
Today, Rasmus is the founder and CEO of Bucket.co - a feature flagging tool built for B2B teams. Bucket has raised $5.7m from investors such as Project A and Creandum.
We dig into:
- The realities of fundraising on a deadline
- The role of San Francisco in fundraising - do you need to be there?
- How exit opportunities can come from unexpected sources and the importance of showing up
- The importance of building a great product
- What Rasmus learned at Elastic - one of the biggest DevTools in the world
- Why Bucket is betting on helping engineers at b2b companies understand how users use their features
- The future of product engineering
Where to find Rasmus:
- LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/makwarth/?originalSubdomain=dk
- Twitter/X https://x.com/makwarth
- Bucket https://bucket.co/
References
- Elastic https://elastic.co/
- Opbeat acquisition announcement https://www.elastic.co/blog/welcome-opbeat-to-the-elastic-family
- Shay Banon - founder of Elastic https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimchy/
- Gregory Tademoto - VP Global Business & Corporate Development https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorytademoto/
To support Scaling DevTools, 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:
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/
55:37Episode 102
Sagar Batchu - co-founder of Speakeasy
Sagar is the CEO and co-founder of Speakeasy - an API tooling platform. We talk about the journey of Speakeasy. The challenges of startup life. How they developed the product and how they work with influencers in a surprising way.
- Building relationships with influencers can significantly enhance product development.
- Importance of listening to customers
- Fine line between product and consulting
- The role of documentation in user experience
- Being responsive to customer needs builds long-term relationships.
- The startup journey requires patience and adaptability.
Links:
- Sagar Batchu
- Speakeasy https://www.speakeasy.com/
Check out the Enterprise Ready Conf from WorkOS https://enterprise-ready.com/
40:33Episode 101
Anurag Goel - founder of Render
In this conversation, Anurag Goel, founder and CEO of Render, discusses the evolution of Render as a cloud infrastructure platform is actually simple to use.
He shares insights from his time at Stripe, emphasizing the importance of customer focus, crafting a seamless user experience, and the philosophy of progressive disclosure of complexity.
Anurag also highlights the significance of customer support as an integral part of the product and offers advice for aspiring founders on finding their passion and maintaining empathy in their work.
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.
He shares insights from his time at Stripe, emphasizing the importance of customer focus, crafting a seamless user experience, and the philosophy of progressive disclosure of complexity.
Anurag also highlights the significance of customer support as an integral part of the product and offers advice for aspiring founders on finding their passion and maintaining empathy in their work.
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.
What we discuss:
- Building in special details enhances customer experience.
- The delicate balance between simplicity and capability.
- How the power of sensible defaults. and progressive disclosure of complexity improves usability.
- Focus on customer needs drives product development.
- Customer support should be treated as a product.
- Finding founder market fit is crucial for success.
- Empathy for users is essential in product development.
Links
- Anurag's Twitter https://x.com/anuraggoel
- Render https://render.com/
- Stripe https://stripe.com/
Keywords
Render, developer experience, cloud infrastructure, customer support, startup culture, Anurag Goel, Stripe, product development, user experience, technology
Render, developer experience, cloud infrastructure, customer support, startup culture, Anurag Goel, Stripe, product development, user experience, technology
39:13Episode 99
Customer support for DevTools, with Nick Gomez from InKeep
Nick Gomez is the co-founder and CEO of InKeep. InKeep is an AI customer support tool focused on Developer Tools.
They discuss the importance of understanding developer needs, the role of AI in technical support, and how community engagement can enhance support efforts.
What we discuss
They discuss the importance of understanding developer needs, the role of AI in technical support, and how community engagement can enhance support efforts.
What we discuss
- AI support for developer tools is different from traditional B2B SaaS support.
- Developers often seek help through documentation and community forums.
- Scaling technical support requires understanding the developer's tech stack.
- Clear communication channels can improve support efficiency.
- AI solutions must prioritize quality to build trust with users.
- Community engagement can help crowdsource support efforts.
- Support teams should continuously improve documentation based on user inquiries.
- 24/7 support can be achieved through AI tools.
- Investing in customer relationships can lead to valuable insights and support.
- Innovative tools are changing the landscape of developer support.
Links:
- Nick Gomez's Twitter https://x.com/nickgomezc
- InKeep https://inkeep.com/
Keywords
AI support, developer tools, technical support, community engagement, customer investment, quality assurance, support team structure, 24/7 support, innovations in development
AI support, developer tools, technical support, community engagement, customer investment, quality assurance, support team structure, 24/7 support, innovations in development
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
55:50Episode 97
Michael Grinich - founder & CEO of WorkOS
In this conversation, with Michael Grinich - founder and CEO of WorkOS. WorkOS helps you start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code.
We discuss the challenges and strategies of navigating tough conversations in a startup environment, the importance of understanding engineering leadership, and the role of empathy in user experience.
We discuss the challenges and strategies of navigating tough conversations in a startup environment, the importance of understanding engineering leadership, and the role of empathy in user experience.
The conversation covers the significance of conferences for startups, the necessity of articulating the 'why' behind a business, and the challenges faced by solo founders. The discussion also touches on decision-making processes, handling competition, and the future direction of WorkOS.
- If a conversation scares you, it's probably necessary.
- Engineering leaders focus on business goals, not just technology.
- Conferences can be a great way to connect with potential customers.
- Building relationships at events can lead to long-term success.
- Frameworks can be constraining; focus on user empathy instead.
- Understanding user needs is crucial for product development.
- Articulating the 'why' can enhance customer connection.
- Maintaining focus on your mission is key to success.
- Finding a deeper mission can drive your startup forward.
- The journey of building a startup is often unclear at the beginning.
Links:
- WorkOS https://workos.com/
- Michael's Twitter https://x.com/grinich
- ELC https://sfelc.com/
- Crossing the Enterprise Chasm Podcast https://workos.com/podcast
- Start With Why https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why/
- AWS reinvent https://reinvent.awsevents.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/
- 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/
32:05Episode 91
Hamzah Chaudhary from Lightdash: bringing developer tools to Business Intelligence
Hamzah Chaudhary is the cofounder of Lightdash, an open source, self-serve BI tool.
In this episode, Hamzah shares:
In this episode, Hamzah shares:
- Their initial plan to build a consultancy and how it morphed into a product to solve their customer's needs
- How open source works as a strategy
- Bringing software engineering tools to the BI domain
- How they reach their users
- How they partner with bigger organizations
Links:
- Lightdash https://www.lightdash.com/
- Lightdash GitHub https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash
- Hamzah's Twitter https://x.com/hamzahc1
33:07Episode 89
Frontend Developers: the Newest New Kingmakers with Kate Holterhoff from RedMonk
Kate Holterhoff - an analyst from RedMonk - shares why frontend developers are increasingly dictating the adoption of new developer tools.
Kate shares specific examples, including Supabase.
Links:
Kate shares specific examples, including Supabase.
Links:
- Frontend Developers: the Newest New Kingmakers https://redmonk.com/kholterhoff/2024/02/15/frontend-developers-the-newest-new-kingmakers/
- Kate's website https://www.kateholterhoff.com/
- RedMonk https://redmonk.com/
- Kate's Twitter/X https://x.com/KateHolterhoff
39:59Episode 86
Developer quick-start guides with Amit Jotwani
How do you write a developer quick start guide that they will love?
That's what we talk about with Amit Jotwani. Amit is the founder of HelloDX and previously worked in developer experience at Retool and Amazon Alexa.
This came about because I was reading Amit's fantastic guide on EveryDeveloper.
Links:
That's what we talk about with Amit Jotwani. Amit is the founder of HelloDX and previously worked in developer experience at Retool and Amazon Alexa.
This came about because I was reading Amit's fantastic guide on EveryDeveloper.
Links:
- Amit's website https://ajot.me/
- HelloDX https://hellodx.co/
- Craft Quick Start Guides That Developers Will Love https://everydeveloper.com/quick-start-guides/
- Amit's Twitter/X https://x.com/amit
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.
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.
45:39Episode 84
Buying Developer Tools Companies with Greg and Matt from Polychrome
Greg Lazarus and Matt Althauser are two of the cofounders of Polychrome - a company that buys small to medium sized B2B software businesses: with a focus on Developer Tools. Their portfolio includes the feature flagging tool Flagsmith (we recorded an episode with them last week) and the browser automation tool Browserless.
In this episode we cover the ins and outs of buying developer tools.
Links:
- Polychrome https://www.polychrome.com/
- Matt Althauser https://x.com/malthauser?lang=en
- Greg Lazarus https://x.com/greglaz5
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.
In this episode we cover the ins and outs of buying developer tools.
Links:
- Polychrome https://www.polychrome.com/
- Matt Althauser https://x.com/malthauser?lang=en
- Greg Lazarus https://x.com/greglaz5
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.
50:28Episode 83
Bootstrapping Flagsmith to $3m ARR
Ben Rometsch is the founder of Flagsmith. Flagsmith is a Feature Flag & Remote Config Service that recently reached $3m ARR.
Ben candidly shares exactly how they started, how they got enterprise customers and how they worked with Polychrome to take Flagsmith to the next level.
Links:
Ben candidly shares exactly how they started, how they got enterprise customers and how they worked with Polychrome to take Flagsmith to the next level.
Links:
- Ben's Twitter https://x.com/dabeeeenster
- Flagsmith https://www.flagsmith.com/
- Polychrome https://polychrome.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.
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
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.
42:24Episode 80
Designing APIs with Chris Bell from Knock.app
Chris Bell is the founder of Knock.app - flexible, reliable notifications infrastructure.
In this episode we discuss:
In this episode we discuss:
- Designing APIs
- The importance of champions when selling to enterprise
- How do you justify cost of a developer tool?
- Selling to platform teams
Links:
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.
41:57Episode 79
3 BILLION searches per month without VC funding - Jason Bosco from Typesense
Jason Bosco is the founder of Typesense.
Typesense is the Open Source alternative to Algolia.
Typesense is a batteries-included Search API.
We discuss how Jason built Typesense to be a hugely successful company without VC funding.
We talk about what revenue-funding means and why it should be considered as a viable option for founders.
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:
- Jason's Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonbosco
- Typesense https://typesense.org/
Typesense is the Open Source alternative to Algolia.
Typesense is a batteries-included Search API.
We discuss how Jason built Typesense to be a hugely successful company without VC funding.
We talk about what revenue-funding means and why it should be considered as a viable option for founders.
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:
- Jason's Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonbosco
- Typesense https://typesense.org/
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
48:14Episode 77
Dana Oshiro - General Partner at Heavybit
Dana Oshiro is a General Partner at Heavybit. Heavybit is a VC that invests exclusively in developer-first startups.
What we discuss:
What we discuss:
- One sharp thing. Finding an addressable chunk of a bigger opportunity.
- Thinking big & small
- Are 5 people seriously going to support our migration from DataDog? At Facebook you had a lot of support people/systems you're forgetting
- Finding the sidedoor
- Stepping up as a founder
- Fear of hitting up the people you respect.
- Best founders build for themselves
- Do founders get better at putting themselves out there?
- Speaking in front of people to make change - "there's a new approach. We deserve better!"
- Movements
- DevOps & JamStack
- Don't try to control the movement
- Joining into other movements
Links
- Dana Oshiro https://twitter.com/danaoshiro
- Heavybit https://heavybit.com/
Thanks to Adam DuVander from https://everydeveloper.com/ for introducing us.
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.
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.
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.
31:57Episode 74
Making mobile apps for developers, with Anders Borum - creator of the most popular git client, Working Copy
Anders Borum shares how he created the number 1 git app in the app store - Working Copy.
What we talk about:
What we talk about:
- The origins of Working Copy
- Word of mouth vs App Store Optimisation
- One time vs recurring subscription
Links:
- Anders - https://twitter.com/palmin
- Working Copy - https://workingcopy.app/
- Rauno https://twitter.com/OvalSoftware
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.
41:42Episode 73
Why developers trust Resend, with Zeno Rocha
Zeno Rocha is the founder of Resend. Zeno is also the founder of React Email.
Resend is a simple-to-use email API built for developers.
Previously Zeno was the VP of DX at WorkOS and the creator of the popular Dracula VS Code theme as well as the popular open source project Clipboard js.
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 talk about
Resend is a simple-to-use email API built for developers.
Previously Zeno was the VP of DX at WorkOS and the creator of the popular Dracula VS Code theme as well as the popular open source project Clipboard js.
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 talk about
- Building trust and a great developer experience
- Creating a successful open-source project (Clipboardjs)
- The importance of storytelling and a coherent (launching react email and Resend)
- The importance of a great readme
- Prioritization, descoping and making something worthy of being shared by Guillermo Rauch
Links:
- Zeno's Twitter Rocha - https://twitter.com/zenorocha
- Resend - https://resend.com/
- React email - https://github.com/resend/react-email
- Dracula theme https://draculatheme.com/visual-studio-code
- Clipboardjs - https://clipboardjs.com/
- WorkOS - https://workos.com/
42:11Episode 72
Startups don't need DevRel. A debate.
Stefan Avram recently tweeted that "You shouldn't have devrels. Your customers should be your devrels"
So I invited Stefan on to debate this with one of the industry's most respected DevRels Dan Moore from Fusion Auth.
This is 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:
So I invited Stefan on to debate this with one of the industry's most respected DevRels Dan Moore from Fusion Auth.
This is 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:
- Stefan's tweet https://twitter.com/StefanTMD/status/1735022106822295920
- Dan Moore https://twitter.com/mooreds
- Fusion Auth https://fusionauth.io/
- Wundergraph https://wundergraph.com/
39:21Episode 71
Getting Your first Enterprise Customers - Michael Grinich from WorkOS
Michael is the founder of WorkOS. WorkOS helps startups cross the enterprise chasm - it's a bit like the Stripe of Enterprise features.
In this episode, we focus on selling to enterprises: the features you need, the team you need (e.g. sales!) and the common pitfalls Michael has seen.
We also talk about things like: what even is an enterprise customer?
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. Thanks so much for supporting us as our first ever sponsor Michael and 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://workos.com/
- https://x.com/grinich
- Crossing the Enterprise Chasm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR2QZQrzoiA&t=368s&ab_channel=BriKimmel
In this episode, we focus on selling to enterprises: the features you need, the team you need (e.g. sales!) and the common pitfalls Michael has seen.
We also talk about things like: what even is an enterprise customer?
This episode is sponsored by WorkOS. Thanks so much for supporting us as our first ever sponsor Michael and 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://workos.com/
- https://x.com/grinich
- Crossing the Enterprise Chasm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR2QZQrzoiA&t=368s&ab_channel=BriKimmel
33:46Episode 68
Exiting to Apple - Dennis Pilarinos from Unblocked
Dennis Pilarinos is the founder of Unblocked. Unblocked allows lets you talk to your code base.
Dennis previously founded Buddybuild - a CI/CD tool for mobile developers.
In 2018, Buddybuild was acquired by Apple, and Dennis became a director in Development Technologies at Apple.
Some topics we cover:
- The story of Buddybuild and the Apple acquisition
- Why did Apple buy Buddybuild?
- Segmenting when building a tool for everyone
Links:
- Dennis' Twitter - https://twitter.com/dennispilarinos
- Buddybuild acquisition - http://tcrn.ch/2CG9s4G
- Unblocked - https://getunblocked.com/
Dennis previously founded Buddybuild - a CI/CD tool for mobile developers.
In 2018, Buddybuild was acquired by Apple, and Dennis became a director in Development Technologies at Apple.
Some topics we cover:
- The story of Buddybuild and the Apple acquisition
- Why did Apple buy Buddybuild?
- Segmenting when building a tool for everyone
Links:
- Dennis' Twitter - https://twitter.com/dennispilarinos
- Buddybuild acquisition - http://tcrn.ch/2CG9s4G
- Unblocked - https://getunblocked.com/
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.
32:38Episode 64
Erik Bernhardsson from Modal Labs
Erik Bernhardsson is the founder of Modal Labs. Modal Labs is a tool to run generative AI models, large-scale batch jobs, job queues, and much more.
Links:
- https://twitter.com/bernhardsson
- https://erikbern.com/
- https://modal.com/
Links:
- https://twitter.com/bernhardsson
- https://erikbern.com/
- https://modal.com/
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/
30:59Episode 61
From getting hacked to cybersecurity founders with Antoine Carossio and Tristan Kalos from Escape.tech
Escape helps you Find and fix GraphQL security flaws at scale within your DevSecOps process
- Introduction to Tristan and Antoine. 0:00
- How did they get started in cybersecurity? 4:35
- How did you get your first few customers? 9:49
- Challenges from a product and tech point of view. 13:57
- Challenges of integration into the development process. 18:10
- How to find the right team? 22:55
Links:
- Escape.tech https://escape.tech/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=devtools-podcast
- Tristan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/TristanKalos
- Antoine's Twitter - https://twitter.com/iCarossio
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
- SST https://sst.dev/
- Dax's twitter https://twitter.com/thdxr
- Between Two Nerds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I2Xep0GTQY&ab_channel=SST
27:35Episode 55
Building ambitious developer tools with Ruben Fiszel from Windmill
Ruben is the founder of Windmill https://www.windmill.dev/ which helps you turn scripts into workflows and UIs in minutes
Some of the things we talk about:
- Getting to the threshold of being useful.
- Speed is the key to success.
- The second mover advantage
- Getting early users of the product.
- Why infra is an interesting market for him.
- The challenges of being a solo founder.
- The recipe for a digital startup is to be really passionate about the project.
- Advice for founders who are building ambitious projects.
- Doing everything that no one wants to do.
You can find Ruben at https://twitter.com/rubenfiszel
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
25:47Episode 52
Building computer vision tooling with Niko from Rerun
Nikolaus West is the founder of Rerun.io - Visualize computer vision.
What we discuss:
What we discuss:
- Finding a problem to work on
- What are some of the features that will be free and open source?
- What’s the difference between a commercial and a free service?
- The most important thing is that we’re building something that will be useful
- How to get into the minds of computer vision developers
- Why build in Rust
Rerun - https://www.rerun.io/
Niko's Twitter - https://twitter.com/NikolausWest
Niko's Twitter - https://twitter.com/NikolausWest
31:45Episode 51
Developer onboarding with Kilian from Polypane
How do you do onboarding in a way developers actually like?
Kilian is the founder of Polypane - The browser for ambitious web developers https://polypane.app/
Kilian's Twitter - https://twitter.com/kilianvalkhof
Kilian is the founder of Polypane - The browser for ambitious web developers https://polypane.app/
Kilian's Twitter - https://twitter.com/kilianvalkhof
28:35Episode 50
From VC to DevTools with Karl Clement, founder of CODEOWNERS
Karl Clement is the founder of https://codeowners.com/
CODEOWNERS is the single source of truth for code ownership.
Summary
CODEOWNERS is the single source of truth for code ownership.
Summary
- Introducing Karl
- Code ownership
- What are the types of people that are implementing code Code Ownership
- How to find and reach platform engineers.
- What are some of the key metrics that organisations are looking for to measure the value of their tooling?
- Dora metrics
- Mean time to resolution, MTTR
- What is Backstage and how has it been used?
- Improving the developer experience with Backstage.
- Backstage implementation is essentially a signal that a company is willing to invest in the organisation but the developer experience as a whole, which is great
- Backstage implementation is a signal of investment in the organisation.
- How venture capital can help with product development.
- If you’re building a product in a space that no one else is in, you are reducing your odds
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
24:53Episode 43
Go slow & build good things, with Rob Moore from Churnkey
Rob Moore is the CTO and founder of Churnkey - a tool that reduces churn for you automatically.
What we cover:
- Developer documentation
- How Rob buys tools
- How Rob discovers tools
- Go slow & build good things
- How Churnkey works
References:
- Rob's twitter https://twitter.com/robmoo_re
- Churnkey https://churnkey.co/
- Super docs super.so
What we cover:
- Developer documentation
- How Rob buys tools
- How Rob discovers tools
- Go slow & build good things
- How Churnkey works
References:
- Rob's twitter https://twitter.com/robmoo_re
- Churnkey https://churnkey.co/
- Super docs super.so
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:
27:48Episode 40
Building in-person developer communities with Paul Butler from Drifting In Space
Paul Butler is the cofounder of Drifting in Space. They believe that browser-based applications can feel like magic if they’re built with the right tools. They make Jamsocket, a platform for building applications with session backends, and Plane, the open-source server that powers it.
What we cover:
- The power of in-person meetups
- How to communicate complex problems
- Deconstructing topics for developer content
- Writing about trends e.g. GPU rendered UIs
- Going after developers doing "something ambitious with browsers"
- The power of in-person meetups
- How to communicate complex problems
- Deconstructing topics for developer content
- Writing about trends e.g. GPU rendered UIs
- Going after developers doing "something ambitious with browsers"
18:58Episode 38
Demand Generation for DevTools - Dino Kukic from Hygraph
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
- Introduction Hygraph
- Finding your focus
- Demand Generation
- What is a good SEO strategy?
- Does performance marketing work with developers?
- How to target developers
- Working with sales teams
- Collaborating on content
Where to hear from Dino
- Twitter: @DinoKukic
- https://hygraph.com/
Where to hear from us
- Twitter: @JackSBridger
- https://blog.bitreach.io
- Newsletter: https://www.bitreach.io/
26:51Episode 37
Where should Developer Advocacy sit? With Vera Tiago from OutSystems
Scaling DevTools is the podcast that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one.
What we cover
- Introduction to Vera
- Developer advocacy at OutSystems
- Progression in OutSystems
- Moving around the company
- Challenges
- Strategies at OutSystems
- Education
- Developer advocacy skills
Where to hear from Vera
31:21Episode 35
Making DevTools more human with Carla Sofia Teixeira from Miro
Scaling DevTools is the podcast that investigates how DevTools go from zero to one.
What we cover
- An introduction to Miro
- What does ‘humanness’ mean?
- How to leverage ‘humanness’
- The four pillars of DevRel
- Outreach
- Product
- Education
- Community
- Always be empathetic
- Always be respectful
Where to hear from Carla
- Twitter: @CarlaSofii
- Linkedin: Carla Sofia Teixeira
- **https://developers.miro.com/**
34:19Episode 33
Crossing the chasm with Shawn Wang (swyx)
Resources
- Crossing the chasm by Geoffrey Moore
- Airbyte
- Netlify Auth Library
- Wardley map
- Strategy Letter V by Joel Spolsky
- The hardest working graphic in software
- 10x-ing Svelte (Svelte Summit 2022 Talk Notes)
swyx’s links:
Key points:
- Everyone in tech should understand the technology adoption cycle and know which stage of the adoption cycle you’re at
- First time founders obsess about products and second-time founders obsess about distribution.
- At the beginning, focus-in on one offering - have conviction in who your users are
- Your tech IS the story at the earliest stage of the adoption cycle. Because you are targeting innovators and they love to know you use Rust for example! At the later stage, tech no longer matters; the cost matters. Your messaging evolves
- You should be picking industries and companies with a strong chance of success
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/
23:08Episode 30
Playing the long game with Ed Freyfogle - founder of the OpenCage Geocoding API
Ed Freyfogle is the Co-founder of OpenCage. The OpenCage Geocoding API provides worldwide, reverse (latitude/longitude to text) and forward (text to latitude/longitude) geocoding based on open data via a REST API.
What we cover
- Introduction to OpenCage
- Transparency is key
- Competition and learning
- Developer mind tricks
- Bootstrapping OpenCage
- Playing the long game
- Measuring conversion
- Enthusiasts
Where to hear from Ed
- Twitter: @freyfogle
- https://opencagedata.com/
- http://freyfogle.com/
- Geomob podcast: https://thegeomob.com/podcast
24:07Episode 29
Bootstrapping a SaaS boilerplate to $25k MRR with Kyle Gawley from Gravity
Kyle Gawley is the Founder of Gravity. Gravity help founders build SaaS products at warp speed.
What we cover
- Introduction to Gravity
- The journey so far
- Why trust is important
- Creating and building trust
- Marketing approach for Gravity
- Specific problem to solve
- Tips for SEO
- Selling to developers badly (things to stay away from!)
- The future of Gravity
Where to hear from Kyle
- Twitter: @kylegawley
- https://usegravity.app/
- Learn how to build a SaaS product from scratch course: https://usegravity.app/how-to-build-a-saas
- https://aigraphics.io/
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
25:12Episode 25
DevRel from the ground up with Sean Falconer from SkyFlow
Sean Falconer is the Head of Developer Relations & Product Marketing at Skyflow. Skyflow is a privacy API for sensitive data that is built on a customer data vault.
What we cover
- Building a DevRel function from the ground up
- An MVP DevRel team
- A real content strategy
- Hiring the right person
- Measuring performance in the early stages
- How do DevRel and marketing interplay?
Where to hear from Sean
P.s. thanks so much to Harpreet Sahota for listening and suggesting we invite Sean!
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/
15:53Episode 21
Building tools for experienced developers with André Eriksson from Encore
André Eriksson is the founder of Encore. Encore is a backend development engine built on the belief that escaping complexity unleashes a higher state of creativity.
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 Encore's Go framework
- What drove André to create Encore and where he found his conviction from frustration
- Problems faced by experienced backend developers
- Obtaining your first customers who immediately get it
- Focusing on content to bring developers to you
- Sales at Encore - tailoring everything to what is important to customers
- Building technical trust - can you trust it will do what I want?
- Building business trust with open source
Where to hear from André
- Twitter: @_eandre
- https://encore.dev/
Where to hear from us
- Twitter: @JackSBridger
- https://blog.bitreach.io
- Newsletter: https://www.bitreach.io/
17:34Episode 20
Developer User Research extends your runway, with Ana Hevesi
Ana Hevesi is a Developer Experience Researcher and Ecosystem Consultant. She has experience marshalling technical products and communities at companies including Stack Overflow, Nodejitsu and MongoDB.
What we cover
- An introduction to developer user research
- Research at DevTools startups
- How to use findings and insights
- How user research can help extend runway at a startup
Where to hear from Ana
Tools Anna loves
15:12Episode 18
Critical path infra for developers with Megan Reynolds from Crane
Megan Reynolds is an investor at Crane Venture Partners. Crane are an early stage VC who have invested in developer tools such as Gitpod, Encore and Novu.
What we cover
- What is happening in the market right now?
- Critical path for developers
- What can devtools do to make themselves more critical?
- Understanding your landscape
- What are the good founders doing? Gitpod example
- Why Megan invested in Novu
- What Megan is looking for in devtools
Where to hear from Megan
- Twitter: @meganreyno
- https://crane.vc/
Dev Tools mentioned
- Gitpod - open source remote developer collaboration
- Gitpod // Factorial case study
- Novu - open source notification infrastructure
- Encore - backend development engine
- Firebase - backend as a service
- Supabase (open source alternative to firebase)
- Posthog (open source alternative to mixpanel)
17:49Episode 16
Higher versus lower order thinking with Wesley Faulkner
Wesley Faulkner is a Senior Community Manager at AWS. Amazon Web Services provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.
(00:40): Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about higher-order thinking?
(00:40): Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about higher-order thinking?
(05:31): Could you share some examples of higher-order thinking versus a lower-order marketing campaign or communication that didn't work so well?
(11:06): Could you share your thoughts on developers wanting to understand how things work?
(13:38) When it comes to higher-order thinking and understanding your audience, investing long-term sometimes feels like it may have a slower payoff. How do we justify this kind of investment? Especially if we're a startup that needs users or signups really quickly.
Tweet we are discussing
Tweet we are discussing
Where to hear from Wesley
15:36Episode 15
Authentic Developer Education with Dylan Fox from AssemblyAI
Dylan Fox is the Founder & CEO of AssemblyAI. AssemblyAI is an AI company that researches, trains, and deploys State-of-the-Art AI models. Thousands of developers and product teams build with AssemblyAI's simple API to automatically transcribe and understand audio data at scale.
What we cover
(00:20): Could you tell us a little bit about AssemblyAI?
(01:10): Could you talk about your content strategy?
(03:37): How do you balance the goal of promoting AssemblyAI with creating authentic, useful pieces of content?
(09:59) How are you able to produce such in-depth content?
(11:22) What was it like going through YC and acquiring your first users?
Where to hear from Dylan
Where to hear from Dylan
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
15:16Episode 9
The four pillars of developer marketing with Kuba Czakon
Kuba Czakon is the CMO of Neptune.ai, a Metadata store for MLOps, built for research and production teams that run a lot of experiments. Kuba is also the author and creator of https://www.developermarkepear.com/.
What we cover
(00:54): How should we be doing developer marketing?
(01:06): How are you applying your four pillars of developer marketing at Neptune?
(11:00): How are you thinking about SEO?
(13:21): How are you allocating your resources now that you are the CMO of Neptune?
Where to hear from Kuba
- Twitter: @JCzakon
- https://neptune.ai/
- https://www.developermarkepear.com/
- Developer Marketing community - https://marketingto.dev/
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:
- Twitter: @nwbotha
- https://shipsaas.com (Nico's SaaS boilerplate)
- https://www.supermeme.ai (Nico's other project - a meme tool)
- https://katlinks.io - SEO tool (Nico uses this)
15:51Episode 5
Experimental Marketing with Natwar Maheshwari
Natwar Maheshwari is a Developer Marketing Lead at Algolia. Algolia is known for empowering builders with the search and recommendation services they need to build world-class experiences.
What we cover
(00:43): How do you think we should think about developer marketing when we're just getting started?
(03:34): Are there things we can do to create that experimental culture?
(07:10): It's about not being afraid to do things that you don't have a lot of knowledge on and try them out just because they seem like a good idea. But also try to get at least a little bit of expertise thrown in there so that you're not, for instance, doing an SEO experiment over 24 hours and expecting to see some results.
(09:48): When you're experimenting with different things, does that play into brand building?
(12:12): When we talk about experimentation, is it experimenting within constraints? How would you describe the kind of process?
Where to hear from Natwar
- Twitter: @natwar86
- https://www.algolia.com
- Newsletter: https://www.engineeringbrew.com
22:28Episode 4
Content for developers with Karl Hughes
Karl Hughes is the founder of Draft.Dev - a marketing content agency focused on creating great content for software engineers. Since founding the company in 2020, the team has grown to include marketers, editors, engineers and over 130 technical writers. Karl also lectures and writes about his learnings and experiences and was previously CTO at a Venture-backed startup. Karl is the perfect person to talk to if you're serious about scaling your developer content.
What we cover
(01:20): Content is pretty much accepted as one of the most predictable paths to grow for developer tools, but the payback is also sometimes a little slower than other channels. Karl, against this backdrop, how should DevTools startups be thinking about content?
(09:44): How does the reputation of your DevTool come into it?
(12:42): I'd love to hear about how you think about promotion, and especially at the moment if there's anything that startups can be doing to shorten the payback of some of their content?
(16:12): Have you had any experiences with developer content on TikTok?
Where to hear more from Karl
- Twitter: @KarlLHughes
- https://draft.dev
- Blog: https://draft.dev/learn/
17:37Episode 2
Early Stage DevRel with Brandon West
Brandon West joined SendGrid, a customer communication platform for transactional and marketing email in 2011 as their first Developer Evangelist. Since then he’s had a brilliant career, working at AWS and CoScreen, which has just been acquired by Datadog.
What we cover
(00:57): What does DevRel look like at startups at the earliest stage?
(05:13): How do you balance doing the right things and building credibility with the fact that you're also willing to push and demo things, which aren't perfect yet.
(07:13): What was it like when you were at SendGrid?
(11:46): What did the relationship look like with the product team?
(05:13): How do you balance doing the right things and building credibility with the fact that you're also willing to push and demo things, which aren't perfect yet.
(07:13): What was it like when you were at SendGrid?
(11:46): What did the relationship look like with the product team?
(17:04): Where can people learn more?
Guest links
19:45Episode 1
Developer Marketing Does Not Exist with Adam DuVander
Adam DuVander is an expert on technical content strategy and the author of Developer Marketing Does Not exist. Adam was previously a Developer Marketer with Zapier & SendGrid and a journalist and developer before that.
Adam DuVander
Adam DuVander
Adam Duvander is the founder of Every Developer and author of Developer Marketing does not exist. He helps dev-focused marketers build content strategies to reach more developers. Adam was the perfect person to have on for our first episode because he literally wrote the book on developer marketing.
What we cover
- (01:47): How should these type of startups be thinking about prioritisation of content versus other things that they could be doing?
- (04:13): Where do they start?
- (05:44): You've written a lot in one of your talks about opinions and pushing an opinionated view of things.
- (07:43): How do you get those developers to also be writing great content?
- (13:55): How do they know if it was a good piece of content?
- (19:51): Where can people learn more about Adam and about all of the amazing insights that you have on developer marketing?
Links
- Twitter: @adamd
- Every Developer: https://everydeveloper.com
- Book: Developer Marketing Does Not Exist
0:50Episode 1
Scaling DevTools Trailer
Created by Jack Bridger, founder of Bitreach. BitReach helps Devtool companies reach more developers. In this series Jack will explore how startups sell to developers, build tools and become successful.