Scaling DevTools

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...

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...

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 significanc...

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 i...

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 c...

Vlad Matsiiako is the CEO and co-founder of Infisical. Infisical is an Open Source Secret Management tool. What we discuss: - The story of Infisical - How the team has made Infisical easy to adopt - How being open source helps you with trust at the beginning stages - How do enterprises adopt Infisical - How do developers at enterprises discover tools like Infisical - The different mini-games at va...

Andrew Lisowski is the cohost of devtools.fm.  In this episode we talk about why Andrew started devtools.fm and what he's learned along the way.  Life as an open source maintainer. How the JavaScript ecosystem is different to other developer ecosystems. The importance of dogfooding. The power of DHH. Why obsessing over one problem eventually leads to great results Should DevTools start podcasts an...

Robby (Amanda Robson) is the co-host of Open Source Startup Podcast (with Tim Chen). In this episode we discuss: There are many ways to open source success When open source is a good strategy and when it isn't Why open source projects usually need time to brew How to know if your project is venture scale Why Robby believes in the Open Source model Robby is working on a highly mysterious new thing...

Hamzah Chaudhary is the cofounder of Lightdash, an open source, self-serve BI tool. 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...

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 n...

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://red...

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...

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 Devel...

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-...

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:...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 WorkO...

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 u...

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 featu...

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...