This is our 100th episode! 

And we're thrilled to welcome back fan favourite Ant Wilson - the cofounder and CTO of Supabase.

They discuss the evolution of Supabase, the importance of open source, and effective marketing strategies. 

Ant shares insights on community engagement, the significance of developer-centric branding, and the challenges of navigating the enterprise landscape. 

We also touch on the rise of AI and vector databases, emphasizing the power of open source in development. The conversation concludes with reflections on the journey and future aspirations.

Thank you to everyone who made it our 100th episode!

Takeaways

• Open source can significantly enhance hiring opportunities.
• Building a strong brand requires understanding your audience.
• Open source provides a competitive edge against incumbents.
• The importance of stability and security for enterprise clients.
• Time in the market builds trust with potential customers.

Links

• Supabase https://supabase.com/
• Ant Wilson's Twitter https://x.com/antwilson
• pgvector https://supabase.com/docs/guides/database/extensions/pgvector  
• Greg Richardson https://x.com/ggrdson
• Previous episode with Ant https://podcast.scalingdevtools.com/episodes/product-market-fit-is-one-pivot-away-with-ant-wilson-founder-of-supabase

Keywords

open source, developer tools, marketing strategies, community engagement, AI, vector databases, enterprise solutions, product development, tech podcast

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

• 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

Han Wang is co-founder of Mintlify - modern, out the box documentation.

In this episode, Han shares the story of Mintlify and how to make great docs.

We even talk about the time Paul Graham told them to change their name.

What we cover:
- the origin story of Mintlify
- what is good documentation
- the process of documentation
- how AI is affecting documentation
- why PG told them to change their name

Links:
- Han https://han.dev/
- Mintlify https://mintlify.com/

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.

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:

• 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

Vivian Dufour is the CEO and co-founder of Meterian.

Meterian is an open source vulnerability scanner.

In this episode we talk about topics like:

• Selling to enterprises
• Why you need to make your product easy to test
• Hiring and managing salespeople

Links:

• Meterian: https://www.meterian.io/
• Vivian Dufour - https://www.linkedin.com/in/viviandufour/ 

Ellen Chisa is a partner at Boldstart Ventures. Prior to Boldstart, Ellen founded Darklang - a programming language. Before Darklang, Ellen worked in product.

What we discussed: 

• Startups should focus on building one SDK and doing it well, rather than trying to build multiple SDKs at once.
• North Star metrics
• Developer tooling companies can learn from consumer-facing companies in terms of marketing and creating an identity for their product.
• Being authentic as a founder and actively engaging with the community can help establish a strong brand and attract users. Recognize and leverage your unique strengths and skills.
• Busy work can be valuable
• The importance of segmenting your message

Links:

• Ellen's Twitter/X https://x.com/ellenchisa?lang=en
• Boldstart Ventures https://boldstart.vc/
• darklang https://darklang.com/

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:

• 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.

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:

• 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.

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.

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'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.

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:

• 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 

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.

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:

• 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

Chris Bell is the founder of Knock.app - flexible, reliable notifications infrastructure.

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:

• Knock https://knock.app/
• Twitter https://twitter.com/cjbell_

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.

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/ 

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:

• 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

Dana Oshiro is a General Partner at Heavybit. Heavybit is a VC that invests exclusively in developer-first startups.

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.

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.

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:

• 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.

Anders Borum shares how he created the number 1 git app in the app store - Working Copy.

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.

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

• 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/

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:

• Stefan's tweet https://twitter.com/StefanTMD/status/1735022106822295920
• Dan Moore https://twitter.com/mooreds 
• Fusion Auth https://fusionauth.io/
• Wundergraph https://wundergraph.com/ 

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 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. 

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/ 

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

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

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

Links:

• https://twitter.com/fmerian
• https://marketingto.dev/
• https://launchweek.dev/
• https://github.com/fmerian/awesome-product-hunt

Lu Wilson AKA todepond is one of the people behind tldraw, the infinite canvas for the internet.
Lu also has a youtube channel, todepond.
Lu also built the [hilarious] programming language dreamberd
Lu is also a researcher with Ink & Switch - an independent research lab

In this episode Lu shares how tldraw went viral again and again and again this year.

My biggest takeaways were to share your whole process and default to visual communication.

Links:
- https://www.todepond.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/@TodePond
- https://github.com/TodePond/DreamBerd
- https://www.tldraw.com/
- https://www.inkandswitch.com/

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/

Guest: Logan Kilpatrick, member of OpenAI’s developer advocacy team, often described as OpenAI’s first DevRel.

Highlights:

• Challenges and Growth: Logan discusses the evolution of developer engagement from GPT 3.5 to the explosive growth following ChatGPT's success. Initially faced with the challenge of generating developer interest, the release of ChatGPT marked a significant shift, highlighting the shift from awareness to scaling and improving developer experience amidst high demand and compute-intensive operations.
• Developer Experience Focus: Logan emphasizes the focus on developer experience, detailing the balance between improving platform features and releasing new models and APIs. Despite past trade-offs, the goal remains to enhance core platform functionalities and developer-friendly features.
• Decision Making and Prioritization: Logan shares insights into the dynamic and fast-paced environment at OpenAI, which requires flexibility in planning and prioritization. Key focus areas include documentation, product improvements, direct developer interactions, internal coordination, and supporting launches, especially the GPT Store.
• Impact of Documentation: Underscoring the critical role of documentation, Logan points out that effective documentation is paramount for developer success, guiding the use of OpenAI's API and models. Efforts are underway to improve documentation quality and support various user personas beyond developers.
• Developer Community Engagement: Lessons from engaging with the developer community include the need for diverse content formats and accommodating various user personas. Logan acknowledges the challenge of keeping documentation and resources updated in a rapidly evolving API landscape.
• Building a Superior Developer Experience: Logan stresses the importance of OpenAI's mission to benefit everyone and the role of the API in achieving widespread impact. The commitment to providing the best tools for developers is seen as a differentiator in the competitive landscape of AI model providers.
• Managing Attention and Feedback: Despite the challenges of being a public figure within the developer community, Logan values direct feedback for continuous improvement. Balancing public engagement with deep work, especially on documentation and launch support, is highlighted.
• Community Questions and Answers: Logan addresses questions from the community, touching on the desire for innovative applications of OpenAI technology, plans for global events, prioritizing documentation, addressing developer concerns about scaling, and sharing personal preferences for deep dish pizza in Chicago.

Rapid Fire Community Q&A:

• Innovative Applications: Logan hopes to see development of multiplayer, multimodal text-first AI assistants.
• Global Events: OpenAI is expanding its presence, including hiring in London and considering events in cities like Atlanta.
• DevRel Strategy for 2024: Focus on creating excellent documentation.
• Developer Concerns: Addressing challenges around freedom to scale and capacity constraints.
• Personal Time: Logan plans to take vacation during the end-of-year code freeze in 2024.
• Chicago Deep Dish Recommendation: Lou Malnati's and Paradise Park are Logan's picks for the best deep dish pizza.

Links:

• Logan's Twitter - https://x.com/OfficialLoganK
• Romain's Twitter https://twitter.com/romainhuet
• OpenAI https://platform.openai.com/
• tlDraw https://www.tldraw.com/
• Bloop https://bloop.ai/ 
• Joyfill https://joyfill.io/
• https://portkey.ai/
• Stripe docs https://stripe.com/docs 

This episode provides a behind-the-scenes look at OpenAI's efforts to enhance developer engagement, the challenges of balancing innovation with platform stability, and the importance of community feedback in shaping the future of AI development tools.

Show notes generated with gpt4 (using a blog post I wrote) 

Ivan Burazin is the cofounder of Daytona

What we cover:

- Scaling a 5,000 attendee conference
- How to drive change in big organizations
- Top down vs bottoms up approaches to growth

Daytona is an enterprise-grade GitHub Codespaces alternative for managing self-hosted, secure and standardized development environments.

Ivan Burazin - https://twitter.com/ivanburazin
Daytona - https://www.daytona.io/

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. 

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/

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/

Julien Danjou is the founder of Mergify - a tool that helps merge code safer and faster. 

Summary (auto-generated):

• How do you split your time between work and marketing? 0:00
  • Julian splits 50% of his time between building the product and the other 50% doing marketing and bringing people to the product.
  • Julian talks about mergerfi.
• Where do you start with product development? 1:23
  • The goal is to solve a problem for an engineer. They co-founded Mirchi Fi with Mary and wrote their own tool.
  • The role of time is a lot of time.
  • The importance of doing demos and showing the product around to the team, and how that has changed over time.
  • How the product is simple and there are a lot of viable options around it, but it's hard to think about all the tiny details.
• How did they get started? 5:08
  • They both started with a full-time job and moved from a platform to get up. They felt naked without any of their tools. They wanted to build their own tools.
  • They found a first rate customer, pitch.com, and then found more startups willing to use a merge request tool.
  • One of the challenges of being a bootstrapped company is that they only have two hours per week to work on the tool.
  • It is easy to not get good at making decisions when you can do everything, but in air quotes, do everything.
• How long did it take to write the first dashboard? 10:07
  • Before people started using it internally, they did most of the grunt work of writing the first version. The first version was a mvp.
  • The first dashboard they wrote was like HTML and the bootstrap framework, which was pretty bad, but it was good enough.
  • The first version of the product is the only thing that is going to be out in front of users or customers.
  • The importance of being an entrepreneur-minded person.
  • When they found the first customers, they decided not to build a company right away, but to focus on building a few hours a week into bots.
  • The real trap.
• Marketing and getting the word out. 16:00
  • The root problem is that nobody knows about you because you are not doing marketing. You have to go with the event if you have a competitor or inspire something.
  • It is easy to build the things for a year or so, especially when you are a developer.
  • Not everything works, but what works well is open source projects. For example, amazon is using lodgify on their open source project.
  • One of their biggest customers was using one of the engineer's projects on github.com, and they talk to their manager about it.
• Marketing and marketing budget. 20:30
  • Marketing is a lot of different channels that they can use, and they have tried almost everything to see if it works, and if it doesn't work, they try to future-harm.
  • They try to provide value for free to open source users and projects and are happy to do that.
  • Adding value in open source is about saving time and giving time to most open source projects using a merge tool.
  • If a company is new to open source, they need a tool to help them with a workflow tool, marketing, etc.
• How did you find out about rescue? 25:36
  • The number of people using rescue is small. There are very small projects with just one or two people mentioning it to project being run by 50 or 100 person behind.
  • The main goal is to actually work on the open source projects, not start a new one.
  • Redhat was working on an open source project with Eddie when they started. Redhat is a great leverage for building a company.
  • One takeaway for a dev tool founder, be strict about splitting 50% of your time between building the product and doing the fun stuff.

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

In this episode, we're joined by returning guest Colin Sidoti - the cofounder and CEO of Clerk.

Clerk is a comprehensive user management platform. 

What we cover:
- The origin story and South Park Commons
- Clerk's dramatic growth since the first episode - what changed? What did they do right?
- 7% growth per week
- Tiny details that improve the developer experience
- How to you know if a change is better - watching people's faces as they try it
- The difficulties of bringing new joiners up to speed in a very high context environment
- Obsessions of founders
- Zuckerberg's obsession and South Park Commons talk
- Nick Parsons appreciation: why it's hard to hire good developer marketing people
- The uniqueness of marketing developer tools
- Buying a van and parking it outside YC
- Local marketing campaigns in San Francisco

Links:
- Clerk https://clerk.com/
- Colin's Twitter https://x.com/tweetsbycolin
- Nick Parsons' Twitter https://x.com/nickparsons
- Jakob's tweet https://x.com/jakeplusev/status/1827791946380877828
- Malte Ubl's blog https://www.industrialempathy.com/
- Zuck's talk at South Park Commons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02fBBoZa9l4

Zach Goldie is a DevTools messaging consultant

• Ship code faster is an empty statement. 0:00
• How do you position yourself against the competition? 1:56
• The problem with free monitoring tools. 6:43
• Explain why fast is a good thing. 11:44
• Curse of knowledge and how to overcome it. 16:42
• The problem with copy length and word count. 21:37
• How do you know if a page is good? 27:05
• Pitching self-serve to users. 32:42

Links:
- Zach's Twitter https://twitter.com/DitchingData
- Zach's site https://www.zachgoldie.com/ 
- Benefit layers https://dx.tips/benefit-layers

Steve Krouse is the founder of Val.town - a social website where you can write and run code.

• Introduction to Val.Town's vision 0:00
  • How long it took Github to make money on Steve
  • Val Town is a social website where you can write and run javascript or typescript, run the code on servers, and see the results.
• Knocking down friction points 2:12
  • Val Town is making it so that programmers can create cool stuff without having to go through the pain of sending an email.
  • Zapier for developers is another kind of tagline that has been seen other people that you've interviewed on this podcast.
• Categorising use cases on the website. 4:45
  • Val Town recently made a list of favourite use cases and categorised them on the website. The challenge is explaining to people what it is and what it can be used for.
  • What can be made with Val.town section
• How to get people to make cool things with your tool 15:51
  • People hear about Val Town because other people are using it. The more people sign up, the more people are signing up for it.
  • Val Town has a smaller number of people who are excited about it and use it a lot, but it's not a mythical product market fit.
  • Every Thursday, the team is not allowed to work on the product. They all have to try and make Vals to go viral, which is a really fun creative day.
  • The last one that went viral was hacker news follow, which was branded as an installable script.
• How do you think about notifications? 24:30
  • Val Town is perfect for programmatic customization of notification emails, so that installing those into your account will be part of the tutorial.
  • Val is passionate about education, and it feels like that's a big challenge because there's lots of new stuff with val.
  • Medium-term ambition, build a learn to code interactive course on top of Val Town. Long term ambition is to have hundreds or thousands of Learn to Code courses on Val Town, embedded in the product.
• Future of coding meetups. 29:36
  • An interview with Brian Dougie, early at Github, and how he helped with bootcamps and how to run code with Netlify.
  • Future of coding meetup in london.
  • Managing a community is a funny thing. The people who start and manage communities are often weird people.
• Date Me Docs 35:33
  • Some people are looking for a unique snowflake, while others are sensitive and don't want attention on their date me docs.
  • The future of dating is a great exercise to go through to get clear in words about who you are and what you're looking for.

Links:
- Val Town - https://www.val.town/
- Steve's Twitter - https://twitter.com/stevekrouse

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 

Gabriel Savit is the founder and CEO of Runway - a tool to coordinate and automate mobile app releases.

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

Links:
- https://twitter.com/gabrielsavit
- https://runway.team/ 

Brian Douglas - or bdougie - is the founder of OpenSauced - an open source intelligence tool. Brian was previously Developer Experience Lead at Netlify and Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub

Summary

• Every engineer is an advocate. 0:00
• Joining GitHub with a 30/60/90 plan. 1:17
• What was the goal when you joined Netlify? 3:16
• How to get started with bootcamps. 7:53
• What are the top projects in open source? 10:52
• The bottom up strategy for adoption at GitHub. 15:22
• Netlify’s Aha moment. 21:19
• How do you get started in reaching out to community and consistently? 25:57

Links:

• https://opensauced.pizza/ 
• https://twitter.com/bdougieYO

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

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

Dan is head of DevRel at FusionAuth - Auth Built for Devs, by Devs

• FusionAuth’s journey from moderation to auth provider.
  • Introduction to Dan Moore, head of DevRel at fusion.
  • Fusion's journey
  • Free to use for many users, but also a cloud offering.
• Synchronous communication vs asynchronous communication.
  • Synchronous communication vs asynchronous communication.
  • 10% of their traffic is coming from forum pages.
• No one ever searches on Stack Overflow.
• What are some of the experiments that have gone well? 
  • Efforts to promote community feel.
  • Community stories, finding out user pain points and wins.
• The importance of getting your community to know each other.
  • Getting 20 or 30 blog posts on the blog.
  • Dan's experience on Screaming into the cloud.

Dan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/mooreds
FusionAuth - https://fusionauth.io/ 

Nikolaus West is the founder of Rerun.io - Visualize computer vision.

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

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

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/

Karl Clement is the founder of https://codeowners.com/ 

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

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 

Fred Schott is the founder of Astro.build and the Astro technology company. 

Astro is the all-in-one web framework designed for speed. Pull your content from anywhere and deploy everywhere, all powered by your favorite UI components and libraries.

Snowpack is a lightning-fast frontend build tool, designed for the modern web. 

Before this, Fred founded Snowpack 

• What is Astro and what is it doing? 0:00
  • Fred introduces himself and talks about astro.
  • Fred explains what astro is and what it does.
• What’s changed in the web over the last 10 years. 2:20
  • The last decade has been defined by full stack javascript.
  • Astro is a server-first HTML rendering.
• Astro’s unique model of building an open source company. 4:51
  • Building a sustainable company around an open source project.
  • The astro technology company model.
  • How Fred got started in open source.
  • What Fred worked on before astro.
  • How Fred got started in open source software.
• Pika was the first project that I really sunk my teeth into. 11:15
  • Pika was the first project Fred really sunk his teeth into.
  • Building snowpack and
• Why is it so bad to create a slack channel for your open source project? 14:00
  • Stop creating slack communities for open source projects.
  • The importance of community
• What it’s like at the beginning of an open source project. 16:26
  • The first users are essential for an early-stage open source project.
  • The power of responding quickly to feedback from the community.
  • The first version of astro
  • The spirit of open source and the importance of licencing code.
• The importance of having fun working on something that’s your own. 22:29
  • The drive to just build it.
  • The importance of having fun working on free software.
  • The psychology of over-architecture.
• The importance of dog-fooding and how to use it. 26:13
  • Dog fooding projects, how to build a tool for someone to use by seeing what they are doing.
• How do you get people to use the tool if they’re not already using it? 29:16
  • Finding a real use case for snowpack.
  • How to approach feedback from users.
  • Using a Github repo to test new changes.
  • Prioritising what to work on.
  • Death by 1000 paper cuts.
  • The importance of listening to users for feedback.

Links:

• Fred's Twitter https://twitter.com/FredKSchott
• Astro https://astro.build/
• Snowpack https://www.snowpack.dev/
• 5 Things I Learned Building Snowpack to 20,000 Stars https://dev.to/fredkschott/5-things-i-learned-while-building-snowpack-to-20-000-stars-b9d
• 6 More Things I Learned Building Snowpack to 20,000 Stars (Part 2)
  https://dev.to/fredkschott/5-more-things-i-learned-building-snowpack-to-20-000-stars-5dc9